When I start my meditation session, I pretty much start to yawn straight away a number of times through the short session.
When this happens, I just say, yawning, and continue on this way.
Is this the right idea?
NICK BUTCHER- What do you think, Owen?
Owen?
I think noting it is fine.
but I'm not too sure on the reason for the yawning.
Maybe the meditation's been taking place at the end of the day.
Are they physically tired?
Or are they finding that when they're meditating, they're going more into a relaxed state rather than a state of concentration and focus?
Yeah, sometimes you might want to do walking instead if you're tired.
Yawning can be rapture as well.
Apparently, you can get into a state of piti and start yawning.
We had this question about what is a yawn.
This Israeli monk, he sent me an email, and he asked me, what is a yawn?
And I went to one monk and got an answer.
And then he asked what did another monk said, so I went to that monk and got an answer.
And then he asked what did Ajahn Tong, my teacher,
say and went to my teacher and got another answer.
And I actually went to the Tipitika as well and looked it up and there's not much about yawning.
What is yawning?
Where does it come from?
Yeah, yawning is fine feelings.
Go ahead.
Yawning physically means that your body needs oxygen.
That's why the body tends to yawn.
So maybe some deep breaths or get some fresh air before meditating.
Yeah.
If you're doing stressful mind work, it can cause you to yawn when your brain is working too hard.
You find when you start to meditate, you yawn because
the oxygen's not getting to the brain or something, so something's triggering that.
It can be when you're thinking too much.
So yeah, you don't always just have to acknowledge everything.
That's the key to it.
But
Especially with fatigue, when a person is nodding off, you can get up and walk, you can pull your ears, you can wash your face, you can recite chanting.
I don't know, when I was living as a meditator in Canada, I would try to do driving meditation, which is of course dangerous, especially at night.
because you can enter into states of concentration and fall asleep.
So in order to combat that, I was thinking about what can I do with trying to think of different ways, you know, massaging my arms or something.
Nothing was working until I started doing really loud chanting, which is, of course, what people have been doing outside of the Buddhist teaching, right?
They put on some music and sing along.
That really helps to wake you up.
Anyway, that's not what I would do if you're yawning, but...
But yeah, you can start doing chanting.
That is something that can help.