Lifestyle
Is this $130 ‘head orgasm’ in Orange County worth it? We tried it
I’m getting a brain massage — and it’s sublime.
I’m 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.
Kayla Faraji tickles reporter Deborah Vankin’s hands with pink goose feathers.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
It’s all part of an hour-long ASMR session at Faraji’s new Kas Wellness in Costa Mesa.
“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.”
Kayla Faraji does “tracing” on reporter Deborah Vankin’s arms with bamboo chopsticks.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
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. The feeling is sometimes called a “head orgasm” because, for those who respond to it, ASMR can not only calm the central nervous system, but may bring on a sense of euphoria, giddiness or acute alertness.
Only about 20% of the population, however, experience “the tingles,” as the sensation is often referred to. But for those who are ASMR-sensitive, studies show there are health benefits: It may temporarily alleviate stress, sleeplessness, low mood and chronic pain as well as aid focus. People who experience ASMR also show lowered heart rate and blood pressure because it activates the parasympathetic nervous system for relaxation.
Over the last decade, ASMR has exploded in popularity — the term was coined in 2010 by cybersecurity analyst Jennifer Allen and in 2025 “ASMR” was a top search term on YouTube. But until recently, the ASMR community has primarily coalesced online. ASMR enthusiasts — a.k.a. “Tingleheads” — typically have watched videos online of a practitioner whispering while combing a client’s hair, for example, or dipping rose petals into paraffin wax and, after they harden, tapping the edges on a hard surface to trigger a sense of relaxation or bliss.
Faraji, in addition to opening Kas Wellness, also posts ASMR videos on TikTok, where she has more than 300,000 followers. One of her videos — in which she chews gum while dripping warm massage oil onto the back of a client’s neck — has garnered more than 26 million views.
But ASMR‘s online dominance is changing as more and more brick-and-mortar ASMR studios pop up around the country.
“There’s been a lack of real-world opportunities for people to intentionally have their ASMR triggered by an expert,” says physiologist Craig Richard, author of 2018’s “Brain Tingles.” “It’s only starting to happen in the real world where you can go and explore it through an intentional ASMR practitioner, like you can walk in and get a massage.”
Kas Wellness has opened in Costa Mesa, one of two in-person ASMR studios in the L.A. area.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
As the founder of ASMR University, which compiles and shares research findings around ASMR, Richard keeps an updated list of in-person ASMR studios internationally — and they’re still rare, he says. “As of January, there are 16 businesses that stimulate ASMR in person in the U.S., four in Canada, 11 in Europe and one in South Africa,” he says.
In addition to Kas Wellness, the L.A. area also has Soft Touch ASMR Spa in Pasadena, which caters to women and nonbinary clients. But little else.
ASMR practitioner Kayla Faraji.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Faraji says she conceived Kas Wellness as a full-scale “luxury ASMR boutique” with spa vibes. The space is a mash-up of textures: Rows of warm, flickering candles illuminate a cool, polished concrete floor; velvet curtains ripple by plush and furry throw rugs. There’s a candy dish in the lobby, which is awash in hues of cream and white, offering visitors gummies infused with passion fruit and the calming herb ashwagandha.
Kas Wellness offers one signature ASMR service — or “sensory journey” — for one hour, 90 minutes or 100 minutes. Clients may upgrade to a “four hand session,” in which two practitioners work on them simultaneously. As in a massage, guests undress “to the level of their comfort,” Faraji says (I did from the waist up) and slip beneath crisp white sheets on a treatment bed in a private room. Practitioners — there are four at Kas Wellness — then stimulate the head, face, chest, arms, hands and back using “tingle tools,” as they’re sometimes called, or “triggers.” One is a so-called “sparkle brush,” filled with tiny beads that rattle as the brush sweeps through hair; another is a soft “sensory brush” that provides a form of white noise when swooshing over skin; jade stone combs feel cool to the touch and give off a hollow scratching sound.
Tools used for an ASMR session include pink goose feathers, skeleton hands, bamboo chopsticks, metal golden nails, green jade combs, sensory brushes and a pink sparkle brush.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Faraji likes to use her own nails as a sensory trigger.
“The human connection is such a part of this,” she says. “We try to spend time incorporating real touch as much as possible.”
That said, the ASMR experience is distinctly different than a massage, Faraji explains.
“Fundamentally, the concept of a massage is manipulating your tissue and muscles through pressure,” she says. “ASMR is the complete opposite — we use light sensory touch to relieve stress. We’re not kneading or applying pressure or manipulating your joints. It’s surface touch. We have so many nerves in our body and they’re all firing — it takes your body out of fight or flight.”
For an additional $20, guests can don robes and enjoy the lounge area before their treatment. It features hanging macrame chairs, a tabletop mindfulness garden and refreshments such as sparkling water, hot tea and Japanese whiskey. There’s also a meditation corner, where visitors can scribble what they want to let go of in their life on pieces of water soluble paper, before dropping them into a dish of floating candles and watching their troubles dissolve. Then they’re encouraged to light a candle and meditate on positive intentions they want to bring into their lives.
