A couple of months ago, I came home to find my boyfriend sprawled on the couch in front of an unusual YouTube video. In it, a woman was cutting little cubes off a block of soap without saying anything. “What on earth are you doing?!” I said. “Just watch,” he said, goo-goo-eyed. I sat down, expecting nothing, and soon found myself feeling oddly relaxed. There was something strangely peaceful, even hypnotic, about watching the little cubes of soap ripple and fall under the knife; about the sound of them clattering on the counter below. I started to get a tingling feeling down my spine from watching the video – like the kind of thrill you get from listening to a great song. It was like the inverse of fingernails on a blackboard: a random sound that soothed, for no reason.
After a little research, I discovered we weren’t the only ones who felt relaxed by watching people cut up soap. We were experiencing something called ASMR – a neurological phenomenon that’s growing in popularity worldwide.
What is ASMR?
“ASMR” stands for “autonomous sensory meridian response” – a term invented by an American ASMR enthusiast in 2010 when she was naming a Facebook group and hoping to lend credibility to the feeling others were calling a “brain orgasm”.
“ASMR” describes the tingling feeling – somewhere between intense relaxation and a pleasurable mental thrill – elicited by certain sensory cues.
