Category: Middle Age

Sleeping With ASMR

I recently came across a question that seems straightforward, but, in the manner of such questions, swiftly becomes a rabbit hole for the mind. I mention it only on the reflection that the things that affect your sleep may not be as intrinsically you as at first sight.

The question was how much of you is actually you and how much comes from others. Initially, on thinking about this, I concluded that actually I am all me. But on breaking it down further, I understand the influence over time of parents, teachers, lecturers, employers, work colleagues, friends, famous figures, intellectuals and so on.

Taking aside people for a while, I find the influence of the media, the television, the newspapers, social media, the Internet. Until, in the end, I reach the conclusion that nothing is really me at all. There is zero of me that is intrinsic.

That being the case, the aspects of life that have negative connotations one would think are optional. If one cannot sleep worrying over something or other. In fact, this is outside of one’s self. Socialising to ensure that behaviour was in line with society norms. Expectations of others. Influences absorbed over the years from all communication mechanisms to which one has been exposed.

Similarly, expectations about appropriate times to sleep. The manner in which one sleeps. The things that one wears for bed. The chemicals one should take to assist with sleep and those that one should avoid. Every single one of these (and more I have not thought of) have come from outside of oneself. They must, all, therefore, be optional.

On some level one can decide to reject each and every one of them (in some cases, it would require a lot of work admittedly). I believe that a thought exercise like this is highly valuable. If you are struggling to sleep, perhaps, one of the aspects that you regard as critical is, in fact, up for debate.

Do you actually need to sleep when other people say that you do? Do you actually need to eat, exercise, drink, behave in the fashions that have been laid out for you? Is it worthwhile experimenting to find something that works for you in a better way? Even where such experimentation takes you into areas that others would find peculiar or at the least “different”.

The process requires more work than I have given it, but perhaps expanding ones thinking to embrace options that normally one would disregard without thought, may contain the seeds of a practical solution.

I notice that it is now established (as I had already concluded on this blog) that sleep gets more difficult as we age. Whenever I read articles like this, I always find the explanation of the problem to be far more compelling than the solutions. In fact, after a while, if you spend time reading a number of sleep articles, the solutions seem to come down to the same things.

One would never tend to find any solutions that would require changes that affect the ability to make money. (In fact, solutions like that tend not to occur in any media-based article I notice). For example, if you found that you could get a great amount of sleep by getting up at 3AM and going back to bed again at 11AM this would not be recommended. It would require a restructure to the way that the day tends to operate in the current working world. As far as I can tell it would be feasible to reorientate a day to fit around how a person’s body clock actually works and get the same amount of work done.

However, it would be difficult. Difficult equates to costly, and costly is an option that will never be suggested. I am not suggesting it is the correct approach. However, when you are considering how much of you is you and how much is the influence of others take into account the solutions that are never mentioned. Some of them maybe as powerful as the ones that you consistently see. There will be very good reasons that you do not see them. Some of those reasons may not be a good fit for you.

Of course, if you have found your way to the Procrastination Pen, it is probably because you have got used to using sound to distract you from all the whirring, buzzing and grinding that happens between your temples whenever you try to lay down your head. I have tried for many-many months to lay out auditory solutions. Many of these have derived from publicly available sources. I review one, I determine if it is suitably relaxing, I put it up for you to consider. Some of these have been more successful than others.

Of late, I have looked for sources outside of YouTube and out of sheer laziness, no doubt, I have found that the Internet Archive delivers a resource to which I continue to return. However, it is variable to say the least and today’s offering is no different.

Martin & Ryan (unintentional ASMR)

https://archive.org/details/MartinRyan

Blink and you will miss it. The video is less than ten minutes in length and it starts off immediately with strong background noise, which could be air conditioning. The participants are so quiet that noises from adjacent cubicles can be equally clearly heard (this is a definite “turn the volume up” video).

I would say that the patient describes himself as “Ryan Parnell” but the sound track for vocals is so indistinct I cannot be certain (even with the volume turned up to eleven). Turning it up in this way made the drawing of curtains for privacy frankly deafening and I needed the modern version of a graphic equaliser to amplify the vocal track whilst muting everything else (I do not have such a device).

The extraneous noises are very distracting; I would make a guess that the recording equipment (such as it is) was really not up to the job.

