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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.
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 5.5 seconds in, 5.5 seconds out — a cycle of 11.0 seconds, or about 5.5 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
Best as a wind-down in the last half hour before bed, and useful any time you notice your breathing has gone shallow and fast. It is the pattern to pick if you have never done a breathing session before, because there is nothing in it to fail at.
When not to
Do not do it standing up the first few times, and never while driving, cycling or in water. If you feel light-headed, stop and breathe normally — that is a sign the pattern is too slow or too deep for you today, not a sign to push on.
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 | Sit or lie somewhere you will not be interrupted for ten minutes. Sitting is better if there is any chance of falling asleep before the session ends and you did not intend to. Let your shoulders drop. You do not need to sit up straight; you need to be able to breathe without pressing on your stomach. |
| 0:20 | Breathe normally for four or five breaths and just count them. This is not the exercise yet. It is a baseline, and it tells you how fast you were breathing before you started paying attention — most people find it is faster than they expected. |
| 0:45 | Now lengthen. Breathe in through the nose for a slow count of five and a half seconds, and out through the nose for the same. The easiest way to keep the count without concentrating on it is to think "one and two and three and four and five and" at a walking-pace rhythm. If nose-out feels restrictive, let it out through slightly parted lips instead. |
| 1:30 | There is no pause at the top and no pause at the bottom. The turn from in to out should be smooth and unhurried, like the top of a swing rather than the end of a sentence. If you find yourself snatching the next breath in, your out-breath was too long — shorten both sides by half a second and stay there. |
| 3:00 | By now the count should be running on its own. When it is, stop counting words and follow the length instead: in for as long as it takes, out for the same again. If the count comes back, let it. Nothing is spoiled by counting. |
| 5:00 | Halfway. You may notice the breath has got quieter and smaller without getting faster. That is the point of the pattern and it does not need to be encouraged. Do not try to breathe deeply — slow, not big. Deep and slow together is how people make themselves dizzy. |
| 7:00 | If your mind has been somewhere else for the last two minutes, that is not a failure and it does not need fixing, only noticing. Come back to the length of the out-breath. It is the easiest part of the cycle to find again. |
| 9:00 | Last minute. Keep the same pace; do not speed up because the end is close. If you are doing this in bed and you are already sleepy, simply stop counting at some point and let the rhythm carry on without you. |
| 10:00 | Finished. Do not stand up quickly. Sit or lie for another thirty seconds and let your breathing find its own rate before you move. |
Notes
Why five and a half seconds each way? It works out at about 5.5 breaths a minute, which is in the range slow-breathing research generally uses. Anything between five and seven breaths a minute is close enough; the exact number matters far less than the fact that the out-breath is at least as long as the in-breath.
This is the pattern to repeat rather than to perfect. Ten minutes done four times a week does more than forty minutes done once, in the same way that a short walk most days beats a long walk once a month.
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 10 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?
Best as a wind-down in the last half hour before bed, and useful any time you notice your breathing has gone shallow and fast. It is the pattern to pick if you have never done a breathing session before, because there is nothing in it to fail at.
Other sessions
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.
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.