ASMR Ear Massage
October 2, 2016 7:45 PM   Subscribe

Put on your head phones, clean your ears, and enjoy the rubbing, cupping, stroking, tapping for tingles.
posted by Foci for Analysis (37 comments total) 35 users marked this as a favorite
 
these cupping videos might actually slay you
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:57 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


So, what's the condition that these address? This is uncomfortably close to the stuff that triggers misophonia for me.
posted by the sobsister at 8:09 PM on October 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


what is this? is it a sex thing?
posted by awfurby at 8:17 PM on October 2, 2016


My skin is crawling. Uh, thanks?
posted by mochapickle at 8:19 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


ASMR is the BEST. It helps with anxiety, misophonia, insomnia, and stress management. I have misophonia and am particularly affected by chewing sounds, smacking lips, and page flipping, but for some people those sounds trigger ASMR tingles, so I just avoid videos that center on those sounds and seek out sounds that soothe me instead! The neat thing about ASMR is that it isn't a totally audio-only experience. Hand movements, watching someone draw, iron, paint their nails, and do other fluid, methodical motions can trigger tingles, too. There are so many wonderful ASMR artists on YouTube now, and since it's growing into a more widely accepted and understood form of therapy, the quality of the productions has gone up tremendously so artists have better microphone set ups and really good cameras. It's a godsend. I go to bed every night listening to sessions by GentleWhispering, WhispersRed, Olivia's Kissper ASMR, and AmalZd. Love love love love love!
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:21 PM on October 2, 2016 [6 favorites]


Oh, yay! I prefer the one that include soft spoken commentary but these are good!
posted by otherwordlyglow at 8:22 PM on October 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


this is the most tingliest of tings
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:29 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yes, it is sort of a sex thing (or it can be, if you let it). ASMR tingles closely mimic and/or map on to the tingles you feel when you have an orgasm. Some artists play heavily off that and their videos are very different than the ones above. Mileage varies, obviously. Some people don't experience ASMR at all and never will. As more research goes into the sensation and its therapeutic properties, that could change. It's a neat thing to come out of YouTube, honestly. It started with massage instruction videos by a woman named Lita. I think her YouTube account is Massage Clips by Lita. She has this uber soothing voice and that plus her massage demos = the birth of ASMR. Then there were these short form movies from Japan that featured experts of a given craft doing their best work (ironing, shoe shining, weaving, painting), and they were so well edited and recorded that people started sending them around as "tingle videos". The history of the whole thing is a trip!!
posted by Hermione Granger at 8:30 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Oh so this is quite interesting. I had never heard of ASMR before - the Wikipedia article is enlightening.
posted by awfurby at 8:38 PM on October 2, 2016


I totally believe it exists, and periodically I have to get my headphones out when something like this gets referenced because I keep being like--maybe this one? But nothing.
posted by Sequence at 8:45 PM on October 2, 2016


I'm always disappointed to see that people ask if it's a sex thing. I felt ASMR a lot as a kid, especially when someone combed my hair. It wasn't until a This American Life episode that I realized there was a name for it.

Sadly, though, the name has a pseudoscientific ring to it, and there are indeed seems just been very little if any legitimate scientific research into the phenomenon. I worry that associations with a sex fetish will further delay scientific interest.
posted by Eyeveex at 9:00 PM on October 2, 2016 [4 favorites]


There's definitely a preponderance of young, pretty, women that are popular ASMRists but one of my favorite channels is by someone who never shows her face.
posted by otherwordlyglow at 9:02 PM on October 2, 2016


Okay! I am home and can finally get REALLY geeky about this topic that I love so dearly. I highly recommend visiting the Wikipedia article awfurby linked to for a great primer on ASMR in general, some of which I will call out here for conversation purposes.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, a euphoric experience characterized by a static-like tingling sensation on the skin that typically originates on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine.

The term ASMR was first coined in 2010, though "brain massage", "brain orgasm", and "attention induced euphoria" floated around for a while, too, before ASMR became a widely used and formally adopted descriptor for the sensation that thousands of people had been describing to one another on internet forums since 2007.

ASMR is usually precipitated by stimuli referred to as "triggers", most of which are acoustic and/or visual. These triggers are often encountered during the interpersonal interactions of daily life (such as having your hair cut or washed at a salon, or getting your nails painted during a manicure). Exposure to specific audio and video can trigger ASMR as well.

