I’m working hard at relaxing. As I reach the twilight of my youthful ‘40s,
I seek those moments where my yesterdays and tomorrows are less important than
my todays. Mental exercises, desk yoga, mild sedatives, pirate-type drinking,
Frisbee on the quad, silent garage karate and deep naps on quiet Sunday afternoons
have given me glimpses of an inner calm, but none lasts very long. Counting to ten, quaint cups of herbal tea
and reruns of TJ Hooker aren’t much
help either, although that Bill Shatner is a heck of an actor.
I
remain skeptical of the more extreme versions of the pursuit of peaceful
self-awareness, like transcendental meditation, sensory deprivation tanks and
Crosby, Stills and Nash music, but I need to try something. A man can wiggle his feet, rearrange his sock
drawer and check and recheck his Facebook only so many times before he asks,
“What is this ‘relaxation’ you speak of, and how does one find it?”
It’s
not easy being the unrelaxable type. When
you see a parade, I see mountains of tickertape that need vacuuming. Enjoying a nice holiday meal? The dishes!
Dear God, look at the pile of dishes.
I’m not sure where people actually “live in the moment,” and I’m missing
my map to get myself there.
A
friend, Margaret, tells me about a technique she’s tried, a relaxation method
that helps with insomnia and anxiety, something that’s gained popularity recently. She doesn’t offer much, other than it works
for her. She sends me a link with the
description “ASMR Ear Nose and Throat Examination Role Play.” I click on it,
but something’s not right. I expect a
lady in a leotard teaching me how to “breathe earnestly,” but instead, I’m
confronted with a young woman’s face filling the entire screen, calling herself
“Doctor Feather.” Before I know what’s
happening, she’s whispering and putting on rubber gloves, every sound she makes
amplified and crackling in my ears. This
feels wrong, like the deep bass soundtrack’s about to start any moment, and
I’ll find myself explaining my browser history to my internet provider. I close out the window and step away.
I email
Margaret back to make sure this is OK to watch.
She responds with, “You have to stop
smirking and actually try and ‘get in the room’ with the practitioner. I
recommend headphones. I personally
got pretty relaxed and smooth-feeling. That is very good, health-wise, to enjoy
some of that every day.” I find headphones, an hour to myself and go back to
Dr. Feather’s office for an appointment, suspending my disbelief. Over the next hour, I listen and watch Dr.
Feather check my ears, open Band-Aids, take my blood pressure and whisper
things in my ears like, “Fonzie,” “Spock,” and “I’m going to occlude each
nostril.” Her movements are methodical,
her words chosen carefully and her voice never above a whisper.
ASMR, or “Autonomous
Sensory Meridian Response,” is a relaxation therapy based on the idea that
certain sounds can produce feelings of calm, reducing stress and anxiety. The sounds are meant to give the viewer a “tingling”
feeling, and as I dig more into what’s out there on the web for ASMR, “getting
the tingles” is a steady theme. Some
define ASMR as, “deriving pleasure in your head through stimulus.” I’m not sure Dr. Feather pretend-examining my
hairy Hobbit-like ears is pleasure, but it’s not terrible either.
As I poke
around online, I discover a galaxy of ASMR videos – thousands of them. And these haven’t been watched a few dozen
times – Dr. Heather’s ENT exam has almost half a million views, for
example. I look for the most popular
ASMR videos and find a woman named Maria GentleWhispering who spends an hour
fitting me for a custom suit, petting the fabrics, clicking the shirt buttons
and softly clawing at a photo of a man in a suit with her lacquered nails. Her voice is soothing, but I can’t let go of
this lingering feeling that even though I’m not doing anything wrong, I don’t
want my family walking in on me. Good
thing I locked the door. It’s a sign I
may never get over this sense that even though over 2 million people have tuned
into to hear Maria play with fabric swatches, I’m not relaxing – even if my
skull is tingling like mad and I fell asleep somewhere between the shoulder
measurement and the button selection.
A day
later I see another video from Ms. GentleWhispering that’s been viewed 6.5
million times – a short one intended to induce sleep. That’s like the entire population of Indiana
lulled into the Land of Nod by a blonde lady tapping her fingers on a hairbrush,
saying things like, “I’ll help you drift away as long as you trust me.”
I watch
a video of a man whispering almost inaudibly as he disassembles a computer
mouse; in another, a man takes apart his laptop. I find a popular ASMR practitioner named
Whispers Red, a British woman with auburn hair, who appears to be heavily
medicated and standing in front of a wicker basket filled with fake Easter
grass. She’s smiling in an off-putting
way as she reaches into the plastic grass and pulls out a series of “tingly
things.” She’s grinning in such a way
that I’m terrified at what she might pull out of her basket.
To validate
whether my growing doubts are unfounded, I sit my daughter down for a few
minutes of “Halo Hair Salon,” a video that almost 3 million people have viewed. A red-headed young woman with giant white
teeth tries to give us both a head massage in our kitchen. “This makes me uncomfortable,” my daughter
says.
“It’s
not creepy! It’s not like she’s nude or
anything,” I say in response.
“There
are things that aren’t nude that can still make me uncomfortable,” she announces
as she sprints off. Such comments are
neither productive nor supportive, but she has a point. There’s something about these ASMR videos
that are having the opposite effect on me.
After six hours of listening, watching and doing my best to live in the
moment – just me and strange ladies pretending to brush my hair and shave my
face – I’m less relaxed, focused more on why this isn’t working and if I should
be doing this than on giving in and letting go.
Watching these videos makes me feel like I’m two clicks away from
comparing Greedo mask prices and planning my Brony weekend getaway with Glitter
Gallop and Fancy Prance.
