Breathing techniques

Calm and J breathing are the two most common breathing techniques used in hypnobirthing, they bring purpose to your breath, and encourage relaxation. You wouldn’t believe how much breathing plays a part in your labor and delivery. Breathing is how our body recieves oxygen, thus, its our our uterus is able to contract and bring baby down through the cervix and birth canal. Lack of oxygen, tires the uterus, a lot of the time, resulting in longer labor. Oxygen is part of what fuels labor.

Calm Breathing- Used to promote relaxation

Calm breathing is actually quite simple. All you do is breathe in for a count of 4 and breathe out for a count of 8. That’s really it! Doing this over 4 times, you would have made your way through a surge.

This technique isnt limited to labor, it can be used in everyday life. For me personally I use this coupled with The 8 Zones Technique to fall asleep at night.

Letting your exhale extend tells your body that you're safe, and you can relax. It tells the nervous system to stop produces Adrenalin as you have no need for your flight or fight response when you are calm and safe.  Once your Adrenalin response has slowed down, you will start to feel calm and safe for real.

It’s encouraged to practice this in pregnancy to prepare for labor.

J Breathing-

J breathing is used for the down portion of labor when you are bringing your baby down the birth canal. It’s called J breathing because that is thr shape the breath takes as it moves through your body. Unfortunately the standard for pushing in the west is what we are used to seeing in the movies, with women on their back, legs in stirrups and neck pulled forward as the nurse is counting down from 5 for them to push. This does not support natural childbirth whatsoever. Imagine trying to do a #2 while laying on your back. Not that I have ever done that but I could imagine it would be quite hard. It works against gravity, and forces the body to work 2 times as hard for the same result. It’s important to wait to push until the fetal ejection relfux takes over, and you have a uncontainable urge to “push” or breath baby down. This can be in whatever position you feel most comfortable.

J breathing utilizes breath (go figure), to bring your baby down the birth canal.

Heres how you do it:

Take a nice short deep breath in through your noise that fills your lungs (not your stomach), when your breathe out direct your breath towards your birth canal, channeling all the energy down. Another way to do this breathing technique is to do the same breath in but instead of a long breath out, we do a few short purposeful breaths down, still channeling all energy down. Do this when you feel the urge. Inbewteen surges you can use up breathing. You should feel the muscles in your abdomen flex as you do this. A great way to to practice this is while having a bowel movement, place a sticky note on the wall near the toilet to remind yourself to practice, it may take a little to get the hang of it!

Remember childbirth isn’t a race, while you push, your baby’s head may bob back up while bewteen surges. That is normal! This allows for the walls of your vagina to slowly stretch, resulting in less tearing, and a overall gentler birth. Use that time to breathe, relax, and when the next surge comes, you’re ready!

8 zones breathing-

The 8 zones breathing technique is somewhat adopted from hypnobirthing. Imagine your body broken up into 8 zones horizontally. Head, shoulders to bust, bust to belly, etc. The actual breath itself is the same as calm breathing except, on the breath out you are completely relaxing each zone with each second. Going limp like a ragdoll. This promotes complete relaxation. Use during and between surges.