Feeling was originally used to describe the physical sensation of touch through either experience or perception. The word is also used to describe other experiences, such as a feeling of warmth and of sentience in general. In psychology, the term feeling is closely related to emotion, and usually refers to the conscious subjective experience of emotions. The study of subjective experiences is referred to as phenomenology, whereas psychotherapy refers to a process whereby a therapist helps a client understand their own feelings and experiences. Feelings are also known as a state of consciousness.

Sensation occurs when sense organs collect various stimuli (such as a sound or smell) for transduction, meaning transformation into a form that can be understood by the nervous system.

Interoception is contemporarily defined as the sense of the internal state of the body. This can be both conscious and non-conscious. It encompasses the brain's process of integrating signals relayed from the body into specific sub-regions like the brainstem, thalamus, insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced representation of the physiological state of the body. This is important for maintaining homeostatic conditions[4] in the body and, potentially, facilitating self-awareness.

A gut feeling, or gut reaction, is a visceral emotional reaction to something. It may be negative, such as a feeling of uneasiness, or positive, such as a feeling of trust. Gut feelings are generally regarded as not modulated by conscious thought, but sometimes as a feature of intuition rather than rationality. The idea that emotions are experienced in the gut has a long historical legacy, and many nineteenth-century doctors considered the origins of mental illness to derive from the intestines.

The phrase gut feeling may also be used as a shorthand term for an individual's common sense perception of what is considered the right thing to do, such as helping an injured passerby, avoiding dark alleys and generally acting in accordance with instinctive feelings about a given situation. It can also refer to simple common knowledge phrases which are true no matter when said, such as Water is wet or Fire is hot, or to ideas that an individual intuitively regards as true (see truthiness for examples).

The heart has a collection of ganglia that is called the intrinsic cardiac nervous system

In biology, homeostasis is the state of steady internal, physical, and chemical conditions maintained by living systems. This is the condition of optimal functioning for the organism and includes many variables, such as body temperature and fluid balance, being kept within certain pre-set limits (homeostatic range). Other variables include the pH of extracellular fluid, the concentrations of sodium, potassium and calcium ions, as well as that of the blood sugar level, and these need to be regulated despite changes in the environment, diet, or level of activity. Each of these variables is controlled by one or more regulators or homeostatic mechanisms, which together maintain life.

• blood glucose
• blood ions
• blood pressure
• body temperature

The way that we see other people express their emotions or feelings determines how we respond. The way an individual responds to a situation is based on feeling rules. If an individual is uninformed about a situation the way they respond would be in a completely different demeanor than if they were informed about a situation. For example, if a tragic event had occurred and they had knowledge of it, their response would be sympathetic to that situation. If they had no knowledge of the situation, then their response may be indifference. A lack of knowledge or information about an event can shape the way an individual sees things and the way they respond.[8]

Timothy D. Wilson, a psychology professor, tested this theory of the feeling of uncertainty along with his colleague Yoav Bar-Anan, a social psychologist. Wilson and Bar-Ann found that the more uncertain or unclear an individual is about a situation, the more invested they are. Since an individual does not know the background or the ending of a story they are constantly replaying an event in their mind which is causing them to have mixed feelings of happiness, sadness, excitement, and et cetera. If there is any difference between feelings and emotions, the feeling of uncertainty is less sure than the emotion of ambivalence: the former is precarious, the latter is not yet acted upon or decided upon.

See:medical disorder

• Positive feeling :
• I feel
• I feel good
• I feel nice
• Negative feeling :
• I suffer
• I sick with
• I feel bad

My … hurts

• abdomen
• back
• chest
• ear
• head
• pelvis
• tooth
• rectum
• skin
• Extremities
  • leg
• Chronic pain

I feel: