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'Amniotic Sound': The Joy Of Being Indoors When There's A Storm

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
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Apr 18, 2015
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There's a fascinating `think piece` penned by a poet (or poetess if you prefer) in the current Independent which seeks to account for the pleasure many of us get from being indoors and cosy - when there is a rain and or thunderstorm raging outside the window.

A term for it has even been coined: `Chrysalism`.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/thunderstorm-last-night-uk-love-why-weather-b2082581.html

There is talk of the situation as reminding us - subconsciously - of being in the womb - in darkness and buried away from the sound and fury from the world outside.

It might be related to, but not identical with, the ASMR sensation that has ben covered on these boards elsewhere.

I can't help but speculate that the noise of thunder and the wind could be reminiscent in some way of the sound of a mother's heatrbeat and blood circulation and breathing that a proto-baby will have been aware of during it's time in the womb - and that that is a part of the pleasure. But it's not even that simple because we don't even need a storm to get this effect. I for one can derive pleasure from drifting off into a light slumber whilst people are around me are talking (just as one did as a young child). I think this may be the reason why it is so easy to fall asleep in front of a television or when speech based radio is on. There's something pleasurable about being exposed to (non-threatening) sounds but not partaking in them.

I am also reminded of a branch of fetishism which consists of placing oneself in an inflated rubber suit of some kind and then sitting in a water filled bath. (I am not a devotee of this amniotic sensation seeking myself - , but I do kind of `get it`).

Furthermore , there is an offshoot of the Youtube ASMR craze which consists of ambient soundscapes supposed to relax you - and courtesy of Nemos' Dreamscapes - these often feature forties jazz sounds `from another room` and the sound of rain or thunder from outside. Here's one:

 
I used to easily fall asleep as a child whilst travelling in my dads motorbike and sidecar which was very noisy and bouncy! I still like to sleep on a long car journey (fortunately not whilst driving though:)

I've always wanted to try a sleeper train.

I also remember that cozy feeling in a caravan with the sound of rain on the roof.
 
The sound of sustained rain on an old-fashioned metal roof is guaranteed to make me nod off. It's one of those soundscapes that makes me think of sleeping at my grandfather's (and some other relatives') older farmhouses.

My favorite feeling of "nicely nested-ness" is to be warm, swaddled under heavy covers / quilts, in a cold bedroom.
 
Speaking of being swaddled under heavy covers, has anyone on here ever treated themselves to a weighted blanket? I’m tempted to try one but they can be prohibitively expensive…..I’d be willing to pay the price though if they actually do help you to get to sleep. My worry is that they are just a gimmicky fad. (Maybe it’s my various worries that give me insomnia and this would just add to them!)
 
Speaking of being swaddled under heavy covers, has anyone on here ever treated themselves to a weighted blanket? I’m tempted to try one but they can be prohibitively expensive…..I’d be willing to pay the price though if they actually do help you to get to sleep. My worry is that they are just a gimmicky fad. (Maybe it’s my various worries that give me insomnia and this would just add to them!)

I think there may well be something to it, but I can only offer anecdotal evidence from my own experience ...

Some years ago I noticed that whenever the weighted "anti-radiation blanket" thingie was laid over me in preparation for a dental X-ray I somehow became calmer and prone to dozing off.

On another occasion during a protracted dental drilling session (root canals) I requested that the heavy X-ray blanket be laid over me, and IMHO it helped me stay relaxed - even during those moments when the anaesthetic had no effect.

The sense of smug nested-ness I mentioned earlier seems to work better with heavier (as opposed to warmer) coverings. A flyweight down comforter is nowhere near as comforting (to me ... ) as a heavy quilt, blanket, or even an unzipped old school sleeping bag.

YMMV
 
has anyone on here ever treated themselves to a weighted blanket?
I have a friend who swears by one. It's the only way he can get to sleep at night.

