सीदन्ति मम गात्राणि मुखं च परिशुष्यति।वेपथुश्च शरीरे मे रोमहर्षश्च जायते॥
sīdanti mama gātrāṇi mukhaṃ ca pariśuṣyativepathuś ca śarīre me roma-harṣaś ca jāyate
Word by word
The verse says
my limbs give way, my mouth goes dry, my body shakes, my hair stands on end.
In plain words
This is not a metaphor. It is a list of symptoms.
Limbs failing. Mouth dry. Body shaking. Hair on end. Anyone who has had a bad shock knows every item on that list, in that order.
One of the greatest fighters of the age is describing, in plain clinical detail, what his body is doing without his permission.
Where you've felt this · in health
The shaking that arrives after the near miss, not during it. You handled the moment itself perfectly well. Then you sit down somewhere safe and your hands will not behave, and there is nothing you can do but wait for them.
Going deeper
Take a moment over how unusual this is.
This is heroic literature. Its warriors are normally described from the outside — their armour, their deeds, the terror they cause. Here the poem goes inside a hero's body and reports a panic response, accurately, without embarrassment, and without treating it as shameful.
The accuracy is remarkable. What Arjuna lists is a real cascade: muscles losing strength, mouth drying, tremor, skin reacting. Someone watched this closely and wrote it down.
And it matters for the Gita's argument. Arjuna is not putting up a position for debate. His body has already decided. Whatever Krishna does next has to work on someone in that state — which is why Chapter 2 opens with a jolt rather than with gentle sympathy. You do not reason with a man in this condition first. You get him back on his feet first, and reason with him after.