Commonly reported ASMR stimuli include:
  • 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
  • Receiving altruistic tender personal attention
The combination of stimuli such as the ones described above often produces extra satisfying and soothing results for those who experience ASMR, and are sometimes incorporated into role-play scenario videos for those who are particularly triggered by tender personal attention.
Here are the three videos that are often cited as being the originators of ASMR: And (8 years later!) here are some of the most-watched ASMR videos on YouTube right now (and a sampling of some of the scenarios that are especially popular these days): Some of the most popular ASMR artists are bilingual, so they occasionally upload two versions of a video so that there's one in English and one in their preferred or native language. Both GentleWhispering and Olivia's Kissper ASMR offer videos in English, Russian, and Czech (though I think GentleWhispering took all of her Czech videos down now that I'm trying to find them).

I am trying to come up with a good way to end this comment like you would an essay but while I was searching for videos to link to I ended up letting one of my favorites play in the background while I typed this up and now I am super sleepy, so...
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:19 PM on October 2, 2016 [23 favorites]


One of the odder things I've found on YouTube is the ASMRillion: an ASMR rendition of the entire Silmarillion.
posted by Iridic at 9:23 PM on October 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yes, if you want odd, check out EphemeralRift's channel of ASMR videos. He has a very, um... Unique... Approach to ASMR.
posted by Hermione Granger at 9:27 PM on October 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm a non-responder and perplexed. AMABlestransfem.

I don't understand the desired feeling from ASMR sessions. Does it fill similar holes that other meditative techniques are meant to, or is it an experiential "it feels good while it's happening" thing?

Do users "blank" their minds or are they encouraged to cogitate?
posted by porpoise at 9:34 PM on October 2, 2016


These are wild. I can't believe how relaxing they are, even while getting that tingling feeling. I keep watching them too.
posted by gt2 at 9:46 PM on October 2, 2016


Some ASMR-y goodness from artists I haven't seen mentioned yet:

Made in France's videos are gender-neutral, no talking, with soothing, pleasing visuals. My favorite is this one, in which he moves sand and small rocks around a Zen garden.

Duff the Psych makes quality videos with and without speech. His introduction gives a great overview of what ASMR is and why it works. I particularly like this one.

GMM gives a really funny overview of ASMR from the point of view of people who don't get it, but who ended up producing a pretty good ASMR video anyway! Works as satire and as a tingle-producer.
posted by the thought-fox at 10:06 PM on October 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


ASMR < DMSR
posted by koeselitz at 10:15 PM on October 2, 2016


I've always been absolutely sure this effect exists, and the reason I'm sure is that every single one of these videos gives me an unpleasant, teeth-grinding, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sort of sensation that makes me want to rip out my own ears to make the bad noise stop.

So I figure there are people who enjoy many things I find painful, so I guess this is another of those.

I guess it's like haircuts: Many people seem to enjoy getting a haircut, and it's one of the things they make ASMR videos about. Other people just get their hair cut when it's needed, and don't get any great sensation out of it. I hate haircuts and I get the chills just thinking about them and I wait months to get mine cut to avoid it...

I did enjoy the Zen Garden video the thought-fox linked above, until I turned up the sound enough to hear it and it was fingernails-on-a-chalkboard again. But I turned off the sound and found it quite pleasant to watch for a while.
posted by mmoncur at 10:55 PM on October 2, 2016 [3 favorites]


I don't understand the desired feeling from ASMR sessions. Does it fill similar holes that other meditative techniques are meant to, or is it an experiential "it feels good while it's happening" thing?

Maybe a little of both? The experience is - do you not, when you get a haircut, or some other cosmetological procedure, or a scalp massage, or any intimate but not-at-all-necessarily-sexual attention, get a pleasurable goose-bumpy, spine-tingling sensation? If you don't it's not going to be very easy to explain but if you do well a lot of people find they can induce the same experience while listening to certain kinds of audio or watching certain kinds of video. It's often something that suggests personal attention like the examples here but also things that suggest... a certain general kind of focus or attention to detail? Bob Ross is a classic too and one of my all-time favorites was a calligraphy video. For me I have to kinda get in the right state of mind to experience the sensation which then contributes further to a relaxed state of mind.
posted by atoxyl at 11:11 PM on October 2, 2016


I've always been absolutely sure this effect exists, and the reason I'm sure is that every single one of these videos gives me an unpleasant, teeth-grinding, fingernails-on-a-chalkboard sort of sensation that makes me want to rip out my own ears to make the bad noise stop.

