It’s something we’ve done since we were born but according to Gwyneth Paltrow, we’re not doing it right. The lifestyle guru published a post on her website about the virtues of yawning and how to make the most of your yawning experience. And here we thought watching an hour of C-SPAN would do the trick.
According to the post, there are two types of yawns one must master in order to achieve optimal Goopdom and the everlasting approval of lifestyle overlord Gwyneth Paltrow. The yawns require a lot of stretching and overthinking. For the first yawn, you should have your mouth open. The other requires your lips to be closed. Both demand that you yawn until you can’t take it anymore and there are sweet tears streaming down your face, which you must collect in a jar and mail to Paltrow to add to her morning green tea. Although, if you don’t tear, don’t worry too much because the end of the post notes that you don’t need to be crying in order to benefit from these exercises. Oh, thank goodness.
“There’s a perception that it’s rude or that it means that you’re bored, but the reality is that it’s a very important mechanism for releasing stress,” yogi and yawning expert Michael Lear says. “It feels good for a reason: Trust that your body knows how to calibrate itself.”
If only there was some way we could trust our bodies to know how to yawn on their own…
