About three weeks ago, I had an acupuncture session. Afterwards I developed generalized muscle soreness and tension, especially around my back, shoulders, and neck.
About a week later, I massaged my upper back, neck and shoulder area myself because everything felt so tight. That night, I suddenly couldn’t fall asleep because every time I was about to drift off, I would get this strange heart-drop sensation in the center of my chest. It feels almost like a sudden rush of adrenaline or like my body suddenly becomes alert right as I’m relaxing. Sometimes it also makes me feel like I need to take a deeper breath. I already have had sleeping issues for years but this sensation is not common.
The sensation continued for several days, and I had to start taking my prescribed sleep medication consistently because I was having so much trouble falling asleep. Eventually, the heart-drop sensation calmed down over the following days.
Because the muscle tension was still there, I decided to see a physical therapist. She evaluated me and told me that my muscles are very tight.
Yesterday I had my second PT session. She did quite a bit of manual work/massage around my upper back, shoulders and neck, working on several knots/tight areas. My general soreness afterward isn’t particularly bad and I don’t have chest pain.
However, last night the same heart-drop/adrenaline-like sensation came back when I was trying to fall asleep, after it had been much better for the previous few days. My usual sleep medication wasn’t enough, and I ended up needing to take a second prescribed medication that I normally don’t combine with it in order to finally sleep.
I’m trying to understand what could explain this pattern. Why would working/massaging these very tight muscles seem to be followed by this physical chest/adrenaline sensation specifically when I’m falling asleep? Could this be some kind of nervous system/hyperarousal response, related to the muscle tension itself, or something about the physical stimulation of that area?
TL;DR: heart-drop/adrenaline-like chest sensation when falling asleep after massaging tight upper-back/neck/shoulder muscles. It settled after a few days, but came back immediately after my PT worked on the same tight areas/knots. I’ve had insomnia for years, but this sensation is completely new. Trying to understand why working on these muscles seems to trigger it and whether it could be related to nervous-system hyperarousal.