What is wrong in saying " I am feeling well right now"...?
Solution 1:
Your friend isn't wrong completely. 'Feel' & 'See' are exceptional cases to verbs of perception.
When feel is used to describe emotions, the progressive(I am feeling great today.) is sometimes used. Please do note the word : SOMETIMES here. Mostly , the non-progressive form is used for the word feel : I feel great today. I feel cold today.
Please take a look at the statement below:
- I am feeling great today.
- I feel great today.
The statement (1) above will be an answer to someone's question if he is asking about your health as he had known you were not well when you last spoke with him. So it can be used in a progressive form.
Though the second statement can be your answer to a general 'How do you feel?' question when you might not have been ill when you guys last spoke.
Solution 2:
One website seems to give what seems to be a rule restricting the use of the continuous to verbs denoting actions:
'We use the Present Continuous Tense to talk about activities happening now.'
[But note that they too include a 'sleeping' example!]
The British Council grammar website presents a truer picture:
- We use the present continuous tense to talk about the present:
for something that is happening at the moment of speaking: I’m just leaving work.// The children are sleeping.
So your 'someone' is wrong. He's adopting a broad-brush approach; obviously "Are you seeing the car coming round the corner?" wouldn't normally be used.
But "I feel well" would be interpreted according to context. "I almost always feel well" would indicate [almost] always feeling well, for instance. In answer to a doctor's question "How are you feeling today?" or "How are you since you left hospital?", "I feel well" would refer to the doctor's time indicator.