So I figure there are people who enjoy many things I find painful, so I guess this is another of those.


I have some pretty severe misphonia, and any video with lip smacking or other mouth sounds in particular gives me the howling fantods. Fortunately, if I am listening to a video I can NOPE out of it in a way that I can't if I am sitting next to someone who learned table manners from a goddamn Holstein and has decided that my horrible discomfort, now helpfully pathologized, is a "me" problem.

I also get powerful ASMR response. The line is a fine one, and they do feel closely related.

Anyway, it just occurred to me to look up "cat purring ASMR" and great googly moogly you guys it is absolutely a thing. I had to stop this one - cat purring and fireplace crackling - because it almost knocked me out - my head dropped in about 30 seconds. That's different from my response to other ASMR, where I feel floaty and tingly, but not urgently sleepy. Maybe it's because I associate hearing this sound with being snuggled into a warm bed with a cat curled up under the blankets next to me.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:43 PM on October 2, 2016 [2 favorites]


Yes, if you want odd, check out EphemeralRift's channel of ASMR videos. He has a very, um... Unique... Approach to ASMR.

I wish I reacted more strongly to the stimuli he uses. Not so much now that I live alone, but a person walking in might wonder a lot why I am watching a video of a lady folding towels. A plague doctor examining a watermelon, however, is EXACTLT the kind of thing I would watch.

Then there is RelaxingASMR, the pen guy.


It doesn't necessarily give me the tingles from ASMR, but it's drawing and drawing noises and the guy has a relaxed, Ron Swanson meets Bob Ross thing going on.


And pens! If you harbor pen feelings, which I might.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:04 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


I don't understand the desired feeling from ASMR sessions. Does it fill similar holes that other meditative techniques are meant to, or is it an experiential "it feels good while it's happening" thing?

I've experienced ASMR since long before I knew there was a word for it. The ASMR itself is experiential, but difficult (impossible?) to achieve while you're tense. So it's more like, I dunno, like listening to the soothing voice of Bob Ross or whatever is a way to erode that tension and the subsequent ASMR sensation is proof that you have succeeded in becoming relaxed?

A lot of people who don't experience it equate it with sexual response, but I feel like it's not a sex thing, so much as a trust thing. I'm not sure how much this is related to my early experiences of it, since my strongest memories of experiencing the ASMR sensation as a child relate to positive attention from family members: my mom brushing and plaiting my hair, my sister and I playing a game where you had to trace words on each other's hands or backs Hellen Keller style and try to guess what the message was.

When you look at the most common triggers though, they all seem to be related to trust and safety: videos focusing on small sounds that would only be audible in a quiet, peaceful environment; soothing words softly spoken; roleplays of spa days and doctor's appointments where you put yourself into somebody else's hands and let them take care of you; 3D audio that uses headphones to make it sound like you've allowed somebody you trust into your personal space; soundscapes associated with calm and safety like purring cats or listening to rain beating on a window when you're snug indoors. Triggers are designed to lower the heart rate and to get you thinking "It's okay, I'm safe here, I can let my guard down" and the ASMR sensation is the culmination of that feeling.
posted by the latin mouse at 2:14 AM on October 3, 2016 [4 favorites]


I never managed to feel it more than very fleetingly until I stumbled upon this clip by my favorite comedian, Avery Edison: ASMR Eye Test. It was a weird sensation, tingling and laughing at the same time, trying to figure out what was going on in my brain. I haven't found anything that has worked quite as well since.
posted by WCWedin at 5:21 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


There is a fairly narrow range of ASMR triggers for me. In daily life, one sure fire one is having my purchases wrapped and packaged at a store, especially when tissue paper is involved. My whole body floods with relaxing tingles. It never happens when I'm being touched, like haircuts for example.

In videos, my triggers seem to be about some level of expertise being displayed/described/explained, which rules out ALL of the tapping, whispering, role-playing silly business for me.

My current favorites include some of the many videos posted on youtube by yanghaiying. Here's one where she describes art supplies that she's brought back from a trip to Beijing, and another brief one where she makes tea.

