Feelings we Feel with our Body

Have you ever heard the expressions (cold feet, butterflies in your stomach, on pins and needles, hot headed, a feeling in the pit of my stomach)?  Why is it we relate certain feelings to various parts of the body?  In 2013 some Finnish researchers were asking themselves the same question.  Before we can understand how this happens, we need to find out what happens.  For their study, over 700 people were shown two silhouettes of bodies next to emotional words and pictures. They told them to mark in the areas on the outlines of the human body that they believed would give their own body a feeling. The results were impressive.  They found in general, people feel emotions in similar parts of their bodies.  This explains why we have such expressions in our language.  The body tends to react in some universal ways.  The next question will be to find out if we can find out how these physical sensations are triggered and why.  If you want to help with these studies you can participate in them yourself at http://becs.aalto.fi/~lnummen/participate.htm

Try it.  It might be fun!