Essential Breathwork Skills: Why Mastery Starts at the Source
- Kym Burls
- 20 hours ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 10 minutes ago
Breathwork has exploded.
There are more styles, methods, protocols and promises than ever before.
Facilitator A recommends technique X to calm quickly. Facilitator B prefers technique Y. And facilitator C doesn’t even know those techniques — only technique Z — and recommends it for almost everything.
The result… confusion (heck, I rewrote that paragraph three times so it actually made sense).
With confusion comes inaction, leaving many people quietly feeling stuck.
Maybe this is where you find yourself?
You’ve tried multiple techniques. You’ve followed the instructions. You’ve done countless sessions. But the results don’t last — or they feel inconsistent, effortful, and fragile.
The missing piece isn’t another breathing technique.
It’s found by going to the source.
Note:
This is part one of a two part series focused on the essential breathwork skills
Part two goes into detail about the why and how of each skill
Why most people get stuck chasing techniques
Most breathwork education focuses on what my fellow breathwork educator Kasper van der Meulen calls “streams.”
Streams are the visible practices:
Box Breath
Alternate Nostril Breath
Conscious Connected Breathing
Wim Hof Method
Or whatever the latest ‘magic’ modality doing the rounds is (how many D’s are we up to now — 10D?
These techniques can have value. But here’s the problem:
“If the source of your breathing is inefficient, stressed, or mechanically limited, every technique downstream will be harder than it needs to be.”
You can’t out-technique poor foundations. This is one reason why two people can do the exact same breathwork practice and have completely different outcomes.
A quick detour: how skill learning actually works
Most skills follow a predictable learning arc, often described as the Four Stages of Competence:
You don’t know there’s a problem
You realise there is a problem
You can do the skill, but it takes effort
The skill becomes automatic
Learning breathwork is no different.
But unlike cognitive skills, breathing is both mechanical and embodied. It’s happening 20,000+ times a day, largely outside our conscious awareness. Which means that if the mechanics aren’t addressed early, the body simply defaults back to old patterns.
Sources vs Streams (the distinction that changes everything)
Think of breathing like a river system:
The source is where the river begins
The streams are all the branches downstream
If the source is polluted, narrow, restricted, or chaotic, everything downstream is affected.
In breathwork terms:
Streams are the techniques
Sources are the foundations that make those techniques work
When our sources are stable:
Techniques feel easier
Less effort is required
Regulation happens faster
Results last longer
When the sources are weak:
You need constant reminders
Breathwork feels effortful or forced
You keep “forgetting” how to breathe
You jump from method to method looking for a fix
For this article we’re going to focus on the biomechanical source. The other two sources can be considered biochemistry and neurophysiology.
What do we mean by “mechanical sources”?
Mechanical sources refer to how the breath is physically moving through the system, both consciously or unconsciously.
This includes things like:
Where the breath is moving
How much air is being moved
How forceful it’s being moved
The rhythm of the breath
These are not advanced concepts. But they are often skipped.
Why? Because they don’t look impressive. They’re subtle. They require patience. And they (deliberately) don’t create the peak state that many chase.
What they do create is capability.
Why mechanics matter more than people realise
Your nervous system is constantly listening to the signals your body is sending, trying to decipher what is happening, or what is about to happen, to you.
It responds to mechanical changes in your breathing, including:
Pathway (nose vs mouth)
Movement (belly vs chest)
Pressure (low vs high)
Tempo (slow vs fast)
Rhythm (inhale vs exhale)
These changes are what tells the nervous system either “you’re safe” or “you’re under threat”.
This is why someone can be doing a ‘safe’ activity like meditating and still feel anxious or unsettled. The underlying mechanics, ‘how’ they’re breathing, is sending a different signal.
Why mastering the basics unlocks 99% of breathwork techniques
Once you understand how the breath works mechanically, and learn the skills to speak the ‘language of your breath’, you’re able to send the appropriate signal for what you’re doing, or what you want to do.
And then through consistently practicing the basic skills, techniques become intuitive and what once took effort becomes automatic.
At that point, skills become second nature, and techniques are no longer something you do to your body. They become something layered into a well-functioning, responsive system.
That’s mastery.
And it only happens when the source is trained first.
Not perfectly. Not intensely. Just consistently.
The 3 basic (but essential) breathwork skills
Below are specific mechanical skills that, once learned, allow most people to confidently and safely practice almost any breathwork method they encounter.
(These are also the three skills that most of my clients struggle with)
1. Breath Wave
In functional breathing, the breath wave describes the coordinated sequence of how the breath moves through the body, from diaphragm (belly), to ribs, then chest. You can think of this as learning inhale control — being able to ‘place’ the breath into different areas of the torso.
There are 3 areas to train:
Isolating the belly movement
Expanding the rib cage 360° (front, sides and back)
Isolating the chest movement
2. Exhales
A functional exhale is about letting go. The diaphragm relaxes upward and the rib cage recoils to a neutral position. This increase in thoracic pressure passively forces the air out of the lungs (yes, it sounds like an oxymoron at first).
There are 3 ways to train your exhale:
Relaxed (sigh) - allowing the diaphragm to relax naturally
Extended - controlling the recoil of the diaphragm to extend the length of the exhale
Forced - using the abdominal and intercostal muscles to force the air out quickly, and more air out than normal
3. Depth
Learning to control the depth of your breath is crucial to fixing one of the most common breathing problems seen today - over-breathing. Plus, it will help you learn to match the size of your breath to your breathing (i.e. your energy) requirements.
There are 3 breathing depths:
Over-breathing - taking bigger (deeper) breaths than you need
Balanced - the optimal amount of air in and out
Under-breathing - breathing slightly less than you need
You can train your breathing depth in 3 ways:
Breathe normally - call this depth 5/10, gentle inhale and exhale
Breathe deeply - gentle inhale to a 9/10, relaxed exhale
Breathe less - slow inhale only to a 3/10, relaxed exhale (this may get uncomfortable)
Summary
Breathwork mastery doesn’t come from collecting techniques — it comes from training the source material. With so many breathwork methods available, confusion and inconsistency are common. By understanding the difference between streams (techniques) and sources (foundations), it becomes clear why. When the mechanics of breathing — how air moves, how much is moved, and how rhythm and effort are regulated — are trained first, breathwork becomes easier, safer, and more effective. This source-first approach allows techniques to work as intended, turning effortful practice into embodied skill and setting the foundation for mastering almost any breathwork method.
In Part 2 I go into greater detail about why and how to train each of the three fundamental breathwork skills.
Acknowledgment
Shout out to my good friend and fellow breathworker, Jesse Coomer, for his truly unique 'language of breath' concept. To learn more about it visit his website jessecoomer.com
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