Based on your ASMR experiences…
Explain if you can stimulate or experience ASMR on command or spontaneously, include details like:
- Can you stimulate ASMR on command? If so, how do you trigger it?
- Does it ever happen spontaneously/randomly?
- Do you consider this meditation or something else?
- Do your immediate surroundings make a difference?
- How is the sensation similar or different from ASMR triggered by a video or by a real world stimulus?
Note: Sometimes self-induced ASMR is confused with self-induced frisson. If you feel chills, see your arm hairs rise up (piloerection), or experience goosebumps then you may be experiencing self-induced frisson (AKA voluntary piloerection) rather than self-induced ASMR.
- Read about frisson here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson
- Read about voluntary piloerection here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6071615/
If you think you are experiencing self-induced ASMR (rather than self-induced frisson), then please do share your answers and experiences in the Comments section below.
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ASMR University 
I personally have some measure of control over whether or not I experience ASMR. On occasion, when a person has a specific timbre to their voice and it enters my ear canal in exactly the right spot, my reaction is uncontrollable, and quite strong. On the other hand, I can bring about many of the sensations just by imagining scenarios in which I’ve experienced them in the past, as well as forcing myself to *not* have a reaction if I so choose.
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I can do it on command at any time.
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To clarify, It only lasts for moments. But it takes some concentration to maintain it to tingle continuously.
It seems to be starting behind my head down my neck like chills. I’m not sure if it relaxes me when I do it. It’s easy to trigger by thinking to myself to remember something profound or recall a moment of intensity or amazement. It helps to slightly hold my breath just before and then it cascades like a waterfall and then fades. Doing it over and over can get tiring for some reason. I wonder if it’s health or expending something when I do it too much. But when I hear music that’s live or a sound that’s either ominous, eerie or even beautiful – It’s that state when you feel haunted by a thought, but it can also just be a mechanism that I can control without thought or emotion. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who experiences this.
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I have been doing this since my earliest memories. I can do it at will whenever or wherever I am. It feels like a natural physical phenomenon, nothing spiritual about it. The only times it has happened spontaneously is only in last few years when I took up meditation, but even then I sort of think about it so it’s not entirely spontaneous although I’m not consciously doing it.
It doesn’t happen from outside stimuli. I sometimes get absorbed when looking at something beautiful (nature) and I will tear up with certain songs or memories, but it’s rare for me to feel this sensation unless I produce it myself.
I’ve noticed it soothes the discomfort of a headache and I consider it a rather pleasant experience that I do daily.
My surroundings or temperature makes no difference.
I don’t generally feel chills or experience this
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Can you stimulate ASMR on command? If so, how do you trigger it?
Yes: initially whening standing to urinate, and later with a bit of visualization
Does it ever happen spontaneously/randomly?
quite often, yes. I am very prone to it.
Do you consider this meditation or something else?
I expect it to be a detectable charge change across the surface of the skin. I am certain this would
100% be described as kundalini energy in any ashram
Do your immediate surroundings make a difference?
perhaps initially but over time I have managed to conjure it in nearly any situation.
How is the sensation similar or different from ASMR triggered by a video or by a real world stimulus?
It is the same thing. It is the raising of one’s hackles. The chill that sweeps across the skin raising
goosebumps. Spare energy that you shake off through the arms and fingertips.
I have every reason to believe it to be externally observable using the right equipment. For now, I’m hoping to detect it using galvanic skin sensors.
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Hello World
My name is Patrick and I can “do it” pretty much at will. Started when I was young, probably my early teens, usually occurring in conjunction with me standing at the toilet trying to piss. It would start down in my groin, and radiate up my spine often resulting in a very visible body shiver/shake-off. Generally I would draw it up my spine and over the back of the the top of my skull, other times I might send it out my arms. I think the neural pathways are close to or same as what causes the “yoga yawn”. When I was much younger I referred to it as a “brain yawn”. I assume this is what one is trying to feel when attempting to raise one’s kundalini. One guy asked me once how to initiate it, and I could only respond “How to you get yourself to urinate on command, like for the cops maybe” do believe that anyone who experiences the feeling can isolate triggers and over time get past the requirement for the trigger. For example, i did not now just pee in my pants. Over the years I was able to break through what I feared might be insulating effects of a high blood alcohol level, but over time have been able to set that fear aside. Curious if “it” might have an effect on a Theremin, I ended up in touch with a guy who builds theremins and also is a Type A ASMR adept though he never knew what the “Thing” was, that it actually had a name, until my email showed up in his inbox one day. Since ruling out using a Theremin as a device to externally detect “It”, I went on to acquire the first of what in the end can be up to 8 galvanic skin detectors. This uses EKG pads you stick on you skin here and there, with multiple units ganged to show, hopefully, the charge travel across the surface of the skin. I did manage to get get a slight blip on the screen the one time I hooked myself up, and ever since have been waiting to get additional units, at like $50 a piece from Nuelog. A full EKG helmet would be cool to try. I wonder if I could still initiate if my head is inside an MRI machine? Of course I am very susceptible to many types of external triggers. Except, oddly, any of the ASMR videos I have tried. Not a single one has done a thing for me.
I fully concur it needs a name without the word Meridian in it. I suspect it may be transmissible from one body to another, unsuspecting person. I am quite certain this “Thing” would be highly prized amongst the mystically inclined, and any historical appearance of one so adept could easily give sway to the argument “There really is something there”. Shamen, magicians, heretics and gnostics all would consider themselves uniquely skilled for having translated it from a merely autonomic response to a ready orgy of a nervous system flooded with light, at will.
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