Early days of assessing clients as a breathwork coach.

I'd sit across from someone, watch their chest rise, notice the shallow rhythm, the breath-holding, the over-breathing, and in my head I'd be listing what was wrong.

In a group of fellow facilitators, I was describing a client assessment. Somewhere in the explanation I called their breathing pattern wrong.

One of them stopped me.

"No one breathes wrong."

I paused. I thought I was being precise.

She explained it simply: the breath adapts. It responds to stress, to history, to what the body has needed to survive. What looks dysfunctional from the outside is often the body doing exactly what it learned to do.

Calling it wrong misses that entirely.

It also puts you in the wrong seat. As a judge, not a guide.

That one correction shifted how I work. I stopped looking for what was “wrong”. I started asking: what is this pattern protecting?