Kayla Faraji caresses Deborah Vankin’s head with green jade combs, which make a hollow “click-clacking” sound.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
Kas Wellness also offers custom sound baths for up to eight guests at a time. Faraji leads the sound bath experience and, by request, ASMR practitioners will gently brush clients’ hair or scritch-scratch their arms while they listen to her play the singing bowls.
Kas Wellness may be rooted in ASMR, but the overall effect feels more robust: part high-end massage studio, part spa, part sound bath destination and part meditation center.
Reporter Deborah Vankin lights a floating meditation candle after her ASMR session.
(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)
“It’s about the mind-body-soul connection and ASMR is just the anchoring modality,” Faraji says of her new boutique. “It’s equally important to have the gratitude breathwork at the end [of a session] for mindfulness. Because if your mind isn’t well, your body will never feel calm.”
After my treatment, I lingered in the lounge, where everything felt especially pronounced: my bare feet on the cool cement floor, my toes sinking into the plush rug, even the scent of my hot peppermint tea. I’m not sure if I’d felt the tingles, per say, but I was relaxed for the rest of the day.
“ASMR is such a universal thing,” Faraji says. “When we’re younger, physical touch is such a big part of our creativity — girls will sit and braid each other’s hair and there was that rhyming game, where you tickle each other’s backs [like] spiders crawling up your back. But as we get older, we have less access to soft nurturing touch, especially if you’re single. I think that’s why ASMR resonates with so many people. It’s just comforting.”
Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie play ill-fated lovers Heathcliff and Catherine in “Wuthering Heights.”
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Warner Bros. Pictures
More than a decade ago, The New Yorker published a piece titled “Can Wuthering Heights Work Onscreen?,” in which my now-colleague Joshua Rothman argued that Emily Brontë’s classic is beloved “not just for its romance but also for its strangeness, its intensity, and its violence.” These qualities, he noted, are often left out of the many films and miniseries the book has inspired, which tend to reduce the story to the doomed romance of Catherine and Heathcliff.
The extravagant new movie “Wuthering Heights,” written and directed by the English filmmaker Emerald Fennell, is very much in this vein; it could be the most reductive version of this material ever made. But I can’t say I was ever bored. As she demonstrated in her wild satirical thriller Saltburn, from 2023, Fennell cares little for subtlety, and here she’s made an ode to mad, passionate excess.
You could say she tells the story in broad brushstrokes, but I don’t think she’s even using a brush — more like bright red spray paint. And she’s cast two stars, Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, as a Catherine and Heathcliff you won’t soon forget, even if their love affair is ultimately more photogenic than it is deeply moving.
It begins in the late 18th century, around the time that the young Catherine Earnshaw, who likes to run wild on the Yorkshire moors, gets a new companion named Heathcliff, a scruffy urchin who comes to live with her and her father at their house, Wuthering Heights.
Years later, and now played by Robbie and Elordi, Catherine and Heathcliff are extremely close, to the point of sharing a tense, quasi-incestuous attraction. It’s clear they love each other, even when Catherine expresses her interest in Edgar Linton, a wealthy aristocrat who’s moved into a magnificent estate nearby.
Catherine ends up marrying Edgar, played here by Shazad Latif. Heathcliff storms off in a fury, only to return several years later, with a fortune of his own and a fierce desire to either reclaim Catherine or have his revenge. He inflames her jealousy by setting his sights on Edgar’s impressionable young ward, Isabella — that’s Alison Oliver, giving the movie’s sharpest performance.
Up to a point, this is how past adaptations — including the classic versions directed by William Wyler and Luis Buñuel — have unfolded. But Fennell wants to make the story her own, by infusing it with a hot-and-heavy sexuality that you don’t typically see in a Brontë adaptation. Catherine and Heathcliff do a lot more romping in the rain than usual, in scenes that Fennell stages for wicked laughs as well as earnest emotion.
But it’s precisely in the realm of emotion that this “Wuthering Heights” falters. Elordi and Robbie are fine actors, and they do what they can to give this overheated movie a core of real feeling. But they are often overwhelmed by the sheer gargantuan excess of the filmmaking. The movie may be set in the 18th century, but Fennell draws on a wealth of contemporary inspirations, starting with the soundtrack, which features several moody songs by the pop star Charli xcx. The production design and the costumes are full of outré touches, from the bright red acrylic floor in one room of Catherine and Edgar’s home to the Met Gala-ready gowns that Catherine wears in scene after scene. She changes outfits so often that Robbie at times seems to be playing Barbie all over again.
There’s a reason for all this anachronism; it’s Fennell’s way of saying that Catherine and Heathcliff’s love story is so powerful that it transcends its period setting. But for all her bold choices, there are aspects of this “Wuthering Heights” that remain hidebound and conventional, including its treatment of race.
Over the years, there’s been much debate over the subject of Heathcliff’s ethnicity. Brontë’s book famously describes him as a “dark-skinned gypsy,” and he’s often been held up as one of the few protagonists of color in Victorian literature — not that that’s kept him from being played by one white actor after another, including Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy and now Elordi.
