So one of the pipe and cigar blogs I follow posted the following ASMR pipe cleaning/smoking video. I clicked on it and watched a women speak in hushed tones cleaning her pipe and then smoking another for 25 minutes. As mentioned before in this blog, I have the attention span of a gnat so to watch something like this for 25 minutes straight is impressive. I can’t explain why I was so captivated. Was it ASMR? What is ASMR? I’m so confused. Okay, I’m not really confused, but you might be right now.
Here is the video in question:
Now before you start thinking this is some fetish thing, I had no sexual response to watching the video whatsoever. But I did feel really relaxed after, almost as if I had completed some sort of meditation. Which isn’t that surprising I guess, since I find the act of pipe smoking/cleaning very relaxing and somewhat meditative.
You might be wondering what ASMR is. I know I was. I had heard about it awhile back but I’m always the skeptic when it comes to stuff like this. ASMR stands for Autonomous sensory meridian response. Wikipedia describes it as: “a perceptual phenomenon characterized as a distinct, pleasurable tingling sensation in the head, scalp, back, or peripheral regions of the body in response to visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or cognitive stimuli. The nature and classification of the ASMR phenomenon is controversial, with much anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon but little or no scientific explanation or verified data.”
When I first heard about this, I watched a trigger video (this is what people in the ASMR community call their videos) and nothing. Actually I don’t even think I made it through 30 seconds of one. But this was different. Maybe it is because I have such a psychological connection to smoking in the first place. Who knows? Was it ASMR? No idea, but I swear I felt a few tingles watching this. The sound quality is impeccable, because that is what they are trying to capture. You can hear everything perfectly and I think that is what makes it so pleasurable for me to watch.
You probably won’t be surprised that I watched her video on cigar smoking:
This one was more seductive and I found it doubly enjoyable to watch. And since I was on a roll, I watched this final one for the night. The last one was my favorite because I felt like she was letting me in on her own secret world.
Anyhow, I don’t know if I have experienced ASMR, but what I do know is I found these videos immensely pleasurable and relaxing to watch. I get why smoking would be a trigger for me so I’m not really surprised.
I guess I should warn people, watching these videos may trigger a desire to smoke a pipe or cigar. She does a good job of making these activities look immensely pleasurable.
Anyhow… until next time.
September 22, 2015 at 2:26 am
ASMR is a real phenomenon, at least for me; I can trigger a subtle version of it more or less at will. It’s hard to describe how I do it except to say that I look off into space and take a fairly shallow breath in, then a deep breath out. I then (usually, but not always) feel a very gentle sort of relaxing tingle across my upper back and shoulders and sometimes across the back of my scalp and down my arms. In a way it’s similar to a hit of nicotine after a period of abstinence.
I never paid much attention to it until I heard an NPR item all about it and recognized what they were talking about as “that thing I do sometimes”. Also, the typical triggers of whispering, soft clicking sounds, etc. don’t necessarily it for me, but I do suspect that it’s possible to “train” your tingle (!) to respond to specific triggers, maybe even subconsciously. I can’t imagine being able to do it in any sort of stressful or noisy environment, so I guess whispering makes sense.
I also suspect that quite a lot of the phenomenon has to do with just becoming aware of it in the first instance, and then expectant attention takes over, with the tingle being somewhere between imagination and an actual, subtle triggering of a normally involuntary (or just unnoticed) nervous reaction. I’m sure there’s a bit of internal chemistry going on as well!
September 22, 2015 at 7:11 am
I told my husband about my experience this morning and he said it makes sense, even though he has never experienced it. I guess I found my trigger. I suspect triggers have to do with activities or sounds that one finds comforting or relaxing, so my trigger makes complete sense to me. I’m not surprised that you could train this sort of response. Pretty cool stuff actually. Thanks for weighing in.
September 22, 2015 at 11:35 am
I LOVE ASMR! Especially with headphones on, in the dark – it’s just….amazing. I found it on accident, too on youtube. And, for me – I haven’t quite been able to pin down what relaxes me. I think it’s the Whispering, or, the hushed talking. With the headphones on, it’s like whispering in the ear. ASMR Can also be triggered by other things i found – like, Rain, thunderstorms, etc. THAT does it for me too, because it’s just so…tranquil. And, yea – that would also make me a pluviophile 😀
September 22, 2015 at 5:39 pm
The headphones really make it better, I think because it increases the intimacy. I was using my husband’s really high quality gaming headphones. They are really comfortable like wearing pillows on your ears and I think that added to the experience.
September 24, 2015 at 10:36 am
Yep! ASMR is really quite something. For me, sometimes it works on youtube, sometimes it doesn’t. It works better for me if someone’s here, and doing it personally 🙂
October 14, 2015 at 7:17 am
I’ve watched a few ASMR videos including a couple above. Sadly, I wasn’t able to experience any of the sensations that the descriptions suggest I would.
On the other hand, the woman whose videos you posted was herself quite appealing in many ways. And, because I like cigars, I probably watched it longer than I would have were she not so much “my type”.
Oh well ….
October 28, 2015 at 11:30 pm
I’ve experienced it a couple of times via sounds, but most often via touch. One of my exes used to cause it (this was back in 1999-2002, I don’t know if the phenomenon had been named yet) but tracing a fingertip up and down the back of my neck while we sat together watching television in the evening after supper.
The primary sensation was a tie between an intense tingling all over my scalp and a mental state of trance, with a secondary sensation of — and this will make almost no sense, I’m sure — skin-crawling, but in an intensely pleasant way.
The sound trigger that tends to work best for me is the sound ‘sksksksksk…’. Here’s a video with that trigger, give it a try (with headphones is better, of course.)
November 14, 2015 at 10:07 am
I only discovered ASMR through some links to videos that combined smoking and ASMR. I am also completely perplexed by this phenomenon, but it does seem to be genuine.