Can anyone explain butterflies?

I don't think it's anything physical by the way, I think it's just a phenomenon that can't be explained, but I wanna hear what you all think too, itll be interesting.

The "butterflies" are partly just that, when you are stressed, or excited, blood tends to leave your non-essential areas - like digestion - and go to wherever the body deems essential. Like - legs and arms when you are scared, cos your body assumes you need to be strong and fast - and ...er...other areas ...when you are getting sexually excited, for instance - built in automatic response. And, our nervous systems haven't had time to figure out that most modern stresses don't really require muscles to deal with - it still reacts they way that it did when we lived in forests and caves and such.

Other weird feelings are from the chemicals our body releases to help us when we are under threat not being discharged in explosive action - and often hyper-ventilation.

The warm love feeling prolly DOES have some sort of chemical explanation - we ARE made of meat and such, you know - but I work professionally with anxiety, so I know a lot more about that!

Interestingly, a lot of excited feelings are just like fear ones - but the context means we interpret them differently - like we enjoy scary films, but not scary bosses.

It's an ongoing debate, whether this is physical or mental, but biological psychologists generally believe that all our emotions, such as anger, love or butterflies, are the result of the body's nervous system and the various neurotransmitters the brain produces. Most of these feelings come from the limbic system in the brain, where certain parts of the body such as the hypothalamus and the amygdala have been discovered to influence emotion and anger/fear respectively. There have been a lot of interesting experiments in which rats have had parts of their brains lesioned or stimulated, and they act completely different from normal (for example, having no fear at all or eating to the point of death). I'll try to get some links for you as well.

Sorry, I can't find any links right now, but this issue would be under neuroscience in psychology.

And is tomorrow always coming, yet never goes away?

I do not see a need for debate ie I see no contradiction.

Our "mind" and "emotions" are the subjective experience, I believe, of physical realities, which are, in turn, affected by both.

Thoughts affect feelings, both affect physiology, physiology affects thought and feeling.

All is intertwined and each is part of the other. I see no opposition.

yeah it is tomorrow, too many big words for me. dlowan i didnt think a response with such good answers was possible so fast, either way, i get the feeling and i like it, despite waht nuerotransmitters or whatever or sending. thanks for the responses

Enjoy!

Yea! What is that?

I posed a similar question here awhile back.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=589007#589007

Nevermind, I never said anything.

Bear in mind that we have three nervous systems: the central nervous system(brain), the autonomic nervous system(spinal cord), and the enteric nervous system(alimentary canal). The ens contains more neurons than the ans(spinal cord).

At birth the enteric nervous system is the only nervous system adequately developed. The alimentary canal works perfectly well for food digestion, but the baby has very little muscle control or intellect; therefore, the only way the baby can express itself is through the midline, the alimentary canal. Crying, spitting up, colic, diarrhea, and butterflies, etc., are all reactions to stress involving the alimentary canal.

Later on in life, after we gain muscle control and intellect, we also use these two nervous systems to react to stress, such as, respectively muscle tension and neruoses, but we still have a pattern of reactions involving the enteric nervous system. Butterflies are the same reaction to stress that we first experienced as infants.

coluber--

Very interesting. I was unaware of the ENS.

As an actor/director I've long suspected that "butterflies" were an expression of my common sense and digestive tract that evacuation and flight might be dandy ideas.

well since i believe in the balance of the 7 chakra's to me the butterfly sensation is a slight overload in the chakra in the stomach.

other feelings can be described as this, such as the choked feeling in the throat wen upset, or headaches wen stressed, sexual stimulation etc etc

but that's in my opinion