At this volume the use of a blood pressure cuff is enough to cause you to tear off the headphones in self-defence. At one point, the sound of the person breathing is actually louder than the sound of the person talking. That is, to say the least, unusual. It is a shame because the pace of the examination is well measured and what I can hear of the participants’ voices sounds very calming. The sad thing is that the intrusive noises are louder than the voices here. Not a video I would review again, but as I constantly comment, there are so many varieties of ASMR fan out there. I’m pretty certain there is at least one who will rate this highly.

I tend to spend a little while each day listening to some content from Calm. Today I thought I would recommend one that I heard some time ago:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/ZG8utTdTSd

Daily Trip

The Unchanging I

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Calm is not free. If you want to listen to this material you are going to need a subscription. I feel suitably guilty about mentioning a paid-for option that I linger for only the briefest moment on this section and move swiftly on – to the section where I review a professional ASMR artist.

Today I am looking at one which is something of a cheat, given that it is peripheral to the core medical theme that I have focused on for a great many months.

British Doctor Hand Examination | Real Medical ASMR for Sleep

Firstly, it is unintentional ASMR content so is not specifically from a professional ASMR artist, as such. Secondly, it is from a channel dedicated to Unintentional ASMR, the clue is in the name: Unintentional ASMR Sketches. This channel has one hundred and thirty six videos, five playlists, of which the odd one seems on theme for us:

and

and

Here, therefore, we have a video originally created for one purpose, now employed to kick off some ASMR triggers. (More or less the kind of thing I try to find but here curated into ready-to-wear easy to consume packages).

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

The video is in excess of thirty-three minutes and so not the shortest we have seen. It has notes: “136,639 views 19 Aug 2024

Welcome everybody! Everyone reading this will share a common love of ASMR, specifically Unintentional ASMR. So, this channel is dedicated to finding the best unintentional ASMR videos around, from medical exams, clinical demonstrations, soft spoken instructionals, psychics, spiritual healers and all other unintentional ASMR triggers to help give the tingles.

Simply put this channel is unintentional ASMR. Plain and simple.

Each video takes time; I do significantly edit these videos both the visual parts and audio in order to maximise their ASMR effects so if you enjoy this content then please give the video a like and consider subscribing for more unintentional ASMR content.

One of the best things about the ASMR community is the comments section, so please WRITE A COMMENT (especially if it’s humorous)

Hope you enjoy the ASMR!”

The notes indicate that comments will be permitted and, boy, are there a few of those. Mostly they appear to be ASMR afficionados trying to prove how in the know they are about ASMR. This is rather sad. Rather than a community of people loving calm voices, this is something more of a clique. No matter, we can ignore such things and draw conclusions about the quality of this video for sleep purposes.

It starts loud, with pronounced background noise. The professional’s title is across the screen: Mr Steve Turner, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and College Examiner …

Although the video is loud, Steve has a great voice. He introduces the patient as John. John does not get to say anything. The video quality is poor, hazy in fact, and appearing out of focus. I assume it has been captured from somewhere and along the way some quality has been lost. Perhaps that also explains the hiss in the background.

I turned the volume down and everything was much more palatable (rather the opposite to the volume needed for that first video).

The pace is excellent, methodical, measured in approach. Just the sort of thing that we want to hear. There is relatively little extraneous noise. Such equipment as is employed is introduced without excessive noise. However, at 10:20, music commences. It is loud, louder than the vocal track; it is distracting. Given the person providing the channel purports to be editing the videos for palatability why is it included at all? Fortunately, it lasts for a mere moment and we are back to the voice again. At 20:13 we see a University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire banner in the video (possibly a clue as to where we might find the full version of this video). Fortunately, this is not an excuse to introduce yet more music. It is at this point that we recognise that very likely this video is an assemblage of many shorter videos punctuated by those banners.

I executed a search after reviewing this and found that the original video(s) have been taken down. So it is highly likely that this is the only version that you will ever see/hear. In which case it is well worthy of a review.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week is this one:

Cardiovascular examination demonstration

It has notes: ” 1,274,509 views 2 Feb 2019

MRCPCH Clinical Revision – more videos at http://mrcpch.paediatrics.co.uk

Demonstration of a paediatric cardiovascular examination by Professor Alastair Sutcliffe. Filmed and edited by James Diviney.

