How to Make Yourself Yawn

Priming Your Body to Yawn

Think about yawning. Just thinking about yawning can cause your body to want to yawn. Prime yourself for yawning by imagining yourself doing so. Look at the word "yawn" and think about how it feels to have a good, deep yawn.

Open your mouth wide. Pretend like you're going to yawn, even if you don't feel one coming on. Open your mouth as wide as you can. Just getting in position to yawn can be enough to prompt an actual yawn to form.

Tighten the muscles at the back of your throat. These muscles naturally contract a little when you yawn. Contracting them now may stimulate your body to form a real yawn. Your brain will connect the feeling of these muscles contracting with the act of yawning.

Take a deep breath through your mouth. Just as you would with a real yawn, breathe in through your mouth. Breathe quite deeply and slowly, rather than taking a quick, shallow breath, since real yawns allow you to take in a lot of air.

Stay in position until you feel a yawn coming. With your mouth and throat in position, a real yawn is likely to kick in at this point. Your body will naturally want to yawn when your mouth is open, your throat is slightly contracted and you've taken a good deep breath. If you still can't yawn, try the next method.

Watching Other People Yawn

Hang out around family and friends who are yawning. You probably already know that yawning is highly contagious. When you see someone yawning, you are likely to yawn yourself. This urge to yawn happens more often between people who know each other, like family members, friends or classmates. If you really need to yawn, watch for someone you know to yawn first. Some scientists theorize that yawning helps to synchronize the actions of a social group. This may be why 50 percent of people yawn when they see someone else yawn, especially if it's someone they know. Yawning is so contagious that even reading about yawning can spark you to yawn.

Ask someone you know to pretend to yawn. If no one seems to be yawning, ask a friend or family member to pretend to yawn. Just seeing the person going through the motion of yawning, even if they aren't really doing it, could trigger your body to yawn in response.

Look around to find strangers yawning. Even though yawns are less contagious between strangers, they're still slightly contagious. If you're in a public place in which you don't know anyone, look around to see if anyone is yawning. Hopefully you'll catch the bug and yawn in response.

Watch a video of people yawning. If you don't have any people around to watch, look up "yawning" on YouTube and watch a video of someone yawning. This will have the same effect on you as seeing a stranger yawn in person. You could also just look at a picture of someone yawning.

Try watching animals yawn. Yawning is even contagious among animals and humans. As a fun experiment, try watching your dog or cat yawn, then see if it affects you. Look at videos of other animal species yawning, too. Research shows that almost all animals do it.

Creating a Good Environment for Yawning

Go to a warm room. People yawn more often in warm places than in cold. Scientists believe that's because yawning floods the body with cooler air and helps to cool down the brain when it's on the verge of getting overheated. Studies show that people yawn less often in winter or in rooms that are kept cold. On the reverse side, if you're trying to get some work done and you can't stop yawning, try turning down the temperature to cool the room down a bit. Your yawns should subside pretty quickly.

Get cozy and comfortable. We tend to yawn more in the morning because our brains are a little hotter during the night. Yawning cools us down when we wake up. If you want to make yourself yawn, try getting back in bed, getting under the covers and warming yourself up. You'll be yawning before you know it.

Stress yourself out. Stress and anxiety cause the brain's temperature to rise, and yawning cools it back down. That's why Olympic athletes have been observed yawning right before competing. Skydivers and other daredevils also yawn right before they take the plunge. Working yourself up into a frenzy may help stimulate some yawning to cool your brain down.