TempoLife › Features › Sleep sounds and stories › breathing-4-7-8
4-7-8 breathing
In for four, hold for seven, out for eight, four times through. A short, deliberately lopsided pattern for the ten minutes after you get into bed and find your mind still running.
There are no recordings on this page yet. TempoLife does not host narrated audio for these sessions, so rather than show a player with nothing behind it, every session is published in full as a script you can read, follow or record yourself. Audio versions are planned; when a recording exists, a player appears here automatically.
The pacer
This session runs at 4.0 seconds in, 7.0 held, 8.0 seconds out — a cycle of 19.0 seconds, or about 3.2 breaths a minute.
The silent visual pacer needs JavaScript. Without it, use the numbers above and count — that is all the pacer does.
When to use it
Use it lying down, once you are already in bed and the lights are off, or in a chair after something stressful. It is short on purpose: four cycles takes well under two minutes and the whole session including settling is about four.
When not to
It contains a genuine breath hold, so treat it with more care than the other patterns here. Do it lying down or sitting, never standing, driving or in water. Stop if you feel light-headed or short of breath. If you have a lung or heart condition, or you are pregnant, ask a clinician before using a pattern with holds in it — a hold is the one part of breath practice that is not simply harmless.
The session
Read it through once before you start, so you are not reading while you are doing it. The times on the left are where each instruction lands if you keep an unhurried pace; they are a guide and nothing goes wrong if you are a minute out.
| Time | What to do |
|---|---|
| 0:00 | Lie on your back or sit with your back supported. Rest the tip of your tongue just behind your upper front teeth and leave it there for the whole session; it stops you clamping your jaw and it gives the mouth something to do. |
| 0:15 | Empty your lungs first. Breathe all the way out through the mouth, unhurried, until there is nothing left that comes easily. Do not force the last of it out. |
| 0:30 | Cycle one. Close your mouth and breathe in quietly through the nose for a count of four. Hold for a count of seven. Then let it out through the mouth for a count of eight — slowly, steadily, with a little sound if that helps you keep it even. |
| 1:00 | Cycle two. Same again: four in, seven held, eight out. Keep the counts even in speed rather than fast or slow in absolute terms — the ratio is what matters, not the seconds. If seven is uncomfortable, count faster so the whole cycle is shorter, and keep the 4:7:8 shape. |
| 1:30 | Cycle three. By now the out-breath is doing the work. This is where most people notice the pattern beginning to land: the hold builds a small amount of pressure and the long exhale releases it. |
| 2:00 | Cycle four. Last one. Do not add extra cycles the first few times you try this — four is the whole exercise, and doing eight because four felt good is the usual way people give themselves a headache. |
| 2:30 | Stop counting. Let your breathing go back to whatever it wants to do and do not manage it. Stay still for another minute or two. If you are in bed, this is the moment to stop doing anything at all. |
Notes
The claims made for this pattern online are much larger than the evidence for it. What is reasonable to say is that a long exhale relative to the inhale is the common ingredient in slow-breathing techniques, and that a short fixed routine is easy to repeat. What is not reasonable is treating four cycles as a treatment for anything.
If the hold is unpleasant every time, use the coherent-breathing session instead. It has no hold at all and it is a better fit for most people who are simply trying to get to sleep.
Recording it yourself
Since there is no narration here, the most useful thing many people do with this page is record it. It takes one pass on a phone voice recorder and it works better than you expect, for a reason worth knowing: a familiar voice is less interesting than a stranger's, and less interesting is exactly what you want at bedtime. Read at about two-thirds of your normal speaking speed, leave the pauses longer than feels comfortable, and do not re-record it because you stumbled — the stumble will not matter to you at 23:00.
These are relaxation practices, not treatment, and nothing here diagnoses anything. Do them sitting or lying down — never while driving, cycling or in water. Stop if you feel light-headed. Breath holds in particular are worth checking with a clinician first if you have a heart or lung condition or you are pregnant. Persistent trouble sleeping, loud snoring with pauses, or sleepiness that does not lift after a full night are reasons to see a doctor rather than to try another breathing pattern.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take?
About 4 minutes as written. The timings in the left column are a guide, not a metronome — running two minutes over is not a mistake.
Do I need the recording?
There is no recording of this session and the page does not pretend otherwise. Read the script once before you start so you are not reading during it, or record it in your own voice, which many people find works better than a stranger's.
When should I do it?
Use it lying down, once you are already in bed and the lights are off, or in a chair after something stressful. It is short on purpose: four cycles takes well under two minutes and the whole session including settling is about four.
Other sessions
Coherent breathing, 5.5 breaths a minute
The plainest of the paced-breathing patterns: in for five and a half seconds, out for five and a half, for ten minutes. No holds, no counting past six, nothing to get wrong.
Box breathing, four by four
Four seconds in, four held, four out, four held. A square, symmetrical pattern that is easier to hold on to than an uneven one when your attention keeps sliding away.
Body scan
Fifteen minutes of moving attention slowly from your feet to your head, without trying to change anything on the way. The oldest and most reliable of the wind-down practices, and the one that most often ends before it finishes because the person doing it fell asleep.
Non-sleep deep rest, 20 minutes
A longer lie-down that keeps you just the right side of awake: body scan, a little breath work, then a stretch of doing nothing at all. Twenty minutes in the afternoon, or a first-aid session on a day after a bad night.
Sleep story: the night train
A slow, deliberately uneventful story to read — or have read to you — in bed. Nothing happens in it, which is the point: it gives the part of your mind that wants a narrative something dull and pleasant to hold while the rest of you stops.
All sessions · Chronotype questionnaire · Sleep calculator · Sleep results
Source: Zaccaro A, et al. How breath-control can change your life: a systematic review on psycho-physiological correlates of slow breathing. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2018;12:353 · checked 2026-09-02
Source: NHS — Breathing exercises for stress · checked 2026-09-02
See whether the wind-down changes the night
TempoLife reads sleep from Health Connect, so a fortnight of doing this before bed becomes a measurable change in when you fall asleep.