In essence, Leboyer is suggesting that the mother breathe in deeply and slowly from the belly, chanting a loud pure sound on the outbreath and with the contraction; and then waiting at the end of the outbreath for the contraction to be over, before breathing in again. Leboyer learned the chanting from the Indian teacher, Savitry Nayr.
Nicholas Albery interviewed Leboyer about this new approach:
Albery: Is there any culture or society on earth that you know of where chanting has been used by the mothers in pregnancy or birth?
When a woman is giving birth she is reborn herself. She goes back to her own birth and can go beyond herself. Her little self merges with the real self, the totality, the one and all. Going through this frightening experience, she comes to the limitations of the small 'I', the ego collapses. She's both herself and the totality.
Albery: Are there signs that the unborn child in pregnancy appreciates the chanting of the mother?
Leboyer: Yes. Very often when the woman has a restless child in the womb, it signifies that the child is unhappy. With the chanting, the mother knows, 'My child is different now.' She knows because the child moves around less.
Albery: Can you imagine groups of pregnant women getting together to practise chanting?
Leboyer: No. It needs to be a one to one relationship, almost like psychoanalysis, it is so intimate.
Some women believe you can take six quick lessons before birth, like before taking a car for a drive. But there are things which cannot be taught. All inner experiences are a matter of getting attuned. Little by little you awaken. The disciple is trying to understand, and reading about it may say 'Ah yes', but the teaching can only be the confirmation of personal understanding, it has only this value.
Albery: Does it need to be the specific type of Indian chanting you are describing?
Leboyer: Some people say, 'It is very nice to have music in labour, what would you like, Vivaldi or what?' But listening to pure sound is different, a perfect sound includes all its harmonies, it is all sounds put together, just as the rainbow includes all colours. With pure sound you can touch absolute perfection. You need to let the sounds open and awaken within yourself. If women can connect with this level of themselves, the experience of childbirth has another dimension.
Birth is not something sweet. It is the most intense experience a person can go through. But as long as you fight it, you're finished. Just as the mystics tell of the joy of getting drunkenly flooded with excessive energy, so for the woman it is possible to go through the storm of labour like this, instead of containing the contractions or bearing the pains.
In childbirth, breath is the ultimate. The breathing and contraction get completely attuned. It is a matter of becoming aware that breath and contraction are one and the same movement, in time with the cosmic breath, the breath of the universe. The breath is breathing you, it is a holographic concept of one in the whole, each part a reproduction of the whole.
And during the months of pregnancy, the woman who is so-called 'expecting' is not expecting any more. She is beyond time. It is a state of grace. There is a field energy around the body. But once pregnancy is institutionalised, the magic is gone, it becomes like a supermarket. It is no longer sacred.
Frederick Leboyer, 8 Warner House, Priory Walk, London SW10 9RE (tel 071 373 1695). See 'The Art of Breathing' by Leboyer, published by Element Books, 1986. Leboyer also has a film on this subject, entitled 'The Rite of Birth.'