One under-appreciated exception is Andrea Arnold’s 2012 version, which features two Black actors, Solomon Glave and James Howson, as the younger and older Heathcliff. Casting choices aside, Arnold’s version is pretty much the antithesis of Fennell’s: somber, downbeat and grimly realistic. It’s a tougher but ultimately more affecting movie. And with “Wuthering Heights” fever having set in, now is as good a time as any to seek it out.
Rep. Jake Auchincloss
Politicians Are Chronically Online
Go Outside, Touch Grass!!!
Published
TMZ.com
Representative Jake Auchincloss says politicians need to ditch their phones and get in touch with nature … telling us most are nice IRL — but they can get real nasty online.
We caught up with the the Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts on Capitol Hill earlier this week … and we asked him about the differences between politicians’ in-person and online personas.
Auchincloss tells us he got a device over Christmas that “bricks” his phone — basically making it a glorified paperweight — and, he thinks his fellows in the House and Senate should get similar tech to brick their own phones and go “touch grass.”
Rep. Auchincloss acknowledges social media is a useful mass communication tool — like newspapers and TV — but he still thinks face-to-face encounters lead to more understanding across political divides.
The congressman also defends most of his colleagues … claiming a vast majority are trying to govern correctly — but a small minority is ruining it for everyone.
Mr. Speaker, can we have Congress outside today?
Chloe Kim (L), Gaon Choi (C) and Mitsuki Ono celebrate with their medals after the women’s snowboard halfpipe event in Livigno, Italy on Thursday.
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Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
Want more Olympics updates? Subscribe here to get our newsletter, Rachel Goes to the Games, delivered to your inbox for a behind-the-scenes look at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
MILAN — U.S. snowboarder Chloe Kim’s quest for a historic Olympic halfpipe three-peat was foiled by none other than her teenage protégé.
Kim took home silver, after 17-year-old Gaon Choi of South Korea rebounded from a dramatic crash to overtake her in the final run.
“It’s the kind of story you only see in dreams, so I’m incredibly happy it happened today,” Choi said afterward.
Kim, 25, was within arm’s reach of becoming the first halfpipe snowboarder to win three consecutive Olympic golds. Despite a last-minute shoulder injury, she cruised easily through Wednesday’s qualifiers, which were actually her first competition of the season.
And she was looking like a lock through much of Thursday’s final — under a light nighttime snowfall in Livigno — which hinged on the best of three runs.
Kim’s strong first showing gave her 88 points and an early lead, which she held for the majority of the competition as many other contenders — including her U.S. teammates Bea Kim and Maddy Mastro — fell on one or more of their runs.
A big crash nearly ended Choi’s night early, but after a medical exam she returned to the halfpipe slope for two more runs.
Gregory Bull/AP
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Gregory Bull/AP
Choi also took a heavy fall on her opening run, needing a concussion check. She almost missed her second turn, only to fall again. But an impressive third run propelled her to the top of the leaderboard, with 90.25 points.
“It wasn’t so much about having huge resolve,” she said later. “I just kept thinking about the technique I was originally doing.”
Then all eyes were on Kim, the last rider of the night, with a chance to retake the lead. But she fell on her cab double cork 1080, a trick she had landed cleanly in previous runs, which stuck her with her original score. Choi and her team broke down in happy sobs and cheers immediately.
As Choi wiped her eyes, a beaming Kim greeted her at the photo finish with a warm hug. As they lined up alongside bronze medalist Mitsuki Ono of Japan, Kim stood to Choi’s side and pointed at her excitedly.
“I’ve known [Choi] since she was little, and it means a lot to see that I’ve inspired the next generation and they’re now out here killing it,” Kim said afterward.
Choi is the same age Kim was in 2018 when she became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboard medal.
The two have known each other for nearly a decade, a bond that began when Choi’s father struck up a friendship with Kim’s dad — who emigrated from South Korea to the U.S. — in the lead-up to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
Kim (R) gave Choi (L) a warm reception after the last run of the night.
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Patrick Smith/Getty Images Europe
“Chloe’s dad did a lot of mentoring to my dad,” Choi said after winning the first World Cup she entered in 2023, at age 14. “I didn’t know much because I was young, but Chloe’s dad gave my dad a lot of advice. It made me who I am today.”
Kim and her dad helped bring Choi to the U.S. to train with at California’s Mammoth Mountain, and maintained a supportive relationship. Kim spoke highly of Choi at an earlier press conference, calling it a “full-circle moment” and saying she sees “a mirror reflection of myself and my family.”
“We’re seeing a big shift to Asians being dominant in snow sports,” she added. “I’ve had aunts telling me that I shouldn’t snowboard, get a real career, focus on school. It’s cool to see that shift happening.”
Choi’s victory makes her the first female Korean athlete to win a medal in snow sports. This is also South Korea’s first snowboard gold.
“I want to introduce this sport more to my country through my performance at this Olympics,” Choi told Olympics.com before the Games. “I also believe that enjoying the Games is just as important as achieving good results.”
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