I've been anticipating thunderstorms here numerous times so far this year, but they've been tending to peter out before actually reaching me. Personally, one of my favorite things is being wrapped in my house robe with a good book, the thunder providing some background noise and then the wind picks up, howling through the trees, and the rain starts in sideways and pitter-pats on the window. I just love that combo.

I might even get a thunderstorm this afternoon if my luck holds together.
 
Personally, one of my favorite things is being wrapped in my house robe with a good book, the thunder providing some background noise and then the wind picks up, howling through the trees, and the rain starts in sideways and pitter-pats on the window.
May I pay a favour forward and direct you to https://asoftmurmur.com/? It allows you to mix a variety of sounds, including all the above, into a pleasing background noise. I find a mix of waves, rain, birdsong and a touch of thunder helps me focus during the daytime, and if I fade down the birds down and the crickets up at night, it helps me drop off much quicker than I usually do. Also available as a phone app, with timer. Recommended.
 
I'm not sure ASMR is a 'craze' as such. It's just giving a name to a physical sensation, that's all. Interesting to link ASMR to 'cosiness' though, I've always thought that I like to be inside in a storm just as a contrast to being outside, soaking wet and cold, rather than because of the cosiness. What gives me the biggest 'cosy' is to be reading scenes where characters are snuggled up safe and warm whilst the world goes to hell outside. For this reason, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban is my favourite HP book - I love listening to the Knight bus excerpt whilst falling asleep.
 
Speaking of being swaddled under heavy covers, has anyone on here ever treated themselves to a weighted blanket? I’m tempted to try one but they can be prohibitively expensive…..I’d be willing to pay the price though if they actually do help you to get to sleep. My worry is that they are just a gimmicky fad. (Maybe it’s my various worries that give me insomnia and this would just add to them!)
The weighted blanket is something that people on the autism spectrum use to help them calm and fall asleep.

I myself wonder if it has something to do with minimizing other sensory input, as that is something people with ASD tend to have difficulty with - experiencing too much sensory overload. A heavy blanket also allows your body to go into a relaxed state easier.

Even an eye pillow will help you to relax. I think it kind of works like acupressure.
 
Speaking of being swaddled under heavy covers, has anyone on here ever treated themselves to a weighted blanket? I’m tempted to try one but they can be prohibitively expensive…..I’d be willing to pay the price though if they actually do help you to get to sleep. My worry is that they are just a gimmicky fad. (Maybe it’s my various worries that give me insomnia and this would just add to them!)

I love my weighted blanket. It is brilliant for going to sleep in

* speed of dropping off
* how long the sleep lasts
* quality of sleep and feeling rested

The autistics that I know who have one, very small number don't like it. It seems to help with other neurological differences too - ADD and ADHD for example.

NTs? I have no data.
 
My middle daughter bought a weighted blanket and doesn't like it. I, on the other hand, enjoy weighting my duvet down with knitted blankets and have trouble sleeping with too little weight on me. She lives in Oz and says it's too hot and oppressive with a heavy blanket, whilst I live in the UK, where it is (for me) very rarely too warm to sleep.

Edited to add: she is NT whilst I am ADD.
 
I used to easily fall asleep as a child whilst travelling in my dads motorbike and sidecar which was very noisy and bouncy! I still like to sleep on a long car journey (fortunately not whilst driving though:)

I've always wanted to try a sleeper train.

I also remember that cozy feeling in a caravan with the sound of rain on the roof.
Having lived in a vast country for some time I am familiar with sleeper trains. They are not as sleep-friendly as you might think as they are often hot, cramped and stuffy. Also the train driver makes scary gear changes - or something - during the night which can be quite alarming. Also sometimes the train has to stop and be lifted - with the help of some kind of crane onto another set of tracks - and that's a noisy process. A night on a sleeper train is fun though. Especially if you get the top bunk bed - because here you are well positioned to peer over the top of the closed curtains and catch sight of villages and train stations whizzing by in the nocturnal landscape....

