The Overlooked Superpower For Balancing Your Nervous System, Releasing Toxins & Deepening Relaxation
Yawning is something we all do — first thing in the morning, during long meetings, while watching someone else yawn, and sometimes for no clear reason at all.
For centuries, yawning has been dismissed as a sign of boredom or tiredness. But modern research tells a very different story.
Scientists are now discovering that yawning is a deeply intelligent physiological reflex with roles in arousal, brain cooling, social connection, pressure regulation, and even emotional attunement. In other words, your body knows exactly what it’s doing — and yawning is one of its most underrated tools for balance and wellness.
As someone who teaches people how to work with their breath to regulate the nervous system, I find this research fascinating.
When we understand how instinctive reflexes like yawning support our wellbeing, we can appreciate that our bodies are always working for us, not against us.
Let’s dive into some of the surprising science behind yawning — and why it deserves much more respect than it gets.
1. Yawning Helps Wake Up the Brain
Although yawning often happens when we’re tired, the reflex itself may actually serve the opposite purpose.
Studies show that immediately after a yawn, there’s a measurable increase in:
Heart rate
Skin conductance (a marker of alertness)
Nervous system activation
In other words, yawning acts like a natural internal reset button, gently stimulating the brain when our attention drifts or our arousal levels drop. This often happens during quiet, low-interaction activities like studying, driving, or watching TV.
Specialists have even compared the body’s response during a yawn to the effects of caffeine — a temporary boost in alertness without the side effects.
Scientists also discovered a link between brain size and yawning length. Small – brained animals, with fewer neurons in the cortex, had shorter yawns, while larger-brained animals had longer ones. Humans have the longest yawns of any species.
Animals, will often yawn before they attack and then yawn again when the fight is over.
2. Yawning Helps Cool the Brain
One of the most fascinating modern theories is that yawning acts as a cooling mechanism for the brain.
Research in humans and animals shows:
Brain temperature rises before a yawn
Then drops during and after the yawn
Returning the brain to an optimal operating range
This makes sense when you consider what happens physically:
Deep inhalation brings cooler air into the body
Blood flow to the face and head increases
Tear production and jaw movement help dissipate heat
Many neurological conditions — including migraines, anxiety, heat stress, and even stroke — can trigger excessive yawning because they elevate core or brain temperature. The body responds with yawns in an attempt to restore balance.
This is yet another reminder of the body’s incredible self-regulating intelligence.
3. Yawning Is Linked to Empathy and Social Bonding
One of the most surprising discoveries is that yawning has a powerful social and emotional component.
Contagious yawning — when you yawn because someone else does — is more likely to happen when:
You know the person, You feel connected to them, You have higher empathy levels
In fact, research shows:
Close friends and family trigger contagious yawning far more than strangers
Children under 4–5 years old, whose empathy circuits are still developing, rarely catch yawns
People with conditions that affect social connection (like autism or schizophrenia) show reduced contagious yawning
This suggests that yawning acts almost like a non-verbal emotional synchronizer — a way that social species subtly attune to each other.
As a breathwork facilitator, I see this often: the way people’s nervous systems mirror, synchronize, and co-regulate during sessions. Yawning becomes part of that shared physiological language.
4. Yawning Helps Equalize Ear Pressure
This one is more familiar: yawning helps open the eustachian tubes, equalizing pressure in the ears during changes in altitude (such as on airplanes or elevators).
While not the main purpose of yawning, it’s a handy secondary benefit — another example of how the body uses natural reflexes to maintain comfort.
5. Yawning Is Not Caused by Low Oxygen
For many years, it was believed that yawning occurred when the body needed more oxygen.
But modern research shows this is not true:
Increasing oxygen levels does not reduce yawning
Increasing carbon dioxide levels does not trigger yawning
So if yawning is not about oxygen, we now understand it as a multifunctional reflex related to arousal, temperature regulation, social connection, and resetting the nervous system.
A New Perspective: Yawning as a Gift, Not a Flaw
Yawning is such a common, universal behavior that we often overlook its wisdom.
Across species — from humans to chimpanzees to birds — yawning appears to play important roles in:
Balancing the nervous system
Regulating brain temperature
Supporting social communication
Maintaining alertness
It even occurs in human fetuses as early as 20 weeks — a sign of how deeply wired this reflex is.
Rather than being a sign of disrespect or boredom, yawning may be one of our body’s ways of communicating its need for physiological or emotional recalibration.
Yawning and Breathwork: An Intriguing Connection
In SOMA Breath sessions, yawning is incredibly common. Participants often report:
Feeling sudden relaxation
Releasing emotional tension
Shifting into a calmer state
Or even coming back into alertness
Based on the science, this makes perfect sense.
Yawning may appear involuntary, but it often signals the body’s intelligence doing exactly what it needs — cooling the brain, resetting attention, releasing stress, or deepening connection.
In my workshops, I always tell my students:
“If you yawn, let it come. Your body is working with you.”