Yawning is good for you, apparently. It can help you relax, which maybe isn’t so surprising. But it can also increase compassion, social awareness and empathy, and even increase self-awareness in ways similar to yogic breathing.

Andrew Newburg, director of Penn’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind, reckons yawning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience.

In an essay published in the online Penn Gazette, he writes:

Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool.

But yawning doesn’t just relax you – it quickly brings you into a heightened state of cognitive awareness….  it rids the brain of sleepiness, thus helping you stay focused on important concepts and ideas. It regulates consciousness and our sense of self, and helps us become more introspective and self-aware.

My first response on hearing this was an element of suspicion. I remember hearing many theories on why people yawn over the years, all with explanations that could apply only to human beings. But most animals yawn. Certainly most mammals do. I remember seeing a snake in a zoo doing a most extravagent yawn, with its entire jaw hinged back.

Yawning is so widespread in animals, it is madness to think that dogs would yawn for one reason, but humans for an entirely different reason.

Newburg doesn’t seem to be falling into the human-centric trap, though:

Dogs yawn before attacking, Olympic athletes yawn before performing, and fish yawn before they change activities. Evidence even exists that yawning helps individuals on military assignment perform their tasks with greater accuracy and ease. Indeed, yawning may be one of the most important mechanisms for regulating the survival-related behaviors in mammals. So if you want to maintain an optimally healthy brain, it is essential that you yawn.

His advice is to yawn as many times a day as possible. He advises yawning when you wake, when you have problems to solve, before you sleep, and whenever you feel angry, anxious or stressed.

He recommends forcing yourself to yawn, doing it deliberately and consciously, and doing it at least ten to 12 times in a row.

Your eyes may start watering and your nose may begin to run, but you’ll also feel utterly present, incredibly relaxed, and highly alert. Not bad for something that takes less than a minute to do.

I don’t need to learn martial arts or self-defence, because I don’t get in fights and no one ever attacks me.

Hang on a minute, is that true?

Yes. And no.

I’m no spring chicken, I don’t hang around in bustling clubs and bars, I live in the country and lead a simple sort of life.

I don’t get in PHYSICAL fights, for sure. No one ever attacks me physically, with fists or a sword or what have you.

But what about verbal violence, financial violence, psychological attacks.

Hey, you know what: I’m under attack from advertising and politicians and religious nutters and quacks and salesmen and internet marketers and spammers and on and on, all the time.

Then there’s the people all around me, bless them every single one. They’re not saints. They’re fallible human beings just like me.

I need defence against all of this.

I need psychological self-defence. I need training, tools, techniques.

When I’m under attack, I should be aware of the fact for a start. Then I’d better be able to size up my attacker and counter his (or her) moves.

Even if my attacker is simply an abstraction – like fate, or life, or murphy’s law, I still need a way to deal with it. I need to defend my inner self, so I don’t weaken, don’t give in to pointless depression or grief or resignation. So that my confidence and self-belief doesn’t take a battering.

If you need these things too, stick around. It’s going to be one of the main topics for this blog.

Freedom is something many of us search for, perhaps most of our lives. But are we looking in the right places?

There is a famous saying on the subject of freedom, often attributed to Thomas Jefferson (wrongly, it turns out):

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

The quote is referring to political freedom – it’s talking about nations and societies and how they interact with the individual. It refers to vigilance, about what is going on in the world around you.

On the level of personal freedom, I suggest there is a slightly different equation:

“The price of freedom is self-awareness.”

The vigilance that is needed is an awareness of what is happening in your inner world.

Without self-awareness, you are at the mercy of external events.

Others can take control of you, making you angry or jealous or sad through the things they do.

The world and the environment you live in will constantly pull you this way and that.

Without self-awareness, you may not even know this is happening to you. You will flow through life without a thought, without a compass to steer by, without a rudder with which to steer.

Or, to put it another way, no paddle for your canoe. And you know where that puts you…

You are adrift, at the mercy of the winds and the tide.

Self-awareness gives you the ability to calm the winds and the waters and make them still.

You may not be able to change the world or what other people do, but you are able to see how these things are affecting you, and make a conscious decision not to be swayed, not to be changed, not to be controlled.

So you are free to go your own way, to choose your own course through life. When others make a suggestion, you can consider it, and accept or reject it, depending on your own wishes.

Without self-awareness, you run the danger of being manipulated constantly by others. It might be by your own loved one. It might be by friends or family. It could be by advertisements and corporations, eager to take money from you.

It could be by governments, or their corrupt minions, eager to keep you under their control.

It could be by the media, by bloggers, internet marketers, by sports franchises or religious cults.

It could be by your past. Or your fears. Or your weaknesses. Or your delusions.

It could be by your own body.

To achieve true freedom, you need it both inside and outside.

You need freedom from poverty and persecution. Having control over your time and how you spend your day is important to many of us. The freedom to make our own choices about our life, even in little ways, is something to be treasured.

These freedoms alone are not enough. Being self-employed, or working from home, or quitting the day job or becoming rich, these things alone won’t make you free.

Inner freedom is more important. You need to understand yourself; how your mind works; how it interacts with your body.

These two types of freedom, inner and outer, are not two different things. They are one and the same thing.

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Footnote:

*Wikiquotes says the ‘price of freedom’ quote isn’t really Thomas Jefferson at all:

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Often attributed to Jefferson, no original source for this has been found in his writings, and the earliest established source for similar remarks are those of John Philpot Curran in a speech upon the Right of Election (1790), published in Speeches on the late very interesting State trials (1808):
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.