YAWNING MEDITATION IS AMAZING!!!
Yawning meditation can be somewhat likened to Ujjayi breathing in yoga and is a meditation practice we can employ to stimulate certain areas of the brain and improve focus, compassion and advance our spiritual practice and overall health.
Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, MD and director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, has researched yawning meditation and its benefits. He claims that yawning is one of the best-kept secrets for maintaining a healthy brain.
Newberg’s research shows that yawning stimulates neural movement in certain mind areas and regulates brain temperature and brain metabolism. This can in turn, increase muscle control, enhance sensuality, and even starve off jet lag. In addition, yawning has been found to boost the immune system and improve memory. Yawning has been used for some time in voice therapy as a therapeutic intervention for reducing performance anxiety and hypertension in the throat.
We can actually use yawning to cultivate calm, stay focused, and be more compassionate. Newberg claims that a good yawn can relax you more efficiently than meditation and whilst calming you also brings the mind into alert focus, an ideal state of heightened cognitive function. During the day, it also rids the brain of sleepiness, maintaining your attention. And the reason why we start yawning as we go to sleep is because it also regulates our internal clock, limiting our reliance on alarms. Most fascinatingly, it stimulates the brain responsible for generating empathy and social awareness, so it may in fact strengthen our ability to be gentle and kind.
Several recent brain-scan studies have shown that yawning stimulates the part of the brain responsible for generating empathy and social awareness. This area of the brain is called the precuneus, which is a tiny structure hidden within the folds of the parietal lobe. The precuneus has recently been associated with the mirror neuron system in the brain and therefore yawning may help us to resonate and feel how others do, improving social awareness, communication and compassion.
Intentional yawning may actually strengthen our ability to be more kind and compassionate to others.
According to scientists at the Institute of Neurology in London, the precuneus appears to play a pivotal role in
- Consciousness
- Self-reflection and
- Memory recall
This brain structure, the precuneus, is also stimulated by yogic breathing, a great explanation for why different forms of meditation seemingly contribute to an increased sense of self awareness. Age-related decline and attention deficit disorders seem to harm the precuneus, so it could be that yawning meditation could in fact strengthen this part of the brain to reverse aging and ADD.
The coolest facts about yawning come right down to the nitty gritty neurochemicals.
- Dopamine is increased, which goes on to activate oxytocin production in your hypothalamus and hippocampus, two areas essential for memory retrieval, voluntary control and temperature regulation.
“These neurotransmitters regulate pleasure, sensuality, and relationship bonding between individuals, so if you want to enhance your intimacy and stay together, then yawn together.” Dr Andrew Newberg
- Further neurochemicals and molecules involved with yawning include nitric oxide, glutamate, GABA, serotonin to name a few you may know the benefits of for meditators (however, the list goes on!)
Yawning meditation is an activity we can do that positively influences so many functions of the brain and for its wide ranging effects, it uniquely sets it apart.
It is recommended that you yawn ten times before you want to concentrate or memorise, perform well (even in a race), before exercise and sleep and even in intimate settings with those closest to you. We also recommend that you do it to increase empathy and compassion, as a compassion focussed meditation in therapy and for use in a daily contemplative spiritual practice. Newberg recommends that we engage in an intense ritualistic practice daily to set our brain up for enlightenment experiences. This could mean we need to engage in an intense ritual such as a 15 minute yawn-sigh meditation, or rapid movements of head, body, arms combined with the yawn-sigh practice. This will interrupt old habits and everyday consciousness bring the brain to a different and transcendent state.
12 ESSENTIAL REASONS TO YAWN by ANDREW NEWBERG
- Stimulates alertness and concentration
- Optimizes brain activity and metabolism
- Improves cognitive function
- Increases memory recall
- Enhances consciousness and introspection
- Lowers stress
- Relaxes every part of your body
- Improves voluntary muscle control
- Enhances athletic skills
- Fine-tunes your sense of time
- Increases empathy and social awareness
- Enhances pleasure and sensuality
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