Я чувствую себя свободно, когда гуляю в парке.

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Breakdown of Я чувствую себя свободно, когда гуляю в парке.

• парк: the park
• в: in
• гулять: to walk

Questions & Answers about Я чувствую себя свободно, когда гуляю в парке.

Why do we say я чувствую себя свободно and not just я чувствую свободно?

In Russian, when you talk about how you yourself feel (emotionally or physically), you usually say чувствовать себя + (adverb/adjective).

• Я чувствую себя свободно. – literally “I feel myself freely.”
• Without себя, я чувствую свободно sounds incomplete or odd, as if you’re talking about how you sense things in a free way, not about your internal state.

So чувствовать себя is the standard construction for “to feel (in some way)” about yourself, similar to English “I feel good / bad / free.”

What case is себя, and why is it used here?

Себя is the reflexive pronoun (“myself / yourself / himself / herself / ourselves / themselves”) and it has no nominative form. In this sentence, it is in the accusative case.

The verb чувствовать (“to feel, to sense”) is normally used with a direct object in the accusative:

• чувствовать боль – to feel pain
• чувствовать холод – to feel cold

When the object is the same person as the subject, Russian uses себя:

• я чувствую себя свободно – I (subject) feel myself (object) free(ly).

So себя is required to show that the one who feels and the one who is being felt (so to speak) are the same person.

Why is it свободно (adverb) and not (adjective)?