The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 6 August 2019 *** 19
LIVING
W
ould you like to
sleep with Emma
Smith tonight?
She’s going to kill
me for saying that,
but I mean it quite
literally. If you play the “9hr Sleep
Clinic” video on her YouTube
channel, she’ll tuck you in, check
you’re comfortable, coo softly as you
drift off, then wake you up come
morning. If that sounds like your idea
of a nightmare, it is evidently others’
dream, with 1.9 million views so far.
For as much as a third of the
population, Smith’s breathy whispers,
audible mouth sounds and nurturing
smiles to camera elicit something
called an autonomous sensory
meridian response, or ASMR – a
relaxing tingle that prickles across the
scalp and shivers down the spine,
which many find helps them relax.
Smith, 40, only stumbled across the
phenomenon in 2010, after a serious
car accident left her with PTSD-
induced insomnia. Finding videos of
towel folding and hair brushing
helped her to rest and recover, has
proved career- and life-changing.
Going by the moniker
WhispersRed, the mother of two is
now Britain’s best-known “ASMRtist”,
with more than 800,000 YouTube
subscribers and 200 million views of
her hypnotically whispering into
microphones in her “Tingle Shed” at
the bottom of her south London
garden. Last month, Penguin released
her series of mini ASMR audiobooks,
ahead of publishing her actual book,
Unwind Your Mind, in September,
when you’ll also be able to buy her
album of sleepy ASMR songs.Emma Smith, Britain’s best-known ‘ASMRtist’
tells Rachel Cocker how the cult YouTube
sensation became bafflingly big business
Would these
spine-tingling
sounds put
you to sleep?
The secret benefits
of going barefoot
O
f all the objectionable
details unearthed from
Google’s VIP save-the-
planet summer camp in
Sicily last week – and
there were a number- many headlines picked on one thing
in particular: that the Duke of Sussex
gave his speech “BAREFOOT”.
The tone was one of simmering
outrage. “‘Just who does he think he
is, Gandhi? Joan Baez?” it went. “He’s
sixth-in-line to the throne, and he has
the temerity to take his shoes and
socks off while public speaking? I’m
sorry but this is the last straw.”
To many, the idea of Prince Harry’s
naked hooves – which he reportedly
prepared for their big moment with a
£50 pedicure at the five-star Coworth
Park in Ascot – was one small
misstep. But to others, it may be one
giant, barefooted leap for humanity.
All over the world, small groups of
people are heeding the advice of
Kenny Loggins by kicking off their
Sunday shoes and getting footloose.
Their arguments range from the
simple (shoes are hassle, man!) to the
spiritual (literally connect to the
planet, man!) to the vaguely medical-
sounding (studies, which we’ll come
to, man!). There is even an association,
Barefoot Alliance, which advocates
the acceptance of “barefooters.”
As Prince Harry and Australian cricketers kick off their
shoes, Guy Kelly asks whether we should all follow suitthose sentiments is Gwyneth Paltrow,
who consciously uncouples from her
shoes whenever she can. Paltrow
“swears by” a practice called earthing
“for everything from inflammation and
arthritis to insomnia and depression”.
In 2017, her lifestyle website Goop
published an interview with Clinton
Ober, author of the confidently titled
book Earthing: The Most Important
Health Discovery Ever?, in which he
explained that the ground has an
“abundant supply of free electrons that
can help neutralise free radicals – if
only we would take our shoes off and
access them”.
It’s not an idea confined to Goop
acolytes or people named Clinton.
Musicians, from Sandie Shaw to
Florence Welch and Tim Minchin,
frequently perform barefoot, with
some believing it allows them to better
channel their vocal energy. Gusto, a
Silicon Valley company, has a shoes-off
policy at its headquarters to make
employees feel at home; Flykick, a
London gym, puts attendees through
boxing workouts and burpees without
so much as a sock in sight, to combat
how “weak and lazy” our feet become
when reliant on shoes. And last month,
the Australian cricket team walked
barefoot around Edgbaston in an
attempt to capture “positive energy
coming out of the earth” before their
world cup semi-final against England.
They lost by eight wickets.
Humans started wearing
rudimentary sandals around 40,
years ago, but before that our bodies
had adapted to long stints walking and
hunting by evolving tough, leathery
calluses. A recent study of shod and
unshod walkers in Kenya found that,
over time, shoes may have had a
negative effect on our joints, especially
for runners. Other researchers have
said that toddlers who spend the
majority of time barefoot have better
balance and jumping skills.
John Woodward, 72, hasn’t worn
shoes since 1976. He’s unequivocal on
whether there are health benefits: he is
“still running every day and am very
fit”. Though comfortable in his
shoeless choices, others – namely
establishments that have asked him to
leave on account of his bare toes – have
struggled to get on board.
“It was funny to be asked to leave
the British Museum, when I was
surrounded by barefoot sculptures
showing off the beauty of the human
body and aphorisms by Socrates
about physical health and moral
virtue,” he says.
Barefooters like Woodward believe
that the wearing of shoes is nothing
more than praying to a false god (a
false shod?), and the sooner we kick
out of it, the better. There is even a
mini documentary, Shoespiracy,
asking just how we fell for the great
footwear fallacy. It sounds like a load
of old cobblers.Feet first: the Duke of Sussex and the
Australia cricket team getting footlooseREXSmith shows me around her
soundproofed shed, stacked with tingle
“triggers” from fabrics to binaural mics,
which capture audio in the same way
real ears hear sound. Eerily, they are
also shaped like them: black, silicone,
human ears, which she whispers into
or runs cotton buds around. Role plays
of ear-cleaning are big in the ASMR
community. “There are a lot of odd
videos,” Smith cheerfully admits, “and
I’ve made a lot of them.”