Another that I've watched so much I don't get triggered anymore is this video of a team of three Italian barbers working on a customer. (Again, for me it's not about imagining myself in the guy's place, it's about the barbers' demonstration of care and expertise.)

A final example, this architect describing the design of a client's beach house by means of narrative and sketching totally does it for me.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 5:26 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


Every time I've tried watching ASMR stuff I just get a sense of being vaguely creeped out.
posted by Foosnark at 5:32 AM on October 3, 2016 [3 favorites]


Like a few of you, I'm also severely misophonic. I might have mentioned before just how much of NCIS I had to skip because they like to eat while going over details of that week's mystery.

Anyway, crafts-person based videos without a soundtrack really work for me. Scraping, sawing, sanding, whatever it takes to make anything and watching the careful precision that the crafts-person does their work is definitely recommended if you don't like mouth noises.

This Making of a Hermes Leica is my go to.
posted by Wetterschneider at 6:23 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Barbara Steisand Effect" with me and ASMR -- I first heard about it when the drama of wikipedia nazis deleting the ASMR entry hit reddit, 2011 or so.

I'd been watching [swedish/chair!] massage vids, and even have a FPP here on mefi from 10 years ago that was proto ASMR --
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 6:56 AM on October 3, 2016


I've experienced this all my life, but with a very narrow range of triggers that seem to be voice-related. I can feel certain voices resonate deeply in my own throat and in the back of my head. Then I sort of turn into a pool of mush!

Watching someone unpack a box etc. does nothing for me. Lita's Massage Clips are still the gold standard.
posted by bwvol at 7:09 AM on October 3, 2016


Some of the voices trigger a minor effect for me, and I suppose this must be the same effect as what I thought ASMR was, but for me it really only happens with specific pieces of music. Such as a Bach violin concerto. Twenty years ago music was the well-known (at least among some musicians) way of causing ASMR in some people, and I wonder if knowledge about it has changed, or if people have changed since then.
posted by sfenders at 8:05 AM on October 3, 2016


Well, Reddit insists that shivers triggered by music are not ASMR but frisson (here). I dunno, IME the sensation is identical.
posted by clavicle at 10:40 AM on October 3, 2016 [1 favorite]


I dunno, IME the sensation is identical.
posted by clavicle at 10:40 AM on October 3 [+] [!]

Interesting! For me, the frisson from music is predominantly physical (goosebumps etc), whereas ASMR (which I've gotten since childhood but never, ever from YouTube videos) is also somehow neurological. I feel profoundly relaxed as well as tingly. Sort of like the constant buzzing of thoughts just falls silent. Yes, it is somewhat akin to the peace one feels after meditating, only far more sensually pleasant (but not sexual at all).

I wish the videos triggered me. They'd be such a great way to wind down after a bad day. Instead, my only hope is to go wandering on the off chance I'll find someone carefully wiping down a table, or folding paper, or painting a wall...
posted by mylittlepoppet at 11:22 AM on October 3, 2016 [2 favorites]


Why does this work? Some of them are so deeply relaxing and I find myself totally engrossed but then I'll burst out giggling because I'm totally engrossed with someone crackling plastic or squeezing play doh.
posted by gt2 at 8:34 PM on October 3, 2016


So much double. Also Frisson.
posted by freya_lamb at 7:03 AM on October 4, 2016


I guess I'm lucky since I get it both from calm softly spoken voices (and I confess that it definitely helps if it's an attractive voice) and unselfconscious competence at a task - a couple of faintly ridiculous examples I get at work are someone doing the window cleaning, or checking fire extinguishers.

The two most extreme instances I've experienced combined both - an IT technical support salesperson and a mortgage advisor in both cases I got ASMR so pronounced that I zoned out completely for a couple of minutes and I couldn't remember afterwards what they had been saying. All-over body tingles, especially concentrated, weirdly, in what felt like my sinuses.

If you don't get ASMR but you do enjoy things like those wire head massagers, it's a lot like that (for me, anyway).
posted by sarble at 7:06 AM on October 4, 2016


Finally, I get it! The reaction to ASMR always made sense but none of the videos gave me the reaction I expected. This one - with no whispering, and once I ignored the video - did. It was just like when a friend I trusted gently scratched my head. I had very bad psoriasis at the time, and she adored tending my scalp. We humans are odd, wonderful creatures!
posted by goofyfoot at 10:47 PM on October 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


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