Revise for your MRCPCH Clinical exam, with videos and high-quality content created by the London Paediatrics Trainees Committee. “

Which are blissfully brief. Comments are denied – which might be for the best.

The channel is Pass MRCPCH – London Paediatrics Trainees Committee this has sixty-one videos, ten playlists (not surprisingly many of these look appropriate for the theme of this blog.

Todays’ video is a little less than seven minutes, so it will not keep us long. It will be interesting to see if it fits in with a theory I had some time back in this blog i.e. that adults speak much more quietly and empathetically when dealing with children than they do when dealing with adults. I wonder if that says something about the origins of ASMR itself.

This video, thankfully, starts without music. However, it commences quite loudly with a presentation towards camera (I’ll assume that it is a camera). There is quite substantial background noise – an ongoing hiss which probably speaks to the quality of the recording mechanism employed here. There is the odd thunk (presumably of equipment being moved off camera). After a brief introduction the young person (Molly) is introduced and as if by magic, the medical professional’s voice becomes more gentle and more measured.

The medical professional is humorous; the presentation is, dare I say it, kind and considerate. In fact, it is exactly the pace and volume which I have been looking for in a video. Despite the hiss, I would say this one is a good video. However, the length is perhaps a little shorter than is properly ideal. Not least because YouTube is going to slot in a bouncy advert straight afterwards.

For the patient she appears to be relaxed, even entertained, which must be quite a skill to create, I would imagine. I thought this one rather good, probably worth giving a review. In any case, I’ll trial it in the Procrastination Pen playlist for a while to see how it beds in.

On that basis, just one, video on this occasion.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I find the statements that alcohol is rotten for sleep to be sadly ratified by experience. I am not the world’s greatest social animal and so my forays into drinkies are but occasional. I am sure that at my age my body does not thank me when I make such forays as I currently do.

Having been out on one of these forays recently, I returned feeling reasonably content with the world, easily slid into Neptune’s house. Only to find much of the night punctuated with tossing and turning and awakening to a head feeling like two tree trunks colliding in a hurricane.

If you do imbibe as a mechanism of medicating your way into the land of nod, it would seem that in fact you are not doing yourself a great deal of good. I would recommend a dose of the Procrastination Pen playlist as an alternative. You can use this playlist as a distraction to gentle you off to sleep.

Each week I review some content for its restful qualities and some of that content (assuming it is any good), I add into a playlist which is publicly available on YouTube and you might find of use.

Some of the other content (such as Calm) will require a subscription. However, I do try to balance it out with as much free material as I can locate that week.

I hope in this fashion to give you enough material to create your own playlist should you prefer.

For a little while I have tried to locate some material that is not on YouTube, i.e. files that are not supported by advertising and therefore that will not be interposed with adverts at quite a different volume and pace from the video itself. Such adverts can be disturbing to the quiet-seeking ear and, to be honest, I’ve got kind of tired of them myself too.

This week’s is this one:

ASMR Blue-20170308-Peripheral Nerve Examination – ASMR Doctor Medical

It is on the Internet Archive again (I’ve found material on the Internet Archive in previous week’s) and is roughly in line with the medical theme, this blog has been following for many weeks, I’m sure you’ll agree.

This is a little over thirty-seven minutes which is a reasonable length for videos we have seen of late. As we would expect the tone is excellent. There is no startup music and the artist does not, initially, descend into whispering.

The notes that come with it are the usual Internet Archive level of brevity: ” ASMR Blue-20170308-Peripheral Nerve Examination – ASMR Doctor Medical-4mnbR3kmiwI-[99689714].mkv

ASMR Blue-20170308-Peripheral Nerve Examination – ASMR Doctor Medical-4mnbR3kmiwI-[E742A0EA].jpg

Title – Peripheral Nerve Examination – ASMR Doctor Medical

video_url – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mnbR3kmiwI

video_description – Hey guys! This is a twist on the popular Cranial Nerve Exam Role Play. Instead of looking at the cranial nerves though, we’re checking your peripheral nerves, which is an entirely different examination called the Peripheral Nerve Exam or Upper/Lower Limb Neurological Examination.

