At Toronto’s most unusual new spa — of sorts — you can enjoy an hour of having your hair, face and back touched gently with various implements, from wooden forks to rubbery bongos, for $139. For $50 more, you can book in for a soft-spoken role play session that simulates a soothing scenario such as … a doctor’s visit.
You’re probably familiar with the whisper-narrated and lip-smacking ASMR videos that have proliferated online in recent years. But Tinglesbar is among a growing number of brick and mortar spaces that offer clients the chance to experience that sensory reaction through physical touch, sound and visuals.
ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and it’s a sensation that some people experience in reaction to various stimuli. “It could be a tingly sensation, shivers that go from your head to your toes, goosebumps or just a feeling of being relaxed and soothed in response to certain triggers,” said Tinglesbar owner Tammy Lung, describing the experience as “oddly satisfying.”
Those triggers are different for everyone but could include watching a hot knife slice through soft butter or fingers playing with slime, or listening to a whispering voice or tapping sound.
“It can be a deeply relaxing feeling with light, sparkly or staticky brain tingles,” said Dr. Craig Richard, a biopharmaceutical sciences professor at Shenandoah University in Virginia. “People often experience it in the presence of a person they perceive as caring, someone who gives them personal attention … it’s often someone with a gentle voice, making gentle sounds, gentle movements or maybe touching them lightly.”
As a child, Richard would watch videos of the 1970s artist Bob Ross paint and become so relaxed he’d fall asleep. He’d didn’t hear of ASMR until 2013, when he listened to a podcast on the subject and realized he’d experienced those telltale tingles. As a biological scientist, he searched for references to it in the literature, but couldn’t find much. About a year later, he started ASMRUniversity.com, an online repository now bursting with information about this sensory phenomenon.
Richard also launched a global survey asking participants about their ASMR trigger experiences. His data reveals that about 20 per cent of people experience a strong, positive ASMR response. “Hair touching and light touch” are among the most preferred stimuli. Smell doesn’t appear to induce ASMR, Richard said, or at least there isn’t yet research to suggest it does.
The cause of this response is still not fully understood, but Richard’s theory is it may be connected to oxytocin, commonly known as the “love” hormone. “It’s released when you’re with someone you trust, like your best friend, a parent, someone you’re comfortable with, someone you love,” he said. “Oxytocin helps to relax us.”
Lung feels ASMR has profound benefits. “It really helps people, not only physically but emotionally and spiritually,” she said. She credits it for helping her de-stress and sleep after long, hard days of studying at university. “I don’t have any vices. I don’t drink or use substances, so ASMR became my outlet.”
By then, she had already spent a lot of time searching YouTube for the kind of content she’d enjoyed before it had a name — or rather, an acronym: Growing up, she would become deeply relaxed while watching makeup tutorials on the shopping channel.
She’d long wished she could experience that sensation offline. When she noticed more people saying the same thing in comments below the ASMR videos she enjoyed, she decided she would bring the experience to life, in a tangible form.
In 2018, Lung rented a space near Bay and Dundas and held a pop-up where people could have someone brush their hair or gently tap their backs with rubber implements. It sold out. So did the events she held post COVID.
In 2023, armed with a growing wait-list of clients, Lung opened Tinglesbar in a shared rented space above a waxing clinic that she quickly outgrew. This April, she quit her marketing job and moved Tinglesbar to its permanent home in a former industrial building on St. Nicholas St., steps from Yonge and Wellesley. This gives her the space to host community ASMR events such as group immersive role plays, like September’s simulated elementary classroom.
For individual appointments, clients arrive at a cosy, dimly lit greeting area decorated with creamsicle-coloured Togo lounger chairs and slow-moving jellyfish projections on the wall. Soon, they’re whisked into one of two treatment rooms by a member of the staff, which includes yoga instructors, massage therapists, hairstylists, aestheticians and actors; people who are skilled at — and comfortable with — touching others. Platonically, of course.
Many assume ASMR has an inherent fetish or sexual component, said Maisha Kazi, a yoga instructor and Tinglesbar therapist, or “ASMRtist.” She lamented how uncommon it is to talk about pleasure outside of sexual intimacy. “But we all need non-sexual affection and touch,” she said. “What you get here is all about feeling good in other ways. That’s really the only goal.”
For some, Kazi said, these sessions are entertainment. But as a practitioner, her goal is to induce a meditative state by encouraging clients to focus on a singular sensation, such as a cold tool moving down their arm. “The process of getting to meditation is the act of concentrating on that one thing until your mind is not wandering as much,” said Kazi. Her own ASMR trigger is listening to live music. “I can feel the vibrations physically,” she said. “I get goosebumps.”
Since everyone’s triggers are different, Tinglesbar staff will try almost anything to elicit a client’s sensory reaction — as long as it stays above the waist and steers clear of the chest. As I lay on a massage gurney on an October afternoon, Kazi tried to find out what does it for me. She ran her manicured nails along my scalp and back, brushed my hair and puffed scents, including vanilla, near my nose. She turned a minute glass by my ear, then crinkled a candy wrapper.
“Are you grating parmesan onto my head?” I asked Kazi. “No,” she said. “But now we know this isn’t your thing.”
At clients’ request, ASMRtist and writer Steff Murphy has performed all kinds of immersive role plays, including doctor visits and even lice checks. “I guess it’s something people may recall as soothing because it takes them back to their childhood,” she said, speculating that it’s a time when we felt taken care of. “I’d say that’s probably when a lot of the ASMR triggers formed.”
As adults, having someone take care of our needs is sometimes viewed as weakness, or a luxury. “But it shouldn’t be,” Murphy said.
Murphy compared her role-plays to immersive bedtime stories. But since real-life ASMR is about tactile sensory stimulation, the stories she writes and tells are designed to give her a reason to touch her client’s arms, face and hair.
Encouraging me to listen and let my mind wander as she tucked me under a blanket, Murphy began speaking in a quiet but animated tone. I was transported back in time to an early 20th Century beauty salon, where a gossipy esthetician tinkered with my hair, nails and makeup.
“I got this colour called Crush and it’s a red colour, sort of pink,” she said in a baby-doll voice, dabbing at my mouth with what felt like a tube of lipstick. “I kinda like it.”
Suddenly, her hand slipped, and it felt as if bright red wax was sliding down my face. “Oops,” she said contritely, wiping my chin with what I could have sworn was a damp tissue. “Hold still!”
Within seconds, it was fixed. (Well, sort of. There wasn’t actually any lipstick on my chin — or in her hand. It was just her finger.)
Murphy didn’t skip a beat, chit-chatting about “swell men,” cheating husbands and what might help my “elocution.” Before I knew it, our time was up.
Without breaking character, Murphy helped me off the table and onto a Togo chair in the waiting room. “OK, my darling dear,” she said. “You’re ready for a fashion show! You look so beautiful, so gorgeous!”
I spent a groggy few minutes processing what had just happened before heading home in a relaxed daze, as promised.
