The concept of ASMR was first brought to my attention by a regular playmate who included it in his suggestions for play for our upcoming session. Any session inquiry that forces me to Google terms is one that I want to at least consider. I ended up spending the next few hours in a YouTube k-hole, because ASMR is much easier experienced than explained. If you’ve never heard of it, I suggest you do the same. I can’t describe what it feels like to listen to an African American man taste-test different flavours of Oreos on repeat, or to have a pretty girl softly read the pop-up Alice in Wonderland to you. You’ll have to experience it for yourself.
In short, ASMR is a mental or physical state produced through certain sensory triggers. Many people who experience ASMR describe its use as a de-stressor or anti-depressant. For others it’s just an incidentally- or purposefully-created nice feeling. It’s one of those things that you don’t realise is a Thing until you find out that others experience it.
As soon as I saw a few videos, I noticed something that seemed to be going on with ASMR, which co/incidentally is the same thing that I think is going on with BDSM: intimacy. And maybe some other stuff, like alternate realities, the use of the physical to transcend or to ground, escape from or return to self, etc. While ASMR triggers can vary in form, most often they engage closely and unconventionally with one or more of the physical senses. A few minutes on an ASMR YouTube channel will find for you the setup of a sonic ASMR experience, which is perhaps the most obvious example of this quality of intimacy that I’ve noticed. Sonic ASMR triggers are often soft in volume if not in quality, and are generally made close to a microphone. The quality of the recording seems to be a key factor in the acuity of the ASMR experience. Often you feel as though you’re there with the person who is creating the sound. Words are whispered, breath is aspirated, and sounds you might not notice with the naked ear are amplified to be experienced much more viscerally.
I also noticed a focus on intricacy. A person narrating an experience for you might describe the circumstances or setting in great detail. Whole words are constructed and explored. The differences between things are pronounced: textures, sounds, movements. Time is spent on each physical or imaginary element, to sometimes-hypnotic effect. Some people describe a sort of ‘going-under’ or trance-like state when they’re affected by ASMR.
If you’re kinky, and especially if you’re given to certain types of play, some of this might sound familiar. It certainly does to me. And there is a vulnerability to it which I can’t help but see as an interesting opportunity in play, particularly as a top. There are ways in which ASMR and BDSM seem to run parallel to one another, and others in which they intersect. The opportunities I’ve had to bring them together have resulted in some of my favourite sessions, which have allowed me to bring sensory, sonic (verbal and non-verbal), and kinesthetic cues together in a way that allows me to thoroughly control another person’s physical and mental trajectory. Which, obviously, I dig.
If you’re having a hard time visualising exactly how one might incorporate ASMR into a kink session, that’s probably better experienced than explained as well, but I’ll try to offer a few possibilities from my own experiences. When I first learned about ASMR it actually seemed like a really natural extension of the play I already conduct in my sessions, which often features a focus on one’s breath – its rhythm, quality, depth, etc – and on ‘dropping in’ to sensory awareness. One of my favourite tools for triggering ASMR is a wire head-massager (I often hear it described as an ‘orgasmatron’) – it’s a really direct physical route to that down-regulated yet hypersensitive state that is characteristic of ASMR. This featured prominently in a session I recently conducted with apprentice Esther in Sydney, with a highly-sensitive bottom from whom I should really collect a testimonial – throughout the session he just kept repeating ‘I’ve never felt this good before’!
ASMR also couples well with sensory deprivation of all sorts, and can deepen the response from the person receiving sensory input. It can also be used as a sort of erotic hypnosis (which is itself a separate type of play that I will be seeking some training in soon), including within roleplay as a way of transitioning into and out of the relevant role or as a component of a power dynamic (why wouldn’t I take advantage of you if I knew you wouldn’t be ‘conscious’ of it?).
There’s something just that dances with the erotic / orgasmic about many of the ASMR experiences I hear about, and in this sense it can also add dimension to someone’s sense of their own orgasmic-ness. ASMR seems like just another type of arousal to me, taking the same sorts of neurochemical journeys that things like pain, sexual arousal, emotion, and entheogens can take. Consider going there with me, even just as an experiment – it might just lead you into some new states of sensory awareness.