Why we don’t score your breathing

Many apps will give your breathing a score. A number for your calm, a streak for your consistency, a chart for your progress. We have chosen not to, and this is why.

A number changes what it measures

When you know you are being scored, you begin to perform for the number. This is true of schools, of workplaces and, it turns out, of breath. A body that is trying to look calm is not calm. It is concentrating.

A saying among people who work with measures goes: when a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure. Breath is a sensitive case, because it changes when you watch it. The more closely you monitor it, the less natural it becomes.

There is a documented version of this with sleep. In 2017, sleep clinicians described a few patients who had become so anxious about the scores from their sleep trackers that the worry itself kept them from sleeping. They called it orthosomnia. It was a small report of cases. It does not tell us how common this is, and it does not say that trackers are bad for most people. But it shows how a measuring device can turn into a second job.

Heart rate variability is a real and useful measure in research. A single figure on your wrist each morning is another thing. It is easy to start asking the number how you feel, instead of asking yourself.

What we keep instead

For each visit we record two words, and only two: how you arrived, and how you left. You choose them. A month later you can read them in a row, like a record of weather.

There are no streaks. No points. No message telling you it has been three weeks. You come back because you want to, and you can stop whenever you like. The record belongs to you, not to us. Our teachers do not mark you either. They watch the room, not a scoreboard.

You may ask how anyone knows whether they are improving. Our answer is plain: ask yourself, and look for small things. Perhaps you notice sooner that you are clenching your jaw. Perhaps you wake on a Sunday and find your shoulders are down. Perhaps the two words you wrote last month are different from the two you write now. No figure can see these for you, and none of them needs to be proved to anyone.

The two words need not be beautiful. Tired, untidy and fine are all good words.

What it costs us, and what it buys

Scores and streaks are very good at bringing people back. We give that up on purpose. It makes our work harder to measure and, in a narrow business sense, less efficient.

What it buys is an hour that is not a test. It also protects the aim we care about most. In the third of our three depths, you can bring yourself back, anywhere, in a few breaths, with nobody watching and no number to confirm it. A score would make that harder, because it would teach you to wait for someone else to tell you that you are fine.

If nobody ever saw a number, how would you know it had been a good breath? By whether you noticed that you had come back.

Tonight, write two words: how you arrived, and how you are leaving. Do not grade them.