Each day, I pick up a student towards the end of my route. Mom has driven him to the end of the drive and waits in her car until I get him loaded. I close my doors, check the traffic, and then return her wave before pulling away. Well, she did something a few weeks back that got me thinking.
She yawned.
As she waved to me, she was smiling through a yawn. You know what happened next, don’t you? I started yawning and for the next half mile, I couldn’t quit. One yawn after another. In fact, as I’m remembering this and typing it, I’m yawning.
How many of you just yawned?
Scientists are a bit mystified when it comes to yawning. Why do we do it and why is it so contagious? Georgia Gwinnet College psychology professor Steven Platek dispels the myth that we yawn to increase our oxygen levels, lower blood pressure, or decrease heart rate. Instead, yawning may have more to with our thermoregulatory system as our body tries to maintain an even temperature.1
Why is it so contagious? “Platek says that yawning is contagious in about 60 to 70 percent of people—that is, if people see photos or footage of or read about yawning, the majority will spontaneously do the same. He has found that this phenomenon occurs most often in individuals who score high on measures of empathic
understanding. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, he found that areas of the brain activated during contagious yawning, the posterior cingulate and precuneus, are involved in processing the our own and others’ emotions. “My capacity to put myself in your shoes and understand your situation is a predictor for my susceptibility to contagiously yawn,” he says.”2 What do you know? I am a highly empathetic person!
Researchers also “theorize that people who are more susceptible to contagious yawning have a higher level of social-cognitive processing (which is the way people process and apply information about others).” Dr. Beverly Brown, clinical trial manager at the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Nottingham, says that mirror neurons cause this social behavior, suggesting “that there is a social communication element to contagious yawning. This research, and that of others, goes some way into explaining why you can feel compelled to yawn when observing other people yawn” 3
Do me a big favor. Don’t break out in spontaneous yawning during church today! However, our attendance with our brothers and sisters is supposed to have a 
contagious effect. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 4:16, “Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.” He repeated the same idea in 1 Corinthians 11:1. “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” To the church of Thessalonica, Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 1:6, “And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost.” And, 2 Thessalonians 3:6 says, “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.”
For the word follow in these verses, the Greek uses a form of the word mimetes. The word means to imitate, to mimic. When someone yawns, I involuntarily mimic their action by yawning. We are to have this affect on our brothers and sisters in Christ, not to get them yawning but according to Hebrews 10:24, to “provoke to love and good works.”
Come to church today and be infectious and contagious. Come with joy, praise, excitement, eagerness, hunger, and thirst. Come with love and compassion. Be the catalyst to start others following your example.
1https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-do-we-yawn-and-why-is-it-contagious-3749674/
2Ibid.
3https://www.rd.com/article/why-is-yawning-contagious/
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