0:00 Nurse Violet checks your vitals

10:45 Doctor Blue performs peripheral nerve exam

#asmr

💙Bluewhisper

Instagram and twitter username ~ bluewispy

Email ~ bluewhisperasmr at gmail”

There are zero comments but this seems to be a lot less unusual on the Internet archive than it is on YouTube, for example. There are of course noises other than the ASMR artist’s voice. I don’t really like the glove noises or the Velcro sounds. There are also rustling noises, crinkling of plastic noises, the sound of a blood pressure cuff being blown up (which to me is excessively loud), there were paper noises, writing noises.

There is, unsurprisingly, some whispered content. In this case this is less distracting than some of the extraneous noises I’ve mentioned.

I think this is a good one, why not have a review yourself.

The offering from Calm that I’ve listened to this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/D1jDKA6-QE

Daily Calm

The Place

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

Tamara may be my favourite voice on Calm. I often prefer the actual content from Jeff Warren or Jay Shetty but for a calming voice I think staying with Tamara is not a bad plan. This one is about our tendency to grasp pleasant emotions and things. Unpleasant things we push away. However, this track encourages us to accept reality as it is, pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

The structure I’ve employed for these reviews now expects a review of content from a professional ASMR artist and I am not about to change unless I get some negative feedback about this.

This week let’s look at this one:

1940’s ASMR~ WWII Nurse Role Play {1900-2000 Series}

It is from the channel Angelica which has 627k subscribers, 1K videos (wow) and sixteen playlists of which one would appear to be on theme for the medical related ASMR this blog has focused on for a long time now:

Today’s video is a little over eighteen minutes long and so, in contrast to the advert-free offering above, is quite short by comparison with some that have been reviewed on this blog of late. The notes are refreshingly brief: “2,827,299 views 28 Nov 2016

New ASMR Channel:    / @angelicasgrasss 

⁂ Instagram:   / angelicasgrass   ·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙”

Comments are not permitted which stops the more esoteric, not to say abusive, contributions of Joe public. However, it also prevents us finding out how many ASMR sycophants have hung around the video in the nearly ten years since it was posted. I am guessing that this video will have been discovered by many thousand individuals and most of those will have loved it (that seems to be how it works with professional ASMR artists).

It begins without startup music and straight away I would say this artist has an excellent voice, somewhat better than some I have heard of late. The video has some background noise (louder than I would have expected for a professional ASMR artist). I like the vocal tone, I like the pace, I like the intonation, I even like the accent. I can see why this artist is so popular. Indeed, if this quality is consistent, I may return to check out at least one other of the videos associated with this artist. There are of course extraneous noises, paper noises, writing noises, sounds from the artist moving about, the odd clunk, sounds of hands being rubbed together. It must be a testimony to the quality of the voice that I did not find any of it distracting.

I’m not convinced some of the equipment in use would have been around in the 1940s however we’re here for the sound rather than the quality of any video presentation.

I think this one well worthy of a listen.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week is this one:

Advanced Health Assessment (NP) Neck/Respiratory/Cardiac

it comes from the channel Eli Metts with 480 subscribers twenty-five videos zero playlists. The videos are on a wide-ranging set of themes. I could only find four that seemed to be on a medical subject. Two of these posted six years ago and the remaining two seven years ago. It would seem that all video posting ceased six years ago for some reason. It looks like this is another video you should view quickly before the channel gets removed altogether.

The video is just less than twenty minutes so not huge in length. It starts without startup music and with no background noise. This is unusual for something filmed in a hospital which usually is dogged by very loud air conditioning noises.

There are notes, which are thankfully, brief: “64,727 views 10 Feb 2019

Advanced Health Assessment (NP) neck, respiratory and cardiac systems assessments”.

Comments are permitted and are the usual level of variability. However, ASMR fans have been here before me (which is usually good news).

There are occasional traffic noises, which sound like they are close by. There are sporadic equipment noises, which sound like they might be in an adjacent room. There are noises from furniture moving.

The medical professional (Eli Metts) has a good voice. One advantage of this video being designed for a medical purpose is that the professional is not whispering. The patient (Gabrielle Burch) also has a good voice but we, sadly, do not get to hear a lot of it.

The examination is nicely paced and most importantly not too loud. It does seem to end rather abruptly but all in all enjoyable in the listening.

