How to Tickle Yourself: 6 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow (2024)

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   Tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue. Lightly rotate your tongue in a circle on the roof of your mouth to create a tickling sensation. No one is entirely sure why this method works, since the areas of our brain that process sensation are less active when self-tickling.^[2]

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   Use a feather or other light object. You'll need an object that you can lightly run across a ticklish surface like the bottom of your foot, or your neck. This still won't feel like you're being tickled in as intense of a manner as when someone else tickles you, since you can't trick your brain!

   • Light touch stimulates the somatosensory cortex which is responsible for analyzing touch, and the anterior cingulate cortex which deals with pleasant feelings. Together these two ares of the brain govern tickling, but only when it is a light touch. As most people already know if tickling is too hard it gets painful!^[3]
   • You could also try brushing the soles of your feet with a bristly hairbrush.
   • You can make a tickling device by taking a stick and gluing long feathers onto it. You can then use this device to tickle yourself.
   • If you use too much pressure, it won't work. Make sure you're using the object very lightly.

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   Move your fingers in a circular motion on your skin. This doesn't always work, but some people report a mildly ticklish sensation when they barely touch their skin with their fingertips and move them around in a circular motion.

   • The best places for this are the inside of your elbow, your neck, or the back of your knee.

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• Try wearing extremely thin fabric over your skin and then tickling yourself. It may help!

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• A lot of the times if you try to tickle yourself using a part of your body (fingers, etc...) You may or may not be tickled so, it is helpful to use other objects to tickle yourself with.

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• You will be tickled more if you use a light object to tickle yourself with such as a feather.

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• If these don't work on you, just remember that it is incredibly difficult to fool your brain or surprise it by yourself (which is how tickling works).

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• Be careful when handling sharp or pointy objects.

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Co-authors: 30

Updated: May 17, 2022

Views:246,557

Categories: Body Tricks

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