Open for any other additional tips as I’m currently all plugged from a 7 hour flight
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There’s tubes running between the sides of your throat and the backs of your eardrums. They’re called eustachian tubes, and the ends normally squish shut by default, like cooked tube spaghetti or your uretha, etc.
When you dramatically change altitude and the outside air pressure changes, your eardrums can get sucked in or bulged out by the pressure inside those tubes. And because they’re squished shut, the pressure can’t equalise.
By yawning and stuff, you stretch that part of your throat, and it pulls the ends of the tube open, so air can go in and out, letting the pressure match the outside again, and your eardrums go back to a neutral position.
You don’t actually need to do a full yawn – it’s usually enough just to push the back of your tongue forwards amd/or drop your jaw a little. If you breathe through your nose while doing it, you should hear the air rushing past, like someone breathing into the mic.
Also if you hold your nose and try to breathe through it anyway, you can usually force air into/out of the things, and clear them that way.
If you get a cold, the tubes can get all swollen and congested, and that’s called eustachian catarrh. It can be quite horibly distresing if one side or the other won’t clear properly, and you’re all uneven.
If you remain clogged up, decongestant (such as pseudoephedrine) is your friend.
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