I think this one was well worthy of a review.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

I came across a course by Tara Brach ” Mindfulness for Anxiety and Sleep: Learning Practices that Help Reduce Stress and Calm Fears”. I’ve subscribed (sadly it is not free) and as it is on theme for the material that we have been covering I thought I’d let you know about it as well. You’ll find it at the Radical Compassion Institute and it is $19.99. Of course, if that sort of sum is a long way from the amount that you wish to spend at the moment, that is completely understandable. However, I know that there are some people desperate for sleep out there and I rather like Tara Brach’s voice…

Of late, I have been trying to seek out material that is both free and not on YouTube, in the hope that I can direct people away from energetic adverts when they are trying to sleep.

This week I thought we’d go back to the Internet Archive again with this one:

PE: Shoulder Pain – OSCE Prep (Pulm, Cardiac, Pulses, Screening OSE, UE Neuro, MSK, Special Tests)

https://archive.org/details/youtube-EglDKnv5mLw

This has the look-feel of a YouTube video that was reviewed on the Procrastination Pen many months ago. It is eight minutes long. It has quite extensive notes:

“This particular video is intended as a demonstration of a physical exam that may be useful in evaluating a patient with shoulder pain.

It is not intended as a complete instructional video and should not be considered a source of complete physical examination instruction. It is also intended not as a perfect example of a physical exam that would be performed for a patient in clinical practice, but is designed to optimize function and efficiency for a OSCE testing setting.

Instead, it should be treated as a supplement to independent learning using primary Osteopathic Physical Examination instructional resources. Clinical skills are best learned and developed with support from faculty in the context of a complete Osteopathic Medical School Curriculum.

Osteopathic Clinical Skills is a channel dedicated to discussing and exploring Osteopathic Clinical Skills concepts for medical students, residents, and clinicians and presenting them in an easy-to-understand manner.

Attributions:

Many thanks to the University of North Texas Health Science Center Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (UNTHSC – TCOM) for permitting use of the Medical Education Training (MET) facilities and equipment during the production of this video.

Additional thanks to the UNTHSC-TCOM learner and faculty volunteers who participated in this production and provided permission for the use of their image in this video.

Addeddate

    2023-08-09 12:29:33

Channel

    http://www.youtube.com/@OsteopathicClinicalSkills

Collection_added

    social-media-video

    additional_collections_video

Identifier

    youtube-EglDKnv5mLw

Originalurl

Scanner

    TubeUp Video Stream Mirroring Application 0.0.35

Year

    2023 “

There are no comments, but then that isn’t really exceptional for a video that we find on the Internet Archive rather than YouTube.

The video starts without startup music and actually has no discernible background noise. The medical professional does not have your classical ASMR voice and is definitely not someone given to whispering. However, his style is gentle and measured, even slow perhaps. Occasionally he speaks a little more loudly which might be distracting if you have just dozed off. There are none of the grinding, popping, clicking, noises that attend many YouTube osteopathy videos and which caused me to reject the entire category for this blog some time ago.

The patient does not have much to say but she also has quite a calming voice. That is not common with YouTube videos – at least one participant habitually sounding like they’re employed to engender wakefulness.

Of course, each week now I refer to something from Calm because I have a Calm subscription, but I am not in any way trying to rub that in. Merely indicating that other material is available outside of YouTube. This week we have:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/TdLlUcxXBY

Daily Jay

Context Switching

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

which is about how changing rapidly between tasks is taxing on the mind and inefficient. A sentiment which I wholeheartedly endorse, given that I have a very single-tasking kind of mind which becomes progressively more insistent about that limitation the older that I become.

This week’s professional ASMR offering comes to us from Cap Bailey ASMR. The channel has 375K subscribers six hundred and thirty seven videos and nine playlists of which this one would seem to be on theme for the medical examination subject we have pursued for this blog for some time now:

The video is this one:

Medical ASMR Friendly Field Exam (Whispered Sleep Roleplay)

The video has comments (of course it does) and, as usual, people are wetting themselves with joy over a new ASMR video. There are notes, which are refreshingly brief: ” 10,275 views 15 Feb 2026

(World War 2 Roleplay) Your friendly ASMR Medic treats your injuries to make you feel better (relaxed and sleep well) I hope ya love this video. I really enjoy doing these type of videos so if you enjoy this, leave a like and let me know in the comments. Much love and enjoy 🙂

Patreon –   / capbaileyasmr 

PayPal – @CapBaileyASMR

Instagram –   / cap_bailey 

Cap Bailey ASMR

375k subscribers”

It is a little over twenty-two and a half minutes in length, so not exceptionally long. It starts without music, but does have a kind of background noise as if the person presenting is standing in a storm. I think this is deliberate given the context of the video. It is definitely a whispery presentation but not your classical ASMR voice, I think. It is a bit esoteric for our normal fare in that it is not in a hospital, GP surgery, or even a nursing student’s bedroom.

