rubatosis– n. the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat, whose tenuous muscular throbbing feels less like a metronome than a nervous ditty your heart is tapping to itself, as if you casually remind the outside world, I’m here, I’m here.
I practice yoga, breathing, and often my heart and breath are calm. My resting heart rate is about 51bpm across the last year. In general, even during some exercise, I don’t think or hear my heart.
However.
There are times when it’s pounding, and at weird times. I might wake up, and my heart isn’t racing, with the rate still in the 70s, but I can literally hear the pounding in my ears. I can feel it in my chest, like it’s letting me know that it’s there.
It’s rubatosis and it’s annoying at night since the noise sometimes stops me from falling back asleep quickly.
From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows