I can’t think of a better title, sorry.
A couple of weeks ago, I was getting a pedicure, which involved an exfoliating scrub of my calves. As soon as she started scrubbing my right calf, I felt a sharp pain just below my left collarbone. The pain continued as she scrubbed, and stopped as soon as she was done. She switched to my left leg, and I felt a similar sensation in the same spot, but not nearly as strong. She then proceeded to rinse off my right leg, and as she rubbed the exfoliant off of my right calf, the pain returned.
Is this the same sort of nerve relationship that is touted in reflexology? Is it a specific nerve that is getting stimulated causing this pain in my collarbone? It wasn’t painful enough for me to ask her to stop, but it was certainly unpleasant.
I’m curious too. When I was younger I used to be able to scratch my elbow and feel it in my chest.
I get this sort of thing happening fairly regularly. It’s extremely localized: scratch one tiny area, e.g. a mole on my left arm, and feel a corresponding sharp sensation somewhere else on my body. It’s like a nerve ending has been wired to the wrong location or something. Doesn’t seem to be a particular spatial pattern for the stimulus/response zone locations.
There is a concept of referred pain, with the classic example of heart attacks causing pain in the neck and shoulders. But this terms seems to refer to specific relationships between distressed organs and particular areas of body where associated pain is felt. My situation is entirely about skin-stimulus/skin-pain pairs, and it seems very random; if someone else even has this phenomenon at all, it would surprise me if they had the exact same mapping that I seem to have.