In order: swallow first, then pinch your nose and swallow, which is the Toynbee maneuver and opens the tube at lower pressure than the alternative. Only then try a gentle Valsalva. Forcing air hard is the one thing to avoid, and it is most risky exactly when you are most congested.
I have mentioned on a couple of other pages that after a flight into Denver in 2016 my left ear stayed shut for nine days, and that I spent those nine days pinching my nose and blowing every twenty minutes. This is the page where I explain why that was the worst possible response, and what I should have been doing instead.
The order matters more than the technique. Almost everyone does the hardest thing first.
How to pop your ear, in order
1. Swallow, repeatedly, with something to swallow. Sip water. The muscle that opens your eustachian tube, the tensor veli palatini, is recruited by swallowing and by yawning. This is the mechanism your body already uses hundreds of times a day, and it is worth twenty deliberate attempts before you escalate to anything else.
2. Yawn, or fake one. Same muscle, bigger movement. Opening your jaw wide, forward and down, pulls on the area around the tube opening.
3. The Toynbee maneuver. Pinch your nose shut and swallow. That is the whole thing. Closing off the nose means the swallow itself moves air through the tube, and comparative studies of equalization techniques found that Toynbee opens the tube at lower pressure than Valsalva does. Lower pressure is not a minor detail, it is the entire reason to do this one before the other one.
4. Valsalva, gently, a few times only. Pinch your nose, close your mouth, and breathe out softly against the closed nose. Soft is the operative word. This one pushes air up the tube and it does open at higher pressure with a longer opening than Toynbee, which sounds like an advantage and is the reason it gets misused.
5. Combine them. Swallowing while holding a gentle Valsalva, or alternating Toynbee and Valsalva, works for some people where either one alone does not.
That is the sequence. Notice that the two things most people start with, blowing hard and poking at the ear, are absent from it.
How to equalize without pinching your nose
Worth its own note, because plenty of people cannot pinch and blow comfortably, or are trying to do this discreetly.
Swallowing and yawning both work without touching your face. So does moving your jaw forward, as though sticking your chin out, and side to side. Some people can learn voluntary tubal opening, which is opening the tube on command without any of the above, and it tends to come from practising the jaw and swallow movements until the sensation becomes recognisable.
None of those move as much air as Toynbee does. They also carry essentially no risk, which is the trade.
Toynbee not working, or nothing working
This is the most common version of this question, and it usually gets answered by repeating the instructions louder. So, directly:
If the maneuvers are not working, the problem is probably not your technique. A maneuver moves air through a tube. If the tube is swollen shut by a cold or allergies, there is no technique that opens it, because the obstruction is tissue rather than pressure. Doing it harder does not address swelling. It only raises the pressure against your eardrum.
That reframing is the useful part. When nothing works, the target moves from the ear to the swelling: what a clinician reaches for first in that situation is intranasal steroid spray or an antihistamine, aimed at the tissue around the tube opening rather than at the ear. Which of those applies depends on whether the problem is swelling or fluid, and that is a distinction you cannot make from the outside.
Two things to stop doing when nothing works. Stop escalating the force, for reasons in the next section. And stop the twenty-minute cycle, which is what I did for nine days: it did not open, and by day five the ear ached on top of being blocked.
And know the timeline. Several days of this after a cold or a flight is ordinary. Two weeks without improvement is the point to have it examined rather than keep trying maneuvers.
Why forcing it is the one thing not to do
This is the part that changed how I think about those nine days, and it is not in most articles about popping your ears.
A forceful Valsalva does not only push air up the eustachian tube. It raises pressure in cranial tissue and circulation, and that pressure transmits to the fluid in your inner ear. The mechanism described in dive medicine is that the oval window can be pushed outward, drawing the round window inward far enough that it tears. Leakage of perilymph, the inner ear fluid, can follow from severe middle ear barotrauma or from a forceful Valsalva. Pressure waves alone can injure the inner ear even without a window rupturing.
A perilymph fistula is treated as a medical emergency. Its symptoms are dizziness, vertigo, imbalance, nausea and vomiting, often with hearing loss, and sometimes with ringing and fullness.
Now the part that matters most, and it is a genuine paradox nobody points out: that risk is highest when you are congested. Dive medicine is explicit that the danger rises when a cold or allergies are already compromising the tube, because the tissue is inflamed and the tube will not yield. Which means the exact moment you most want to force your ear open, because it is stubbornly shut, is the moment forcing is least likely to work and most likely to hurt you.
None of this is an argument against a gentle Valsalva. It is an argument against the harder-and-harder version, which is where everybody ends up at hour forty of a blocked ear.
About the Frenzel maneuver
You will run into this one if you search far enough, so here is the honest placement of it.
Frenzel uses the tongue and throat to compress air into the tube without raising chest pressure, and comparative research does find advantages over both Valsalva and Toynbee. It is a freediving technique. Divers learn it because it works at depth, repeatedly, without the cardiovascular side effects of a hard Valsalva.
If you are here because your ear has not popped since a cold, learning Frenzel is not your answer. Your tube is inflamed, not resistant to the right technique. I mention it so that finding the word does not send you down a week of diving tutorials for a problem they were not written to solve.
Why do my ears pop when I work out
A frequent question and a benign one. Lifting heavy while holding your breath is effectively a Valsalva: you raise internal pressure against a closed airway, and that pushes air through the eustachian tube, so the tube opens and you hear the click.
It is your tube doing its job under a pressure change you created. Worth knowing mainly so you do not add a deliberate hard Valsalva on top of one you are already performing by accident.
Stop, and get it looked at
- Sudden dizziness, vertigo or imbalance after a forceful attempt at popping it
- Hearing that dropped over hours or a day, rather than slowly muffling
- New or worsening ringing right after a hard Valsalva
- Pain, or any discharge or bleeding from the ear
- Two weeks of a blocked ear with no improvement
FAQ
What is the safest way to pop your ear?
Swallowing and yawning, which use the muscle that opens the tube and put no extra pressure on the eardrum. The Toynbee maneuver, pinching your nose and swallowing, is the next step and opens the tube at lower pressure than Valsalva.
Toynbee is not working. What now?
Usually the tube is swollen shut rather than needing a better technique, and no maneuver opens swollen tissue. That shifts the target to the swelling itself, which is a conversation with a clinician about intranasal steroids or antihistamines rather than more attempts.
Toynbee or Valsalva, which is better?
For safety, Toynbee, because it opens the tube at lower pressure. Valsalva opens at higher pressure with a longer opening, which is why it feels more effective and why it is the one that causes injuries when it is done hard.
Is the Valsalva maneuver dangerous?
Gently, a few times, it is a standard self-care technique. Forcefully and repeatedly it is not: dive medicine describes forceful Valsalva as a route to inner ear barotrauma, including a torn round window and perilymph leakage, which is a medical emergency. The risk rises when you are congested.
How do I pop my ear without pinching my nose?
Swallowing, yawning, and moving your jaw forward and side to side. They move less air than Toynbee, and they carry essentially no risk.
How many times should I try before stopping?
Enough attempts at the gentle end to know they are not working, and then stop escalating. If several days pass with no change, the answer is not more maneuvers. The timeline for a blocked ear is worth knowing so you can tell ordinary from overdue.
Why did my ear pop and then block again immediately?
The tube opened and did not stay open, which is what happens when the tissue around it is still swollen. Repeated brief success followed by re-blocking points at inflammation rather than at a stuck mechanism.
The short version of everything above: the gentle techniques are the effective ones, the forceful one is the one with an injury attached, and when nothing works the problem has moved out of reach of technique entirely. What it means when the ear simply will not pop is the other half of this page.