Spring break is over and that means that we are halfway done with the semester. It is exciting and scary at the same time. I know it can be easy for us as students to become overwhelmed with trying to juggle homework, extra curricular activities as well as our social and home life.
One thing that I have found out that helps with dealing with stress is listening to ASMR videos on YouTube. ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. ASMR is the tingling feeling that starts at the scalp and moves down the back of the neck. This feeling is usually triggered by mostly acoustic and visual stimuli.
I recommend if you watch these videos that you use a good pair of headphones. The purpose of ASMR is to rely on heavy auditory senses to fully convey the feeling of the triggers. Several YouTubers that specialize in ASMR have invested in high tech equipment that allows both the right and left ear to experience different sounds at the same time.
A lot of people use these videos to help them relax and fall asleep.
There are thousands of videos dedicated to helping people reach these positive feelings. The ASMR videos that I have found to help me relax are frozen paint mixing, ice cream rolling, soap cutting and kinetic sand cutting.
One of the first type of ASMR videos I watched were people taking a giant butcher knife and slicing kinetic sand. I watched so many of those videos I actually went to Target and got some kinetic sand. It is super satisfying to cut the sand with a giant knife.
The people who make the frozen paint videos usually put the paint in a mold and then freeze it. They place it on a hard surface and use paint tools to slice it and mix it up. The triggers for me are the sounds of the paint being sliced and mixed up.
Another type of video that I have discovered is ice cream mixing. It is a fad that originated in Thailand and has spread internationally. It is basically the process of taking deconstructed ice cream and freezing it by pouring the mixture on a frozen surface and mixing it with scrapers until it solidifies.
The ice cream will get flattened out and then rolled into four to five rolls and put into a container and topped with whatever toppings you want. The triggers for me are the tools scraping against the surface of the table while mixing the ice cream up. I hope in the future that Dayton will get one of these ice cream stores.
One of the newer crazes is cutting bars of soap. People usually use a box knife and really pretty soap and slice and cut it.
These are just a small example of the different type of ASMR videos that are out there. People have made compilations of different types of triggers for different experiences.
This might be the first time you have heard of ASMR. If you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or have trouble sleeping, I highly recommend that you give it a try. It may not be the triggers I enjoy, but I assure you that there is something that can help you get through the rest of the semester.
Paige Rogers
Reporter