I’m spending some time recently exploring psychology books and trying to work out if I am actually learning anything about myself, or if I have an ego sufficiently huge that nothing is ever going to penetrate it. I have found that no matter how many books I read, it does not seem to translate into more of a restful life. Which probably says a great deal about my inability to learn effectively.
So, given life is carrying on at the hubbub it had last year (or more likely an ever-increasing pace with each passing year), I have found it helpful to have something restful to listen to. It was for this reason that I started to explore ASMR. I’m not sure if I am a typical ASMR listener, (I have a sinking sensation that many such people are a great deal younger for instance).I did pretty swiftly find that the quality of “ASMR” was highly variable. I wondered how I would settle down with an ASMR track in the hope of getting to sleep, knowing that the ASMR video was actually going to be restful (and not crammed with all kinds of weird effects designed to hammer on every “trigger”, as if it needed a 4lb hammer).
After a while I realised that I couldn’t depend on the commentary associated with the videos. It ranges from sycophantic through aggressive, onto asinine. The review sites I found seemed to belong to people whose ears were obviously assembled in a different factory to mine. Therefore, I was going to have to review the material in advance before I wanted to use it and make use of some method of storing the ones that were worth listening to.
YouTube played material without paying up front. At the time, the adverts really did not seem too overpowering, but the clincher was that you could assemble the items that you liked into a playlist for subsequent playing. There was no need to own the videos to do so.
I also discovered that you could make the playlist public, so that other people could benefit from the work that you had done.
I reasoned that I would have to be pretty formal in my approach and hence, this process of reviewing videos started. I hope that you have ears not too dissimilar to mine and that therefore you will like the videos that I like.
If so, the Procrastination Pen playlist always appears at the end of every one of these articles and you can hop over to YouTube and see if you like what you hear.
A little while ago I started listening to Calm, mostly because it does not have the advertising load of a YouTube track. The downside is that you are going to need a subscription.
For many people this will be a show-stopper and if so, the YouTube reviews are coming very soon in this article (scroll down a bit). I used to be the same. I find too often now I’ve drifted off to a charming little ASMR video only to have some loud and distracting advert kick off and rouse me back to wakefulness again. In fact, of late this has become so frequent that I think it is by design. Advertising pays the bills, after all.
Today’s Calm track is taken from the Calm Dailies. I find these rather more approachable than Calm “sleep” tracks. The artists involved, frankly, have better voices. The Calm Dailies do not have music (I find music is just not as restful as people would have you believe). Some of the Calm “sleep” tracks involve an actual story and so rather than drifting off to la la land, you find yourself engaging with the story.
The Calm track this week is this one:
https://www.calm.com/app/player/kgezKhbBSs
Daily Calm
Thinking
NARRATOR
Tamara Levitt
AUTHOR
Tamara Levitt
Tamara has a great voice. She maybe my favourite but I rather like Jeff Warren, so I dither in the mornings when I am looking at the next track. That said, Jay Shetty has much of the more interesting material, especially if I need a mental kick up the backside – which is most of the time, frankly.
This is quite a long one for a Calm Daily, in that it is nigh on 11 minutes in length. It is about obsessive thinking. If you find yourself struggling with intrusive thoughts at bedtime, this may well be the track for you.
I’ve settled into a semi-rigid structure for several weeks now: Calm review, professional ASMR review, inadvertent ASMR review. The blog originally only considered inadvertent ASMR videos. It has evolved this way. So, in deference to custom, this is this week’s video from a professional ASMR artist:
ASMR – Extremely Satisfying Allergy Test!
It’s a professional ASMR video so of course it has notes and of course the notes are going to promote the ASMR artist: “410,294 views 24 Sept 2025
Hi guys, welcome back! In today’s video I’m doing your allergy test. Hope you enjoy!
My Spotify Nanou ASMR: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2trBl…
My TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial
My Dutch vlog channel (with subtitles): / @nanouphilipsvlogs
My new English vlog channel: / @nanouphilips
🖥 My other channel: / @nanouphilips
🖥 My channel with shorts: / @nanouasmrshorts
📱My Instagram: / nanouphilips
🎥 Production: Arc Agency – contact: info@arcagency.be
TikTok: nanou.philips
TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial
Twitch: / nanouasmr
🅿️Paypal: https://paypal.me/NanouASMR
📧 E-mail: nanou.asmr@outlook.be”
The notes were so extensive I’ve given you the edited highlights, which, to my mind, are still way too long.
There are comments, of course, and, of course, because it is a professional ASMR artist they vie towards the sycophantic side. So far, so usual.
The video comes from the channel Nanou ASMR, this has 1.75M subscribers, seven hundred and fifty-two videos nineteen playlists, more than one of those playlists has in excess of one hundred videos. So, a hard-working ASMR artist – full kudos given. I am a little concerned because the last video I listened to that had in excess of 1.5 million people raving about it, I really couldn’t get on with at all. Let’s see how this one fares.
It is surprising how often a video starts from a professional ASMR artist that raves about their latest sponsor and so it is a rare experience to be free of that. I disregard completely the many I find that do that. Making money is reasonable but I do find this disrupts the ASMR experience, whether you introduce sponsor du jour in a whispering voice or you do not.
In this case we are music free, sponsor free, and the video starts instead with what I assume to be recognised “trigger” sounds.
Clucking noises, keyboard noises, paper-related noises, donning-gloves noises, crinkling noises, tapping noises, liquid noises, a potpourri of sound, presumably designed as a catch-all of “triggers” for any attending ASMR devotee.