The WWII aspect is unusual. However, we’re here to listen to how good the voice is. I’d say it is acceptable but I am not raving as much as the comments would have had me do.

The voice has an edge to it which makes it less than the calming I was expecting. I think it is that the person presenting is fighting to be quiet or, perhaps is trying both to be quiet and to project at the same time and it is an oddly jarring effect. That is not to say it isn’t well worth a review, of course.

There are, as usual for such things, other noises; tapping noises, stroking noises, slurping noises, some clicks, the odd thump, clunk and scraping noise. The person also makes that odd mouth clucking/clicking noise so beloved of ASMR artists but which does not do anything for me.

This may well be an example of something I have noticed before which is that some ASMR artists seem to try to get every ASMR trigger they can into each of their videos. I have said before that this is a mistake, as it does feel a bit like hammering at a trigger rather than it gently coming out of the presentation. In addition, if your trigger is mouth clucking, it probably isn’t whispering and vice versa. On that basis any ASMR fan is going to find part of the video unfulfilling, presumably.

Occasionally these extraneous noises get to be quite loud. I did find some of the noises to be distracting and personally I would not be using this one to try to fall asleep to, your mileage may vary. If you’re watching, the recreation of military artefacts and costume seems well done, but I think most people reading this blog will be using any of the videos to doze off to and hence will only be listening. I guarantee that there will be many-many people who absolutely lap this up, so why not have a review for yourself.

Today’s inadvertent ASMR video comes from the most minimal of channels. The channel is Lauren King and there is just one video on that channel. The subject of this week’s review.

HEENT Health Assessment Video 2_King

There are no notes and no comments. The channel has just two hundred and forty-nine subscribers but I notice the video has 123,950 views at the time I am looking at it (let’s hope that bodes well for us). It is a little less than twenty and a half minutes which is definitely not huge. It starts without music but with a reasonable level of background noise almost certainly air conditioning. Lauren seems to have a good voice and, indeed, the “patient” has a voice that is pretty good too. So far, so good.

There are equipment noises, noises from adjacent cubicles, some of which are quite loud (laughter even). The “patient” seems to be called “Tanner Wallace”, although there is every possibility of that being incorrect. Also, the date of birth verbally whisks by (possibly August 10 1993, not that the information is of very much use to us).

The bed motors (Lauren raises the bed) make a fearsome noise which is genuinely distracting. Fortunately, that particular noise does not last that long. The examination is well paced even gentle in places. Lauren occasionally seems to work hard on enunciation (there are a few technical terms).

In common with some presentations we have seen, Lauren sometimes spends moments struggling to work out what comes next. This is very standard student assessment video. By now, you and I have seen so many such videos we can almost work out what we expect to happen next. This one seems a small cut above, in that the style has the appearance of including some genuine empathy which is a fundamentally rare skill demonstrated in student assessment videos.

Part way through, the shoulder badge becomes visible and we see that it is Walla Walla University School of Nursing.

This has a channel but we have long established that university channels are there to promote the university rather than generate any ASMR-related content. (No doubt rightly so).

Sadly, my listening to the video was repeatedly interrupted by loud adverts (which more or less reiterates the point where we came in).

I rather liked this one, extraneous noises notwithstanding. Certainly, it is of reasonable quality for a student assessment video and I’m going to put it in the Procrastination Pen Playlist.

On that basis, just one, video on this occasion.

That’s it today, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

I am so happy that even professional journalistic accounts are now documenting distraction as a valid approach towards dealing with insomnia. Regular readers of the Procrastination Pen know that I have been banging this particular drum for over a year now. The distraction that I choose is sound.

I find that a particular kind of sound is restful. A low calm voice in an empathetic tone is absolutely ideal. It does not even matter to me, particularly, if the adopted tone is a whisper.

