I am getting a brain massage – and it is sublime.
I am lying on a heated massage bed, cocooned in a soft, weighted blanket, as Kayla Faraji caresses my cheeks with billowy, pink goose feathers. She slides them down the sides of my neck and around my bare shoulders, sending chills up my spine.
“Now I’m scratching, scratching your chest,” Faraji whispers into my ear, especially breathy. “These are golden nails.” She drags long, prickly iron nail tips up my arms and along my collarbone, filling my ears with a raspy scraping sound.
It is all part of an hour-long
ASMR session at KAS Wellness, Faraji’s new “luxury ASMR boutique” in Costa Mesa, southeast of Los Angeles in the US state of California.
“It’s deeply relaxing and restorative – and there’s such a need for that right now,” Faraji says of our session. “I feel like ASMR is the future of wellness, the new massage.”
ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response, is the pleasurable tingling feeling brought on by gentle auditory, visual or tactile stimuli – think the sound of cellophane wrap crinkling, oil droplets sizzling, fingernails rhythmically tapping a desktop or a hairbrush swooshing through thick, wavy locks.