Why does a self made body massage feels completely different from a massage made by someone else?
In: 95
I’m not an expert but I would assume one of the main aspects of receiving a massage is relaxing. If you’re flexing your muscles and exerting energy to massage yourself, you’re not relaxing.
Because your brain is processing both sides of the massage when it’s you. You are also experiencing the feeling in the nerves of your hands which takes away from only feeling the massage itself. Nothing more really it’s just that. When someone else is doing it you’re experiencing just the one feeling in the one body part which allows it to feel much more extreme.
You can’t tickle yourself either. It feels different when you know in advance what’s going to happen.
There was an experiment where they found that you can tickle yourself if the stimulus is delayed by more than a tenth of a second (I think) before you feel it. At that point, your brain doesn’t correlate the two signals and it’s like someone else is tickling you.
Kinesthesis – Your brain is aware of the orientation of your limbs and is also aware when your own limbs are touching yourself. This is further compounded by the fact that you are aware of your own intent so you can’t take any action against yourself that you couldn’t predict. And as stated by others, part of the enjoyable sensation of a massage is that your muscles are able to relax and be pushed into positions they can’t get to on their own. If you’re trying to massage yourself, your muscles won’t be relaxed.
Basically, external touching from someone else triggers three pleasure receptors in the brain that can’t be filled on its own:
1. Unexpected stimuli
2. Relaxed muscles allow nerves that normally aren’t reachable to receive stimuli
3. Attention from another person
No source, pure self opinion, but I always thought it was a result of social evolution. Grooming / taking care of each others was primordial to the bonding and survival of the group, so our brain rewards us for taking part in those activities. Plus what the others said.
I will explain like you are 13.
It’s the same reason why a hand job feels better than jerking off.
You can sit back and relax, without having to make any effort that would counter your relaxing.
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