Wellness Wednesdays - ASMR

Welcome to Wednesday’s Wellness Clinic. I can promise you I am not a doctor, a psychotherapist or a preacher, just someone with a lot going on inside her head looking for a way to calm the storm and impart that wisdom to you.

This week, I am going to be covering a subject that, before the start of the year, I never thought I’d be engaging with: ASMR (or ‘autonomous sensory meridian response’ to give it its full name). Back in 2020, I thought ASMR was just a bunch of whispering and wasteful soap cutting, but once you get past all that, you can find some pretty satisfying stuff. Now, I’ve heard that the main focus of ASMR is to trigger a sensory response, a ‘tingle’ or shiver which cascades over your body from head to toe like when you use those spoked wire scalp massagers (which, by the way, are one of the cheapest and most amazing things you can own!) I, however, have yet to find a video which triggers me in such a way; perhaps I am immune, or maybe I just haven’t found the right trigger. Either way, I have still got an immense amount of pleasure out of the content I have discovered which I would like to share with you. But first, a little science lesson.

The term ‘ASMR’ first started making the rounds on the Internet around 2010 and the words it is composed of can be broken down thus:

• Autonomous: referring to the autonomic nervous system, from whence involuntary reactions and physiological responses such as sexual arousal…erm, arise. However, ASMR is not a sexual response (no matter how often you might hear it being called a ‘brain orgasm’ and ‘whisper porn’)
• Sensory: this part is fairly self-explanatory. The body’s response is triggered by sensory stimuli – primarily visual and audible – from hearing the crinkle and turn of pages, to seeing kinetic sand or (heaven forbid) soap being cut and shaved.
• Meridian: this last part is a little more uncertain, but it seems to belong more to the realms of spirituality than science. The word ‘meridian’ typically refers to a high point of excitement but can also mean the routes along which the body’s vital energy flows, something acupuncturists understand well, apparently.

Definitions taken from: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/asmr-abbreviation-meaning

Thus, when read as a whole, ASMR is the body’s instinctual response to a sensory experience which has tapped into its vital energies. This response – the ‘tingle’ – has a therapeutic effect which is great for helping those with insomnia to sleep or those with anxiety/depression (that’s me!) to calm their mind. And I definitely feel a sense of calm and contentment while engaging with some of the below YouTube channels. I find the most enjoyable triggers are:

• Gentle tapping/scratching/stroking, usually on wood or glass surfaces (this simulates the sound of rain on a window for me)
• Brushing hair (it makes me imagine someone brushing my own hair)
• Fluffy microphone covers (this simulates the sound of crashing waves on a beach or wind through tall grass)
• Crackling fire (just makes you feel all warm and cosy)
• Pebbles/beads rolling against each other (this simulates the sound of the tide pulling at a pebble beach)
• Plucking sounds (comb bristles, cactus spines, pinecones, etc – I think this plays on the rain effect again)
• Creaking of leather gloves (this one might feel a little sexual?)

And 2 rather strange ones:

• Tongue-clicking (just gentle and slow, but it makes me feel like a cat somehow)
• Oily/sticky sounds in the ear (kind of like the muffled sounds you hear when you get water in your ears while showering, maybe it sounds amniotic?)

All of these ‘triggers’ can be found on one or more of these channels:

- ASMR Bakery is one of the first channels I started watching. She began uploading in 2017 and now has just over 900K followers. Her content is almost entirely non-verbal and consists of many different stimuli including tapping, brushing, ear cleaning, and tracing. If you’re having difficulty finding your specific triggers, she has one 3hr video containing 1000 of them! And her many ear massage videos helped me discover my strange fascination with oily sounds.

- ASMRMagic is a channel I have only just discovered, but having been around since late 2015, Rhianna is a pro at what she does – with nearly 1.5million subscribers to show for it! As a self-proclaimed ‘ASMR-ist’, she uploads videos dedicated to binaural sounds (sounds which feel 3D by using two separate microphones), whispering and relaxation. I have her to thank for finding out I like that ‘plucking’ sound from pinecones.

- ASMR Dream More (a second just-now discovery) is a much smaller channel only recently made in 2019 with a following of just over 200k subs, but the content is no less satisfying. Her sounds are created using everyday objects which, yes, include my nemesis the soap, as well as shaving foam, bath bombs, and make up (what a waste!) but also ice cubes, bubbles, sand, pebbles, writing, and gloves. If you’re a fan of the classic, non-verbal ASMR videos, this is the one for you.

- Slight Sounds ASMR is, by contrast, a primarily vocal channel, but she is by far my favourite, uploading weekly personal attention and role play videos with sensory triggers including tongue clicking, tapping, over-explanation (apparently people like hearing in-depth descriptions), and face touching. She is such a sweet, beautiful, and silly person, and her content is something I enjoy watching before I go to sleep – in fact I may have even fallen asleep once while watching her! So it seems almost hard to believe, given she has been uploading since 2013, that she only has 232k subscribers. Show this girl some love, please!

And with that, I think I should end it there. Go and check these channels out, find what makes you ‘tingle’ (if you tingle), and enjoy it. Oh and Happy National ASMR Day for Friday 9^th April!