ASMR. What is the magic

ASMR

ASMR. What is this magic?

The crispness has moved in and our skies are darkening earlier, we are pulling out the wintery comforts, books, box set shows, merinos and relaxing home styles will be more of a thing over the next few months. Now we can add something relatively new to the entertainment and relaxation repertoire, ASMR!

Something about this group of letters gives a different sort of idea, but it’s actually all about making the most of our senses, which I touched on a little in my last blog Sensory Effects. One of my products was featured by LipsnBerries in an ASMR video where she gently uses my Golden Dew Drops with a Gua Sha. The short clip has clocked over 60,000 views.

ASMR is huge right now and if you’re a podcast listener you might have come across an audio ASMR or there are visual ASMRs on socials, it’s all over the place and with a growing audience. But just what IS it?

It’s a non-clinical acronym and it stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. This phrase has emerged online in the last few years as a description of the response to sensory input, by a woman called Jennifer Allen and become quite the craze.

You might have felt this; a tingling feeling, usually around your scalp, neck and shoulders, or up your spine. A sort of pleasantly jingly excitement, or fission along your energy highways. If you’ve had acupuncture you might have felt these highways flowing as the acupuncture needles are placed on your meridian points to allow your QI (energy) to move – so the energy is being stimulated by touch (and needles).

Some types of ASMR resonate for people more than others. Have you ever had someone whisper in your ear super quietly and had a tingle in the back of your neck? Remember being small on the backseat of your parent’s car – half asleep but deeply relaxed with the continuous sound of tyres on the road and just feeling…. happily still? The snapping of the scissors near your ears when you’re having a haircut making you daydream? The ‘goose bump hump’ as you slip into a warm bath?

Delicious little sensory implosions.

Everything from sound of people eating (ew), whispering, tapping, talking, licking, you name it there is an ASMR out there. Some of them quite unintentionally funny or even informative, some sensuous, and for many it’s become a satisfying and harmless addiction.

While out walking the other day I did a little poking around and found a podcast of an audio ASMR which made me laugh out loud, although I’m not sure that was the intention, where a Swedish man explains the planet Mars. Because I was only listening, I wondered what all the tapping and sliding noises were, but I’ve found the video online and now I understand…

Here is a guy on YouTube inciting great tingles, and you need to listen to this on headphones… trust me! Maria, a 28-year-old Russian living in Maryland USA who rapidly rose from whispers  to 87m Youtube views has recorded simple repetitive actions like, flipping through pages of a magazine and folding towels. For listeners or viewer the aim is to achieve a sense of tranquillity. Maria says “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.”

The human brain is so complex, we don’t yet know enough about the intricacies of ASMR and the science has not been fully researched. But millions of people all over the world are enjoying it, it’s now, as of January this year, listed in the Merriam Webster Dictionary, and also in the Oxford Dictionary showing the Origin as: Early 21st century abbreviation of autonomous sensory meridian response.

Have you found any? Let me know! Or what gives you the good Goosebumps?

Wrap up warm – and listen to that static electricity when you put clothes on out of the dryer more closely, you never know what you might feel.

Until next time.

Hayley xx