Finding the baseline
1 min 30[Keep your own breathing quiet and unremarkable while you record. Listeners copy what they hear, and one audible demonstration sigh will have the whole room over-breathing within a minute.]
Sit or lie however you are comfortable. Put one hand low on your belly, below the navel, and leave it there for the whole of this. [pause for 10 seconds]
Breathe the way you were already breathing. Do not fix it yet. Just notice where it arrives — high in the chest, or lower down under your hand. [pause for 20 seconds]
Now let the next breath out a little more slowly than the one before it. That is the only rule in this whole recording. Out for longer than in. Everything else is detail. [pause for 20 seconds]
The early labour breath
2 min[Say the counts once, loosely, and never repeat them as an instruction. The moment a client is checking their count they have stopped resting — if anyone asks what the right number is, tell them there is not one.]
The first breath is for the long early part. Hours of it, possibly. It is a slow breath and it is meant to be dull. [pause for 10 seconds]
In through the nose, unhurried. Out through the mouth, longer. Something like four counts in and six or seven out — but do not count carefully. If you are counting well enough to notice you got it wrong, you are working too hard. [breathe this way for 30 seconds]
Let it get boring. Boring is the point. This breath is not doing anything dramatic. It is keeping you comfortable through a long afternoon so you arrive at the strong part with something left. [continue for 30 seconds]
The surge breath
2 min 30[Watch for anyone holding their breath at the peak — it is the commonest fault and it looks like concentration. The fix is ‘let your jaw go’, never ‘breathe deeper’.]
This next one is only for while a surge is happening. It starts when the surge starts and it stops when the surge stops. It is not for the rest of the time. [pause for 10 seconds]
As it builds, one breath in through the nose. Not a huge one. Then let it out slowly through a soft mouth, all the way down, until it runs out by itself. Then in again. Keep going until the surge has gone. [practise three of these, about 20 seconds each]
The out-breath is where the work is. Jaw loose, lips apart. No sound is needed, and any sound you make is fine. Somewhere in the middle of one of those out-breaths the surge reaches its peak, and after the peak it only goes one way. [pause for 20 seconds]
You are never breathing into something with no end. You are breathing to the end of one wave, and then you stop, and then there is a gap that belongs entirely to you. [pause for 15 seconds]
Down-breathing for the second stage
2 min[Teach this one, but keep the practice light — down-breathing is rehearsed at full effort only in labour, not in pregnancy, and say so before you press play. If a client will be birthing with an epidural or with a midwife coaching them, frame this breath as something that fits around that guidance rather than replacing it.]
The last one belongs to the second stage, when the urge to push arrives. It is a different shape from the others. Nothing goes upward. Everything goes down and out. [pause for 10 seconds]
A breath in, then send it downwards — down the front of your body, through the belly, out. Some people picture it moving; some just aim it. Either works. Your body will be doing most of this without asking you. [practise two, slowly, about 15 seconds each]
If your body is already pushing, you do not have to lead it. Follow it. The breath goes with the urge, not instead of it, and not against it. [pause for 15 seconds]
Putting it away until you need it
1 min[End cleanly and stop the recording. Do not add reassurance about how the birth will go — the breath is the deliverable, and anything you promise on top of it is something you cannot keep.]
Three breaths, then. A slow one for the long wait. A long out-breath for while a surge is happening. A downward one for the end. [pause for 10 seconds]
You will not remember them in order on the day, and you do not need to. Whichever one you reach for, the useful half is the same. Out for longer than in. [pause for 15 seconds]
That is enough for now. Let your breath go back to doing whatever it wants to do, and leave your hand where it is a moment longer. [pause for 15 seconds]