Embodied cognition

Fred: Now that’s what I call a warm welcome at the airport!
Robert: Which can seriously rattle a shaky old gentleman.
Sophie: Such direct animation would throw other tourists off, too.
Fred: For sure! If there’s accidental intimate contact, a flood of stimuli rushes through your body before your brain can even process it. Something similar happened to me on a plane with the passenger sitting next to me.
Kate: Those experiences get imprinted into your body memory. For me, it shows up as goose bumps – unfortunately, it’s rarely that enjoyable shiver but a really unpleasant sensation. A bad run-in with a dog when I was a kid left a trace in my body, and even today, the tiniest cur makes me instinctively shiver.
Conrad: Body memory indeed stores sensations much more permanently than the brain stores information and, unfortunately, they are mostly beyond our rational control.
Fred: I almost believe the old guy saw through the prank from the start and is playing along to glory in the situation for all it’s worth.
Helen: You think he’s some crafty sex tourist?
Fred: Oh, come on, he’s simply enjoying having two women flirt with him. At his age, it’s all just a fantasy anyway.
Robert: Though the body still has a say in that too, doesn’t it?
Fred: You bet …