[JerzyMadhouse]

I can do the same thing - I was just asking my friend china if she can do it and she looked at me crazy lol you have to focus your inner energy behind your upper neck untill you feel a stimulus that leads to goosebumps down your body

[thinkaroo]

Fascinating. One other thing to add is that you do get some ability to influence your parasympathetic nervous system when you breathe deeply as you are stimulating your vagus nerve in the process.

[Goofysillyme]

Is there anyone out there still viewing this topic? I am 34 and just realized I can generate the same effect from the back of my neck. I'm wondering what are some of the worst side effects everyone has had while/after doing this?

[kOa_Master]

Hi everyone,

I logged in a year or more ago, said I was going to study this (I'm a scientist), then disappeared.

However, this doesn't mean the study disappeared. Presenting the very first scientific study ((well, the first non-case-study)) on what we've come to call voluntarily generated piloerection, or VGP.

(It's attached here. I can't link it.)

I probably have to thank members of this forum in particular, some of whom almost certainly participated in the study because it was linked here. *Thank you* if you participated. It wouldn't have been possible without you.

Next steps? Try to understand it better. I need to do an actual laboratory study, in other words, which this first survey didn't allow us to do. It won't be easy to find participants, but I'll see what I can do.

Hi James,

Thank you so much for your studies, very interesting insight! Have you considered already a follow up study now?
Would love to gather more information here.

Master

[bgbsgs]

I know I'm posting rather late on this thread, but I only found it recently unfortunately.
I had already posted about this on Reddit meanwhile trying to look for answers, but all I got was spiritually oriented, this might be the first place where I've actually seen scientific hypothesis and studies and I can't believe didn't find it before.
Anyway, I registered just for this and I want to share my experience just in case someone else finds this in the future.

I'm a 25 years old male and unlike what seems to be the case with the majority that posted here, I did not discover that I can control my body in weird ways when listening to music/goosebumps nor can I control my goosebumps at will.
At max I can suppress/lower them with my mind or "ability", if you will, when they do show up through normal means.
It's especially noticeable when it happens on cold days since thanks to the cold the goosebumps persist, getting back up when I stop focusing.

About how it started for me, in my case, as dumb as it might sound, it started when I was about 16 years old and when I was watching dbz.
During an episode, in which one of the main characters was teaching another character about "ki", I felt something weird happening in my stomach area, kind of a burning sensation that didn't hurt, and after it happened I could make it happen again at will.

As such at the time I though I was developing some kind of superpower, due to the it first happening when it did, so I started experimenting with it, first by trying to feel it on my hands, and it worked, and then by doing the same all over the body by moving that sensation around.

Now, what I eventually learned to do was:

• Like I said above, I can make the goose bumps go down, though its a lot harder for me to do than the other stuff;
• Suppress the itches on the skin that I feel after taking a bath;
• Suppress the itch that would make me sneeze and that way I can stop sneezing altogether; though if I'm still half-asleep or simply don't stop the itch in time a sneeze or two might escape, though now that I have more experience with it I can stop my sneezes around 90% of the time;
• Stop certain coughs (like when you feel a certain sting on the throat, as if something was stuck) by focusing it where the sting is. Before it subsides though I feel as if my blood pressure on my face rises and my face heats up, then I usually get tears on a single eye and then the need to cough subsides;
• Suppress emotions. For example: if I'm watching an emotional scene in a movie, I can pick up on the feeling of when I'm about to cry and use the "ability" to suppress it. That way I don't even get my eyes wet nor do I get any other physiological changes associated with crying;
• Suppress yawning, though I can't fully stop it for some reason and my throat starts to hurt if I suppress it for too long, so I'm kind of afraid of doing this;
• Suppress the pain I feel when my bladder is full, so I can hold my need to urinate for longer (though the longer I stay without urinating my body makes my intestines work and eventually makes me want to "pass gas" (to allocate space for the full bladder perhaps?). I can also suppress the pain I feel when it's too cold outside and the hands/nose start to hurt and when I'm exercising and the muscles start to ache;
• Keep myself from feeling nauseous after exercising hard by using my "ability" on my stomach and head;
• Make my erections go down, which I found I could do when one morning I woke up with "morning wood" and wanted to urinate. So I tried my "ability" to suppress any pleasure that was causing the morning wood and pictured the blood going out while using the "sensation" to guide the blood for it to go in, what in my mind was, the direction I needed it to go to make the erection go down... if it makes sense;
• Induce heat to my hands. Can make it stronger by first feeling the "sensation" on my chest and moving it down the arms. Thanks to this I could endure walking around on a snowy mountain, around Christmas time, with a simple pair of thin exercise pants, a t-shirt and a hoody while I had my sleeves rolled up;
• During the day, if I get sleepy I can perk my brain/self up if I use my "ability" by inducing that "sensation" around my brain. What I do is picture two loops, one on each brain hemisphere and rotating the left one clockwise and the right one anti-clockwise, or just applying pressure with the "sensation" in the middle of both hemispheres. No idea why it's like this, I'm doing it as I'm typing this and am just saying what seems to work at the moment. There are times when other methods work better but it's probably just until I get better at this. Stopping the sneezes also required multiple methods before I finally found one that could work more reliably.