The sound of sustained rain on an old-fashioned metal roof is guaranteed to make me nod off. It's one of those soundscapes that makes me think of sleeping at my grandfather's (and some other relatives') older farmhouses.

My favorite feeling of "nicely nested-ness" is to be warm, swaddled under heavy covers / quilts, in a cold bedroom.
I second this. I have two memories of this phenomena.
Once, during my first year in Russia, I was awoken by by a pinging and pattering rumpus. It didn't come from the roof but from the corrugated awnings that projected over the balcony of the flat I was in. It was rain, of course - but it held a special significance for me. We had just emerged from a long and gruelling winter - and the sound of the rain represented the arrival of spring as for once it was raining rather than soundlessly snowing.

Another time I was in a sort of temporary `beer tent`/ speakeasy on a lazy spring Sunday afternoon. The ceiling of the construct was composed of corrugated and transparent plastic. As I sipped a beer on my own, it began to rain - which provided me with a perfect excuse to stay where I was. Not only could I hear the rain drumming on the roof - I could also look up and see it plunging down from the leaden sky onto the ceiling and forming rivulets.

I'm not sure ASMR is a 'craze' as such. It's just giving a name to a physical sensation, that's all. Interesting to link ASMR to 'cosiness' though, I've always thought that I like to be inside in a storm just as a contrast to being outside, soaking wet and cold, rather than because of the cosiness. What gives me the biggest 'cosy' is to be reading scenes where characters are snuggled up safe and warm whilst the world goes to hell outside. For this reason, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban is my favourite HP book - I love listening to the Knight bus excerpt whilst falling asleep.
I have long thought that the Ghostly-spooky end of the literary horror genre embodies something of the `amniotic` appeal that we are discussing here. You might read such stories in bed, or in an armchair and quite often the writer strives for a wintry-cum-nocturnal ambience - perhaps even with thunder or heavy rain or a gale as an atmospheric backdrop. The kind of issues that the protagonists struggle with - demons and spooks - are sufficiently distant to most of us to not be seriously alarming.

People who dislike the Horror genre, I have found, often imagine it's devotees to consist of would-be tough-guys who are confronting their fears. Instead, for the most part we are revisiting a lost childhood sense of being protected!

(I am not speaking here of most Horror films where the accent is more on ratchetting up the adrenaline).
 
As a kid, I loved being wrapped up in my blankets like a mummy. I would ask my dad (I only have memories of him tucking us in at night, not my mom) to tuck the blankets around me and snugly under my body - I would be on my back. I now think that I probably liked swaddling as a baby, but don’t know for sure.

I still like being in warm light blankets, but hate having the sheets tucked in. I also have to be the right temperature, very much like Goldilocks. Sometimes this causes some problems as the sheets will get uncomfortably twisted and then I have to wake up fully to fix them. I do have problems with sleeping and sometimes what feels perfect one night can be very uncomfortable
another night.

Snuggling up with a fuzzy throw is the perfect sensory thing to make me feel comfortable, especially if there is snowfall outside.
 
My older daughter, who does have anxiety problems, has done well with a weighted blanket.

I wonder if subconsciously we want to return to the safety of the “ womb”.

We want to be a protected fetus ?
 
My older daughter, who does have anxiety problems, has done well with a weighted blanket.

I wonder if subconsciously we want to return to the safety of the “ womb”.

We want to be a protected fetus ?
But if that were the case - what about those who actively dislike the restriction of a weighted blanket or being tucked in?
 
But if that were the case - what about those who actively dislike the restriction of a weighted blanket or being tucked in?
I hadn't heard of weighted blankets until I read this thread but neither I nor Mrs GR are keen on heavy blankets- I find it hard to sleep if there is even an item of clothing on top of the duvet .
 
