How Can Yawning + Walking Calm You Down?
There are many ways you can stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system—the part of your nervous system that alllows you to calm down, feel relaxed, present, engaged, flexible, and alert. Things like yawning and walking can activate the parasympathetic system. While yawming and walking alone won’t heal ongoing traumas, they are powerful resources in enagagin your body and brain in regulated somatic practices that signal safety and peace to one and other.
Yawning stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which helps shift you out of fight-or-flight (sympathetic arousal) and into rest-and-digest mode. It supports calming and grounding. Often, yawning is a natural sign the nervous system is moving toward safety and self-regulation. You can try gently opening the jaw, letting your mouth stretch wide, and see if a yawn wants to come. Sometimes just creating the space for it can help invite regulation.
One of the reasons walking can feel so calming is because it's actually a form of bilateral stimulation. That means it's using both sides of your body in a rhythmic, alternating pattern—left foot, right foot, left, right. This kind of movement naturally engages both hemispheres of your brain which allows for more balanced and integrated processing—especially when you're feeling overwhelmed, anxious, stuck in your head, or out of it. Bilateral stimulation is something we use in certain types of therapy, like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), to help people process emotions and reduce distress. When you're walking, your brain is getting that same kind of gentle stimulation, which can help you feel more grounded and regulated. When both hemispheres of your brain are active and communicating well with each other—like during walking or other forms of bilateral stimulation—it helps your brain process information more effectively. This includes emotional experiences, stressful thoughts, and even memories that might be stuck or overwhelming.
When we're anxious or triggered, one side of the brain can become more dominant—often the emotional, reactive part (usually the right hemisphere). This can lead to racing thoughts, strong emotions, or feeling like you're in survival mode. At the same time, the more logical and grounded part of your brain (often the left hemisphere) might not be as active, which makes it harder to calm yourself down or think clearly.
Imagine your brain is like a rowboat with two paddles — one on the left side and one on the right. The left paddle represents your logical, thinking side, and the right paddle represents your emotional, feeling side.
Now, picture what happens if you only row with one paddle — say, just the right one. You’d end up spinning in circles, right? You’re moving, but you’re not going anywhere helpful. That’s kind of what happens when your emotional brain takes over — like when you’re anxious or overwhelmed. It feels intense, but you’re stuck in it. On the other hand, if you get both paddles going — left, right, left, right — your boat starts moving forward smoothly and in balance. That’s what bilateral stimulation does. It helps both sides of your brain 'row' together. When that happens, your nervous system gets the message: ‘We’re safe. We’re in control. We can calm down now.’
That’s why something as simple as walking, tapping your hands back and forth, or even watching your eyes move side to side can help settle you. It’s like helping your rowboat get back on course — steady, calm, and balanced. Bilateral stimulation helps 're-sync' both hemispheres. It allows emotional and sensory input to connect with reasoning and language. That balance supports your brain in feeling safe, which then signals to your body that it can relax too.
In a sentence: When your brain is more balanced and integrated, your nervous system doesn’t feel like it’s under threat anymore. That’s when your body can shift out of fight-or-flight and into a calmer, more regulated state.
This doesn’t mean walking can replace EMDR therapy, but it does allow you to practice resourcing techniques that target the same parts of the brain and nervous system when we are using bilateral stimulation through tapping during EMDR reprocessing therapy.
Walking also has a soothing effect on your nervous system. Walking can activate what's called the parasympathetic nervous system—that's your body's 'rest and digest' mode, the opposite of fight-or-flight. So while you're walking, especially at a steady pace and with some awareness of your surroundings (an opportunity to tun into your 5 senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, sound), your body and brain start to get the signal that you're safe, and it becomes easier to calm down and think more clearly. Walking might seem simple, but it can be a powerful tool for calming the mind and body. If you ever feel anxious or like your thoughts are racing, going for a short walk can help bring things back into balance.
Yawning and walking are just two of endless somatic resourcing tips you might explore on your own or with a therapist as you mve along in your healing work.
