Why do you feel your heartbeat in your ears at times?

Those are called pulse points, the contracting of the beating heart is what is being felt. It is called tactile arterial palpation and it can be felt any place that an artery can be compressed against a bone; at the wrist (radial artery) on the inside of the elbow (brachial artery), groin (femoral artery) in the neck (carotid artery) and pedal pulses in the top of the foot.

The rate of the pulse is observed and measured by tactile (touching the pulse point) or visual means (observing the twitch that can be seen on the outside of an artery) and is recorded as BPM (beats per minute) or called the pulse.