Regular listeners to ASMR artists will notice that the whisper is the go-to level in many of these videos and it does all get a bit samey. You will have noticed that I refer to videos and this is because I have been using YouTube as my source of ASMR material, for sleep, for much of the period in which I write about ASMR on this blog.

However, I have made the promise that I will also explore alternatives. This promise is also self-serving since YouTube is financed by advertising and much of that advertising is so noisy it undoes the good work done by the video itself. I lose count of the times I’ve spent forty-five minutes dozing to a relaxing track only to be shocked awake by an advertisement for some undesirable tat.

Unfortunately, money maketh the world go around, so this kind of thing is unavoidable where the website in use depends upon advertising for its revenue. I have therefore been looking at other sites. Of late I have had some success finding material in the Internet Archive. This week I am listening to this one:

https://archive.org/details/asmr-nurse-takes-care-of-you-roleplay/Lasmren/Asmr+nurse+takes+care+of+you+roleplay.mp4

It is from Lasmren ASMR Archive by Lasmren ASMR and straight away I can tell this video is extremely quiet. I had the volume up to eleven and it was still hard to hear it. (Advanced age and encroaching deafness notwithstanding.).

The video is a little over sixteen minutes and is dedicated to someone by the name of “Randy” – if you find the idea of a video dedicated to someone else distracting, I would avoid this one. On the upside there is no startup music. The tone does not involve whispering but on the downside, this is not what I would call my favourite voice.

There are some loud noises that occur in the background (neighbours, I think). There are other noises of course (apart from the loud ones). There are nail clicking noises, rattling noises, movement of a blanket, pill dispensing noises, plastic tapping noises, liquid noises, glove noises, objects being slammed down onto the desk surface, noises from the ASMR artist moving around. Some of these are unwelcome. There are various sounds where devices appear to be knocked against the microphone which, given the rest of the video is quiet, are quite disturbing to any relaxation. I would say that given this the recording level is probably off, and a bit more amplification to the voice was probably required.

Lasmren sounds quite bored; borderline fed up in this, perhaps it is just something in the vocal tone. The presentation seems a bit random, definitely not scripted. I am not certain that it hangs together that well. However, as I have mentioned before, there are as many ASMR preferences as there are ASMR fans, so I am guessing that someone out there will love this.

For a long time now, I have been recommending a track on Calm. I have a Calm subscription and the requirement to subscribe also ensures that you do not need to listen to noisy adverts. The requirement to subscribe also means, of course, that this is not for everyone. Today’s recommendation is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/YnCzboCfYS

Daily Jay

When Fear Takes Over

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Which is about making decisions on the basis of fear and when this is not the correct approach. He suggests that the best approach is that will always enable us to grow. He points out that you need to be clear about why you are making decisions; could it be that the decisions you are making are because of fear.

If that doesn’t sound very sleep orientated, this is because I frequently find the Calm dailies more restful than the Calm material that is actually supposed to gentle me off to sleep. A lot of that material involves music or other noises that I do not find restful.

At this stage, and for a while now in this blog, I tend to review a professional ASMR artist. I have tried various techniques to avoid choosing just the latest video that pops up in the YouTube recommendations. Sometimes this has even been successful.

Today it is this one:

the ent exam you didn’t know you needed 🥼 (asmr doctor role play)

There are not many comments on the day I am looking at it but those that there are seem to be predominantly positive. The channel is ASMR Viella with 27.8k subscribers, three hundred and five videos and three playlists. The roleplay playlist has a number of medical videos in it but is not predominantly medical themed:

There are, of course, notes, and in this case, these are, thankfully, brief:

“9 Feb 2026 ✪ Members first on 6 February 2026 #asmrsounds #sleepaid #asmrroleplay

This ASMR role play includes medical personal attention, questions and note-taking, physical exam, tympanometry (yes that one), a hearing test, and ear massage / care. hope you enjoy~!

new upload every Sunday at 8PM ET~! ✨ thank you so much for liking and subscribing. ʚ♡ɞ

become a channel member here ❤️:

   / @asmrviella 

#asmrsounds #sleepaid #asmrroleplay”

Today’s video is a little over thirty-four minutes in length and so is reasonable compared to some we have looked at recently, but it should not over face you if you simply want to listen to just the one video whilst you drift off. There is no startup music (Heaven be praised) and straight away we are back to the predominantly whispering style of presentation. This means we are on familiar ground (a lot of professional ASMR artists seem to do this). The voice is not unpleasant, but I do like it when ASMR artists ring the changes, i.e. do not opt for a whispering style of presentation.

