What is ASMR? The Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response is a pretty new classification of a sensory phenomenon some people can experience.
It’s often compared to the sensation of using a head massager. ASMR is a pleasant tingly sensation that runs through the head and neck, which can cause sleepy, trance-like and/or euphoric feelings. In fact, a study found that 75 percent of participants felt a pleasurable tingling sensation when they heard people whispering. Some 64 percent felt the same sensation when they heard “crisp or crinkling sounds,” such as fingernails tapping on a metallic table.
Many people realize that they have it in childhood, but have only discovered the name for it in recent years. The name itself has an interesting origin. It sounds like a proper medical name, but it was spawned in a forum group where people who enjoyed the sensation wanted to come up with a name for it. Medical science is currently beginning to study the phenomenon, doing MRI studies to examine brain activity, but there’s no significant consensus as yet.
What does it do? Nothing in particular except feel nice, but it’s nice enough to have spawned 13 million youtube videos, countless articles, and more. Let’s look at some reasons why this quirky little sense experience is so awesome.
Diverse Causes
ASMR triggers can have a wide variety of types. Everything from Bob Ross videos, to gentle touch, to the sound of people eating can cause them. If you’ve not been able to experience the sensation yet, don’t worry! There could be a trigger out there for you somewhere. If one video is annoying, there’s probably another one with the stimuli you crave that’ll get you going better than ever. And since there are so many enthusiasts working on creating stimulating videos, articles, and other resources, the internet can help you find everything needed to figure out what your trigger(s) might be. Here is a partial list of triggers via Wikipedia. (But if yours isn’t on here, don’t worry, there’s lots more!)
- Listening to a softly spoken or whispering voice
- Listening to quiet, repetitive sounds resulting from someone engaging in a mundane task such as turning the pages of a book
- Watching somebody attentively execute a mundane task such as preparing food
- Loudly chewing, crunching, slurping or biting foods, drinks, or gum
- Receiving personal attention
- Initiating the stimulus through conscious manipulation without the need for external video or audio triggers
- Listening to tapping, typically nails onto surfaces such as plastic, wood, metal, etc.
- Hand movements, especially onto one’s face
- Listening to certain types of music
- Listening to a person blow or exhale into a microphone
Also: A 2017 study of 130 survey respondents found that lower-pitched, complex sounds, and slow-paced, detail-focused videos are especially effective triggers.
No Fallout
If you should happen to binge on ASMR tingles, you’ll have no negative effects whatsoever, except perhaps a loss of the sensation for a while. And even that shouldn’t last too long. Watching a tingle-riffic video too many times will lessen the sensation, but there’s always another video out there for you. If you’re searching the triggers for one that sets you a-tingle, there’s no worries there either, the worst thing that could happen is a touch of annoyance if a sound is not for you.
Sales benefits
ASMR could possibly be of great use in sales, if applied correctly. It would have to be carefully thought out and applied to a target audience. Since most people’s triggers are different, it would be a challenge to find something that applied to and appealed to a variety of folks, but if there was data that they spent time on youtube for that reason, you might have an ‘in’. However, for those people who don’t enjoy the sensation, the videos or audio can be quite unpleasant, so take care with your possible application! But there are no limits to the way that you can apply and associate yourself with an awfully pleasant thing.
EXAMPLES:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLFaj3Z_tWw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKoJDyKo1QQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb93N4nxLYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn9q2fS15pA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqU8ar4gSyI
Free relaxation
I mean, who can’t use another way to relax these days? And even better, a method that is totally free? No screen issues, no purchases to stress you out, it’s free, and it can be really fun to discover all the ways the sensation works for you. Anywhere you have headphones and a connected device can become your own personal sensation space with ASMR.
New kind of personal connection
If you discover that your triggers are related to other people (for example, close personal attention is a common trigger) you can even bring a partner or friend into things and make it an enjoyable intimacy between yourselves. ASMR isn’t related to the sexual response for most people, so anyone you’re comfortable with can share tingles with you!
Potential health benefits
Although ASMR hasn’t been widely studied yet, there is new info that says it may lower heart rate and improve overall health. Many ASMRists also say that it can ease the symptoms of depression, anxiety and insomnia, so for anyone who has those, here’s another tool to try and help yourself.
Even the opposite can help
What the essential opposite of ASMR is is called Misphonia, and for those who experience it, finding out that it exists can be a tremendous relief. Misphonia is an auditory processing disorder that causes extreme reactions and anger to certain sounds, such as chewing or pen clicking. Although it doesn’t mitigate the unpleasantness, it can feel like a breath of fresh air to know both, that you are not alone, and that you’re also not crazy for wanting to strangle someone for chewing gum. (Misphonia based strangling, or strangling in general not advocated by the author.)
Community
There are forums, videos, Facebook, and even meetup groups for those who experience ASMR. Your quirky sensation can bring you into contact with lots of people, and perhaps you can find new friends or just enjoy the common experiences with a very diverse range of people. You never know who you might meet that could bring real value to your life. And if you’re not the socializing type, you can always just watch the community go by.
Always evolving
The world of ASMR is constantly evolving, and there are new videos, articles, and science published all the time. If you’ve ever wondered at the rush of tingles and mild euphoria you get when certain sounds or sensations occur, you can find ever greater amounts of information to scratch the wondering itch.
One of the wonderful things about the internet is that we are able to learn and understand the human mind and breadth of possible sensation far more than ever before. When people who would have never had the chance to meet in previous decades are able to compare notes, we find new threads that bind the human species together, and ASMR is a fun and interesting new discovery. Hope you find your happy head tingles!