Moving on...

To do what I do I don't need any particular emotional state, so I have no need to think sad or happy thoughts, I just need to focus.

Haven't meditated much either. Did it a couple of times to see if it would increase the "sensation", but it didn't so I stopped. Through regular use however, not only did the "sensation" get stronger but I managed to learn how to do all the things I posted above.

There's a thing that helps me enhance this too. It involves imagining/focusing on characters with abilities and try to translate their abilities to real life, to my own.
So, as an example, one of those I mentioned above, when I exercise and my muscles start to get fatigued and begin to ache, all I need to do is imagine a character that controls electricity through their bodies and use that to strengthen the  "sensation" of my "ability", to suppress the pain and fatigue so I can keep exercising for even longer.
For some reason that works for all the above.

I guess it can be likened to how some users here said that "using this energy felt like the powering up the characters in dbz do". Which I also experienced and obviously agree with. It did start with dbz for me after all...

What this feels like, to me is as if I was tensing muscles that I can't use through normal means, physically.
What might evoke this sensation, or something like it, is to give an instruction to X part of the body to move, but not moving it, just keeping it at the point between moving and not moving.

I guess I should also mention that if I use this too much I end up felling hungry and if I continue past that point my stomach starts to ache.

Finally, I have tried to use this "ability" in front of a mirror like the user "theskybeblue" suggested and, like it was said that it would happen, the pupils got dilated; though in my case they got immediately dilated as soon as I used it and they remained dilated for as long as I kept the "ability/sensation" active.

As a side note, I have also experienced déjà vu/rêvé plenty of times too, the first time being when I was still in elementary school. Don't know if it's relevant, but there you go.

P.S.: I'm well aware of how crazy this sounds. Especially since I'm not religious at all and I don't know what to attribute this to, I'm at a complete loss; though after reading some of the posts here I line with the hypothesis that this is us somehow controlling part of the autonomic nervous system.
Also, I'm posting here to give more insight about what else can be done with this.
That said, sorry for the massive text wall.

[txzylinski]

I also have this ability. I learned it through practice of Taiji. I noticed similar things as you guys. When is hot it cools me down. When is cold it make me feel warmer. While jogging it gives me more stamina when I'm tired. I learned to channel this goosebumps energy to separate body parts, for example only to left hand or only right hand, or full body. Music is triggering this. Breathing is important, with breathing this feeling is stronger and gosebumps shows faster. Without breathing it's still possible but much, much slower, and weaker. Also some epic scenes from Anime, in my case: Enryuo no Houkou! - from fairy tail, dragons, magic, and stuff. 😁 When I tell in my mind enryuo no houkou, gosebumps are showing up and this warm feeling filling up my body. When I focus this "fire" in my hand other tells me that they feel warmness radiating from my hands. I'm massage therapist, so... I also do Tao Shiatsu, which is energetic therapy. I'm happy to know that there are others like me.

Okay, time for some new information.
Goosebumps are sign that you practice Qigong correctly. According to this video it was long time secret of Daoists.
<link removed>

I believe it's Qi. Goosebumps shows up when Qi flows more strongly.

[Origin]

"Is it useful to be able to control goosebumps, and pulse, at will?"
I would think not.