Areas › Your body › Touch and bodywork
Open your mouth and put on a big obvious fake yawn. More often than not a real one follows, and the soft palate lets go with it.
Yawns are catching, so if you are sitting with someone else one of you starting will usually set off the other. Let it be a proper one: jaw wide, eyes watering, a sigh on the way out. It is a strange thing to do on purpose, and it costs nothing to try twice before deciding whether it did anything.
Qur’an and Sunnah
'He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him' (Quran 8:11). Reassurance arriving through something the body simply does is a familiar pattern, and a yawn belongs to that family.
إِذۡ يُغَشِّيكُمُ ٱلنُّعَاسَ أَمَنَةࣰ مِّنۡهُ وَيُنَزِّلُ عَلَيۡكُم مِّنَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ مَآءࣰ لِّيُطَهِّرَكُم بِهِۦ وَيُذۡهِبَ عَنكُمۡ رِجۡزَ ٱلشَّيۡطَٰنِ وَلِيَرۡبِطَ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبِكُمۡ وَيُثَبِّتَ بِهِ ٱلۡأَقۡدَامَ
Remember when He gave you sleep as a reassurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you, to remove Satan’s pollution from you, to make your hearts strong and your feet firm
Qur’an 8:11read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
A network meta analysis comparing massage, yoga, progressive muscle relaxation and stretching for occupational stress in healthcare workers found all of them helped to some degree, with no clear winner between them. That is encouraging about simple physical ways of settling, and it says nothing at all about yawning, which nobody has trialled. Treat this one as cheap and worth testing rather than as established.
Zhang M, Murphy B, Cabanilla A, Yidi C. (2021). Physical relaxation for occupational stress in healthcare workers: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.. Journal of occupational health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A yawn stretches the back of the throat, which is exactly where the calming nerve runs.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
Rest both hands on your chest, feel it lift and fall, and let the breath go low enough that your belly moves too. If someone you love turns up in your mind while you do it, let them stay.
When the person in front of you starts yawning during body work, it is usually not boredom. Bodies yawn as they let go of what they were holding.
End by pressing your palms together and staying there a moment. Each hand is giving and being given to at the same time.