“If people don’t have ASMR they
struggle to believe it’s a genuine thing,
so there’s quite a lot of scepticism,” says
Dr Giulia Poerio, psychology
researcher at Sheffield University, who
has experienced the tingles herself “for
as long as I can remember”.
Its closest cousin might be frisson:
the goosebumps many get from
listening to an emotionally charged
piece of music. “Neuro-imaging work
has shown you’re more likely to
experience music-induced chills if
you’ve got stronger connections
between auditory and emotional
sensors in the brain,” explains Poerio,
who is working on a study to find out
how closely this relates to ASMR
sensitivity. “It’s important to point out
that before YouTube existed, ASMR
was still around,” she adds. “[We] just
didn’t have a term for it.”
Perhaps it is what Virginia Woolf was
describing in her 1925 novel Mrs
Dalloway, when Septimus’s nursemaid
spoke “deeply, softly, like a mellow
organ, but with a roughness in her
voice like a grasshopper’s, which
rasped his spine deliciously and sent
running up into his brain waves of
sound which, concussing, broke”.
Most modern “experiencers”probably imagined it was a personal
quirk until 2010, when cybersecurity
expert Jenn Allen coined the term
ASMR, in search of a descriptor “that
sounded scientific, so people wouldn’t
be embarrassed to talk about it”.
It caught on. YouTube now hosts
over 13 million ASMR videos, ranging
from actress Salma Hayek crunching
tostadas (1.8 million views) to a three-
hour compilation of fabric-scratching
that has been watched 75 million times.
Dr Nick Davis co-authored the first
study that established the existence of
ASMR at Swansea University in 2015.
He found that whispering is the most
common trigger, followed by close
personal attention – in real life, that
might mean someone gently stroking
your hair or face; in the case of “fake
facialist” or head massage videos, it
means someone simply pretending to.
“The sort of things that tend to
trigger ASMR look a lot like grooming,
in the way that great apes pick fleas off
each other,” Davis notes. He wouldn’t
describe himself as a “consumer” but
does get the sensation, “mostly from
haircuts; there’s something about
somebody being in your personal
space, in a non-sexual way, that I think
is quite relaxing”.
Of course, the husky voices andlingering looks to camera of many
ASMRtists (mostly women) invite the
charge that there’s something kinky
going on. China went so far as to ban
ASMR videos last year, branding them
“vulgar and pornographic”.
“You can sexualise anything,” points
out Smith, who felt a bit affronted when
she was invited last year on to ITV’s
This Morning to explain how ASMR
could aid sleep, only to have her
segment introduced with the strapline:
“Whisper porn, have you tried it?”
That many videos are described as
“role play” doesn’t help. Until you
watch them: I defy anyone to be
aroused by being booked in for a dentalcheck-up, or having safety instructions
for a Dremel power tool read aloud.
Poerio’s research, the first to measure
ASMR’s physiological effects, revealed
that the heartbeats of those who
reported experiencing it decreased by
an average of 3.14 beats per minute
while watching the videos. This is
comparable to the effects of relaxation
techniques such as mindfulness, and
has piqued scientific interest.
“People use ASMR to destress at the
end of the day, to have a good sleep, but
also to self-treat chronic pain,” says
Davis. “I don’t want to suggest that it is,
in itself, a treatment, but if you’re
maxed out on painkillers, a distraction
like ASMR might be helpful.”
What began as an internet curio has
now spawned an entire cottage (or
should that be shed) industry of
ASMRtists, some making serious
money. One, ASMRDarling (otherwise
known as Taylor Darling), is estimated
to earn around $1,000 (£800) a day in
advertising revenue, thanks to her
2.3 million subscribers. Smith won’t
talk numbers; suffice it to say she was
able to give up her day job two years
ago to make the videos full time.In 2017, Ikea released a video of
soothing descriptions of the Skubb
storage system and fitted sheets being
audibly smoothed. In March, Zoë
Kravitz clacked her fingernails down a
Michelob beer bottle in ASMR-style in
the middle of the Superbowl – the
world’s most expensive ad break.
There are two ways to interpret this,
say Poerio. “The first is that [brands]
think that by somehow making people
feel relaxed, they might be more likely
to buy their products. Or it could just
be that they’ve recognised that ASMR
is quite trendy in pop culture and
they’re jumping on the bandwagon.”
Smith turns down “99 per cent” of
companies, but is happy to work with
those who align with her mission to
“normalise” it, recently making a
series of Mind Tingles podcasts for
Fuze Tea to introduce it to Daisy Lowe,
Clara Amfo and Professor Green.
“I really want it to be recognised as
a complementary therapy, a gateway
to mindfulness and meditation,” she
says, listing the problems her fans
have told her she has helped them
alleviate: “Loneliness, social anxiety,
pain – grief is a big one; when you
sleep on your own, just the sound of
someone else breathing is comforting.”
Now who feels bad for sneering?Rustling up revenue: Emma Smith, aka
WhispersRed, in her Tingle Shed studioEar candy: Zoë Kravitz’s ASMR-style
advert during the Superbowl‘There are a lot
of odd videos
- and I’ve made a
lot of them’
JEFF GILBERT FOR THE TELEGRAPHIt has a tough job, as illustrated by a
defensive Twitter thread from March,
when people were mean to the
barefooters. Perhaps the haters should
walk a mile in their... oh, never mind.
“For many thousands of years,
barefoot was sufficient for our species.
It is our innate condition and we
believe there are strong reasons why
that still applies today,” the group
wrote. “Barefooters are not weirdos,
perverts, or unintelligent, at least no
more so than anyone who prefers to
live shod. We are ordinary people
who’ve simply made a choice.”
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