
Yawn. It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain - soundsop
http://www.upenn.edu/gazette/1109/expert.html
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alanthonyc
How many of you yawned when you read the title to this post?

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rms
I tried it but can't decide if any relaxation I felt was placebo or not.

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GavinB
The relaxation was real, even if the cause was a placebo.

I believe this is the only time in the history of HN when it won't be rude to
say . . . _yawn_

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mattmaroon
In that case, more articles about Lisp please :)

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ptn
I think you mean Erlang.

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gloob
I think you mean global warming.

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codexon
_Andrew Newburg is director of Penn’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind.
This essay is from the book: HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN_

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amix
So what... He has looked at how "believing in God affects our brains" - his
idea that yawning could be a good thing is still valid and interesting.

He is a neuroscience professor (but then we'll fall into "Appeal To
Authority"). Anyhow, I think we should stick for what he is saying now, and
not what he has said or researched in the past.

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Tichy
Especially since "believing in God affects our brains" seems entirely
plausible.

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codexon
There's a world of difference between "believing in God affects our brains"
and "HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN".

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tesseract
Yeah, one of them will sell more books.

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codexon
No.

One of them explicitly suggests that God exists and undertakes a non-
scientific point of view while the other does not.

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amix
If he has done experiments and research to see how belief of God affects the
brain, then his approach could be scientific and he may even conclude that
belief in God affects the brains of partitioners. Reading on Wikipedia he has
also researched "non God" religions such as Buddhism - - and he has found out
that stuff like meditation (and praying) affects the partitioner's brain.

And really, as somebody has noted it above: it's very plausible that belief
changes our brains, given that most humans throughout our history have had
belief. And research in belief is _very_ interesting and might put light on
why most of the humans today believe in something.

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theblackbox
you mean _practitioners_? surely?

Normally I would put aside my Grammar Nazi persona, but you make the mistake
twice, so I feel compelled to intervene.

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papersmith
"All you have to do to trigger a deep yawn is to fake it six or seven times."

Does this work for anyone else? Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

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slig
I was very skeptical, but it did work for me.

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onoj
It irks me that while the story is interesting and potentially inspiring, the
idea that this guy has a god fixation means I have to disregard it. Why don't
these people do double blind studies (in this case with MRI) to find out if
what they are saying is actually true rather and just post as if it was true.

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mdolon
I've always found yawning very intriguing, and how people often get triggered
to yawn as others around them are yawning. And how I just yawned at the
thought of that!

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nsrivast
Strangely, I yawn aggressively when lifting weights and when I'm nervous
(usually before a public speaking event).

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nagrom
It could be that your heart rate increases (exertion, nerves) and this is your
body's way of increasing oxygen in the system. That'd be my guess, anyway.

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electromagnetic
I was always told by biology teachers and such, from junior highschool up to
college professors that yawning is stimulated by a decrease in oxygen in the
brain. A decrease in oxygen can be related to a number of things, one being
exercise (which will reduce overall body oxygenation), another being
concentration (certain areas of your brain can locally reduce its oxygen
levels by working more than normal, likely when you shift from using one area
of your brain to another), another is tiredness due to reduced respiration and
heart rates, and finally by waking up as your body tries to increase its
oxygenation levels to cope with rapidly increasing demands (this can be
effected by what state of sleep you're in: light, deep or REM; typically deep
sleep would cause the most yawning when being woken up from).

I'd certainly believe you could induce yawning from anaerobic exercise. If it
was induced by aerobic exercise, I'd say you're not doing the exercise
properly!

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antirez
The feeling of Yawning on purpose is not the same as yawning spontaneously :)

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redcap
Did you fake yawn 5 or so times before getting the real one out as the article
suggested?

I faked a couple of yawns and it still felt good :)

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antirez
I'll try it better :) Thanks

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agbell
Author of HOW GOD CHANGES YOUR BRAIN

