Gwyneth Paltrow says we're yawning wrong

You’ve yawned thousands of times in your life possibly even more. So it’s logical to assume that by now you’re an expert at it.

But Gwyneth Paltrow is suggesting otherwise in a new post on her lifestyle website, Goop. In the post, Paltrow recalls a recent dinner conversation with yogi Michael Lear, who said yawning is a “very important mechanism for releasing stress” and “the body’s primary way to release and stretch the jaw and neck muscles after a long day of work and conversation.”

Lear then offered up two different ways to yawn, both of which involving “tearing.”

To do yawn No.1, tilt your head back and allow your mouth to hang open. Then, contract the back of your throat and breathe deeply through your mouth so that you feel the air hit the back of your throat. Inhale and exhale, and “reach and extend into” the yawn to stretch your jaw muscles. Lear advises repeating this up to 10 times until your eyes start to tear.

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For yawn No.2, repeat the steps in yawn No.1 but bring together your lips, while keeping your teeth slightly separated.“Creating this shape with your mouth as you yawn will take out more slack in the throat muscles to bring the lengthening and relaxation around the base of the tongue, and further stretch and relax the neck, jaw, and occipital regions,” Lear says.

Again, do this up to 10 times until you tear up. While Paltrow added that tearing isn’t necessary for these yawns to be beneficial, it all sounds a little … complicated. Is there really a “right” way to yawn?

Nope, says neuroscientist and yawning expert Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland and author of Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond.

“Yawning is an instinct that develops long before we are born, at the first trimester of prenatal development,” he explains to Yahoo Health. “It’s neurologically programmed…everyone yawns ‘correctly.’”

Adrian Guggisberg, a researcher at the University Hospital of Geneva who has studied yawning, agrees. “I would not see any advantage in trying to modify it voluntarily,” he tells Yahoo Health.

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But researchers are still unclear on why we yawn. “While there are numerous hypotheses, few have been experimentally tested and none is currently scientifically confirmed,” says Guggisberg.

Provine says most of our yawning behavior is usually associated with change, such as waking up, drifting into boredom, feeling warmer, or watching someone else yawn. We may even yawn after reading about it (are you yawning yet?).

But, despite the wide-spread belief, his research indicates that we don’t yawn because of a shortness of oxygen.

Contrary to Lear’s advice, experts say it’s not bad for your health to suppress a yawn — it just won’t feel as good as if you give in to the urge.

So, while the idea of optimizing your yawn is an interesting one, the reality is, you already do it perfectly.