I like being covered by my duvet. It has to be very hot for me to not put it over me. I'd rather be hot than exposed....Somehow uncovered doesn't feel right for me.

I do curl up and wrap it around me.

I also like to hear rain outside when I am in bed/indoors. I have done for some time.
 
I like being covered by my duvet. It has to be very hot for me to not put it over me. I'd rather be hot than exposed....Somehow uncovered doesn't feel right for me.
That's because of the monsters under the bed.:oops:

I also like just floating on my back in a warm pool and hearing the muffled sounds from having my ears under water. I also love submerging like this in a warm bath. Is it related to pre-birth environment? I don't know.

I think I would love to float in a sensory deprivation tank. The thought that in saltwater, you can't sink is something that I would also love to experience.
 
I live 15 floors up in a tower block which is on top of a hill facing SW, which is the direction most storms come from where I live, and it's only a mile or so from the sea. Consequently, when it's windy and it rains, or more especially when there's a storm, the rain hammers the windows. Lying in bed all warm and dry listening to it is, I find, very therapeutic. The wind also howls through the common ways like something out of an old fashioned horror movie and that adds to the ambience. I can hear it loud enough to notice but not so loud that it's a distraction.

One drawback is even with the windows shut and the vents closed is that the air pressure inside builds up and opening the front door, which opens on to the common ways and facing the opposite direction, can be a two handed affair until the door opens just a little bit when instantly the air pressure is released. When I first moved here I ended up falling over backwards a number of times as the door is incredibly hard to open, and then suddenly it isn't.

Also when it's windy and rainy during the day and I can't work (I'm a window cleaner) I like to drive down to the sea front, pick up a coffee and a sandwich on the way, and park up facing the sea in a little used area. The sound of the rain beating against the van and the wind rocking it slightly from side to side has something comforting about it that is hard to describe. After the sandwich and coffee, I'll tilt the seat back a bit and simply experience it. Usually after a while I'll fall asleep whether I'm tired or not. When I wake up normally after about 45 minutes I wake up incredibly refreshed. Winter time is best when it's also cold out. Once I slept for over 2 hours. I needed it. It was wonderful.

I think for me it's because I work outside all year round. Late autumn, winter and early spring I can get seriously cold by the end of the day and frequently soaking wet as well. Some winters can be very long like this one just gone. There was no severely cold weather but from last September till recently the air flow originated mainly from the north to the east which made even average temperatures feel much colder and often bitter. I can't wear too much clothing to keep properly warm because as I'm moving my arms a lot, I use a water fed pole system - a brush on an extendable stick, and this sounds silly, I'd be having to move all that material at the same time as I scrub windows and I'd end up knackered before midday. Carbon fibre window cleaning poles are light at the start of the day but get heavier as the day progresses anyway. So I wear what I call survival clothing. The minimum and just enough to keep the cold at bay but not enough to keep warm.

That's why I think when the bad weather hits I like being either in bed at night or in my van during daytime.
 
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I think security comes into it. In my old house, when the rain and wind hit, especially the very heavy rain you get during a thunderstorm, my house would leak like a sieve. Rain would come through the beam above the patio doors and soak the carpet, my youngest's bedroom where the window didn't fit would end up with the bedding wet if you didn't act fast enough to stuff a towel in the gaps, and the electricity would often trip out too. In that place, hearing wind and heavy rain would cast me into a gloomy despondent mood because of all the clearing up that would be necessary afterwards.

In my new house - double glazed, decent roof, doors that lock - listening to wind and rain is far more of a cosy, 'I'm not out there getting wet, I'm in here all snug' experience.
 
A few days ago I had the pleasure of being under a roof on the balcony of a hilltop restaurant on the outskirts of a city in Guatemala as a raging thunderstorm crept across it, it was absolutely spectacular. OK, not indoors, but sheltered and I liked to think that, given the hilltop location, there was a lightning conductor somewhere otherwise the restaurant would have burnt to the ground years ago.
 
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