Does the sound of a crackling fire relax you? Does the hairdresser send tingles through your scalp and spine? Former "Saturday Night Live" player Molly Shannon once told Conan O'Brian that she had "head orgasms" when airport security gave her a pat down, according to the Washington Post. For the writer of this article, scalp tingles and all-over goosebumps overtake the senses when a phlebotomist checks for a vein.
If you have had similar experiences, then you are probably receptive to ASMR: autonomous sensory meridian response. ASMR has also been called AIHO (attention induced head orgasm), but the experience is not sexual.
According to Make Use Of, this list includes common ASMR triggers:
- The sound of lips smacking, such as when eating.
- Slow or soft speech patterns. Whispering, too.
- Receiving personal attention from someone, such as having your hair done, having your make-up done, receiving an eye exam, receiving a massage, etc.
- Having someone play with your hair.
- Certain sounds may trigger the effect, like fire crackling, paper scratching, white noise, running water, etc.
- Watching someone who is performing a meticulous task, like fixing an electronic, working origami, making tea, etc.
And Bob Ross. Lots of Bob Ross.
For those perceptive to ASMR, the late Ross' voice creates the typical tingles. Even for those who don't respond to the same sensory triggers, Ross' voice was a warm cup of tea.
Maria is a 28-year-old Russian expatriate currently living in the suburbs of Maryland – and she has over 321,000 You Tube subscribers that tune in to watch her fold towels, flip pages of magazines and to hear her whisper.
Bathed in soft light, hands dancing like butterflies, Maria is a beauty. (Her last name has been withheld for safety reasons – “her videos have sometimes attracted unwanted attention,” according to the Washington Post).
Maria at times plays librarian, masseuse and other roles. She whispers delicately into the microphone as if it were your ear, “I missed you,” and tells you she is going to try something that makes her “warm and fuzzy inside.”
Remember the part about it not being sexual? Some of the You Tube comments would offer some, uh, counterpoints, but the point of ASMR is to calm, quell insomnia and create euphoric tingles that usually start in the scalp and travel down the spine.
“It’s like showers of sparkles,” Maria told the Washington Post. “It’s like warm sand being poured all over you, trickling over your head and down into your shoulders. It’s like goosebumps on your brain.”
Maria’s You Tube account does have a link if you’d like to donate money, but she told the Washington Post that it isn’t money she wants. ASMR videos helped her during a period of depression. Maria moved to the United States in 2006 and after three years, she divorced her husband. While looking for videos to help her sleep, she came across an ASMR video titles “whisper.” Now, she wants to “pay it forward.”
In February 2011, Maria posted her first video, according to the Washington Post. She played with seashells and thumbed though a journal. The video disappointingly racked up only two views in a month, so Maria deleted it. Luckily for her subscribers, Maria kept trying and by the end of 2011, she had 30,000 subscribers.
Maria guesses there is more than just the sensory response to sounds. Maybe folded laundry reminds you of your mother or watching a pen glide over paper recalls notes from your grandfather.
“Little taps and crinkles, or the way certain thicker pages create the most amazing sound when they turn — many times we miss that,” Maria told the Washington Post. “There are these beautiful little things that we don’t pay attention to.”
Maria told the Washington Post that she posts a video when she has time (one a week or monthly), because she doesn’t want it to feel obligatory, but that variety is necessary for the continued effects. Watching the same video will cause it to lose its triggering affect. “The more people who create the content, the less immunity there will be for everyone,” she said. “We want you to try other videos so you can come back to us. So it’s more of a partnership between all of us.”
For those who are tingle-less, ASMR sound like hippie mumbo jumbo.
“If you don’t experience it, and there’s no published research, I think it’s appropriate to be skeptical,” Craig Richard, a professor and researcher at the Shenandoah University School of Pharmacy in Winchester, Va., and founder of a blog called ASMR University, told the Washington Post. “I don’t know if I would believe it if I didn’t experience it myself.”
Despite the skepticism, “a lot is known about the physiological states associated with ASMR — relaxation, euphoria, comfort,” Richard said, according to the Washington Post. “It’s the same molecules involved when an infant is comforted by its mother … It’s endorphins, it’s oxytocin, it’s serotonin.”
Maria has gotten thank you notes from anxious college students, military veterans, people suffering from sleep disorders and recently, from a granddaughter who played Maria’s videos for her grandmother in hospice. “It made her grandmother happy and calmed her down,” Maria told the Washington Post. “She said, ‘This is so great, because we don’t know how else to help her.’”
As Maria says in one of her most viewed videos, “I would like to protect you, to comfort you, to help you relax and forget about your trouble, whatever it is.”
“Don’t worry about anything,” she whispers as her fingers trace the camera lens as if it were your face. “Everything is going to be all right.”