I am not really interested in that. I’m here for the voice and so how is it? The voice as you would expect, with such a popular artist, is excellent. Presentation is on the whispery side of whispery and so is about as believable as Boffo for Prime Minister, but this does not detract from its effectiveness as an ASMR voice or as the audio for a restful video. It does that job very well, in fact.
Sadly, the keyboard is selected for its ability to be heard which is sad, because I would prefer that it wasn’t heard at all. I think the keyboard is distracting and excessively loud. No doubt there are some ASMR fans who just love that kind of thing (I guess a number of subscribers to this YouTube channel, in fact).
There are quite a few rustling noises, gloves, clothing, the ASMR artist moving around. This is not obtrusive and so if it isn’t your thing either, it should not cause any concerns.
I’m not sure why ASMR artists do that clicking/clucking noise at intervals with their tongue, it seems out of place to me, but I just bet there is a die-hard devotee that turns up for new videos just to hear that sort of thing.
The plastic arm that intrudes into view and is then drawn on with a felt tipped pen is a tad on the surreal side, as if Metal Mickey had turned up for an examination. Given that you’ll be listening rather than watching, I’d say this should not have any impact. I’d say the video goes on about two to three minutes longer than I would have liked but a heck of a lot of subscribers disagree with me. On that basis you may want to give it a review.
The routine in these articles for the last few months has been that now I deal with the material on which I originally based the blog i.e. inadvertent ASMR videos. Of late, this has been videos on a medical theme, just because I have found a lot of success finding calm and restful videos where those videos were designed to illustrate some medical concept or other.
This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here, here and also here. It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh, and so in this week’s article.
The dedication to this channel has been because the videos here seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case). They have a tendency to be quiet. There is though the regrettable tendency for the odd distracting noise to crop up in them.
Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles, so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). In order to cover the notes for new readers, I will give a precis version with the first video.
I think this will be the concluding such article, as I believe I have calculated that we have covered very nearly every video available. I make it that there are six left to cover and so we’ll mop those up in this article. I suspect we are getting a bit towards the tail-end in terms of quality as well but I live to be surprised.
Straight Leg Raise & Femoral Nerve Stretch Test – OSCE Guide | Clip
In case there are people who have not read any of those previous articles, I will include the notes associated with this video so you see how they work. The notes are lengthy and I’ll only include them once (or this will grow to become a very long article composed principally of notes).
The notes are: “48,856 views 14 Sept 2022 Musculoskeletal Examination OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS
This video demonstrates how to perform a straight leg raise (a.k.a. sciatic stretch test) and a femoral nerve stretch test in an OSCE station.
You can read our step-by-step guide to the examination of the spine here: https://geekymedics.com/spine-examina…
Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources, including:
• 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
• ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
• 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
• 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec…
• 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
• 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-…
• 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
• 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…
Chapters:
00:00 Straight leg raise
00:36 Femoral nerve stretch test
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Always adhere to medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely on the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.
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CPSA OSCE Guides https://geekymedics.com/the-clinical-…
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Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”
As we have heard in the previous articles, these videos commence with an unwelcome piece of startup music. So far, I have found no mechanism for removing startup music on someone else’s video. If I had, you would see more of the videos that have been rejected on the road to getting the odd “acceptable” one out to you.
I have tolerated the startup music in previous Geeky Medics videos and I will do so this time. It does not preclude bumping them to the archive list at some point in the future.
This video is a little over one and a half minutes so it is rapidly over with. It is the voice here that is excellent. There is background noise but it is not excessive. There are periods of silence which might be distracting whilst listening. Personally, I found this quite restful.
There is tail end music which is even louder than the startup music and it would be great if it just wasn’t there at all. Of course, given the video is a short one, there is much more opportunity for distracting adverts which was certainly maximised at the time I was reviewing this one.
Lachman’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip
One and a quarter minutes long and so none of the ones we’re looking at this week seem to be very long at all. It finds time for the distracting start up music though. It is nicely calm in the few moments it is actually playing. However, it also finds time for the even louder tail end music – I’d have to ask why this is necessary.
Anterior & Posterior Drawer Test & Collateral Ligaments Assessment – OSCE Guide | Clip
Just over one and a half minutes and now we’re in the swing of these, we know how it will go, distracting start up music, nice calm presentation, even worse tail end music, YouTube advert…
Patella Tap & Sweep Test – OSCE Guide | Clip
All of these seem of a similar length; this is the same length as the last one. The format is the same as the previous ones including unwelcome musical parts. This video seems to have been substantially slowed down and is mostly silent. This makes for very calming watching but does not contribute much when you’re listening and not watching.
Thomas Test – OSCE Guide | Clip
This one is shorter at just over one and a quarter minutes. Same format as the previous ones. In common with previous OSCE videos there are on screen medical notes for medical students. Of course, these are of no interest to us. The presentation is beautifully calming, but oh so brief and it’s back to funky music again.
Trendelenburg’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip
The last ever such video and the last item in blog posts featuring Geeky Medics. It has been a while now. This is the shortest so far at only slightly over a minute. Same music top and tail. Same on-screen notes, useful to medical students but not to us. Same calming voice but this time we barely have time to hear it before it is back to the music again.
That’s it on this occasion, more next time.
The Geeky Medics playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:
The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:
The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:
I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.
The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:
I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.
I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.
If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.
Until next time.
Photo by DeepAI
The Procrastination Pen 