As we have heard before there are occasional mouth click/cluck noises (I suspect because they are an ASMR “trigger” for someone). Of course, the voice is not the only noise. We have pen clicking, scribbling/writing noises, fingernails clicking against a surface, there are noises which seem to be something dragged across the microphone (these are quite loud), plastic clicking noises, equipment noise including items being placed (quite loudly) on a desk surface, beeping noises, rattling noises, mobile phone alerts, liquid sloshing noises, even the distant sound of aircraft/traffic.

I get the sense, as I have before, that a number of professional ASMR artists try to cram every type of known ASMR trigger into the one video. I think this might not be the best approach. I, for example, like a calm voice, so I find nail clicking and liquid sloshing distracting. If you are the type of person that rather likes liquid sloshing, it might be that you’re not so keen on the whispering, for example.

This one certainly has quite an amount of nail clicking and so if this is not the trigger for you, I’m not sure I’d review it. If it is your thing though, this video should be a good fit (the occasional loud sound notwithstanding). It was not, I have to say, my favourite video to date so I do not think this will be a channel I’ll spend a great deal of extra time reviewing for alternative videos. Your mileage may vary.

Now the ultimate section of the blog article of late. At one time the only section in the article but things have expanded a little over the past few months. This is where I seek out a (normally medical) video and review it to determine if it is suitably relaxing. Given the video is designed for a purpose other than relaxation, these are inadvertent ASMR videos. Some of them turn out to be better than others.

The channel this time is Joy McLaughlin which has only seven videos and yet has 13.8K subscribers. Blimey. There are zero playlists so no point trying to evaluate any to see if they’re suitable for us.

The video is:

Pulmonary Exam

It is only a little over seven minutes so blink and it’ll be gone. Comments are permitted and a number are from ASMR fans, that is frequently a good sign (but sadly not always). The notes are: “598,514 views 6 Dec 2017

Lauren Daley is simply “breathtaking” in her latest short film, “The Pulmonary Exam”– audiences everywhere will be gasping to see how it all turns out.”

Checking the channel, all of the material on it is eight years old so watch this one while ye may before someone takes the whole thing down.

The video starts in silence and then is a little loud, including the voice of the medical professional. I would say that the “patient” here has a better voice. The medical professional introduces herself as “Lauren Daley” who states that she is a first-year medical student at “FAU”, at least that is how I heard it. Assuming I have heard it correctly it is conceivable that this is “Florida Atlantic University” this institution seems to have a nursing programme and it is possible this is where Lauren is attending in 2017.

There is reasonably strong air-conditioning noise, which might be why Lauren feels that she has to speak up here. There is occasional humour, which I did not find distracting. The examination is nicely calm, although never truly quiet. There is an interruption from a person off-camera, potentially the person doing the filming. However, it is not excessively loud.

I think I’ll try this in the Procrastination Pen playlist for a while but it may eventually get booted out. I am doing a great deal of weeding from the playlist into the archive list of late as I would swear, I am getting pickier. (Hopefully that will turn out to be a good thing in terms of the eventual overall quality of the playlist).

On that basis, just one video on this occasion.

That’s it for this review, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

I recently read some recommendations around the use of magnesium to aid sleep. Personally, I was sceptical. I consider my diet has quite enough healthy attributes. So why would I need a supplement. I decided to go with cheap and minimal to give it a try. I located some 375mg magnesium and vitamin B6 from Tesco. I figured if the bargain basement variety was effective, then there was something in this magnesium supplement solution.

I also wanted the lowest mg I could find as I had been warned that strong supplements of magnesium can act as a laxative, and I was not too keen on that.

In any case, I now find it slightly easier initially to fall asleep. I have found that it has zero effect on the nights when I am already stressed – so far nothing available off prescription does. It also seems to have no, to negligible, effect on waking up during the night. Taking it, I find I still wake up around 4AM and it is still a struggle to get back off to sleep again.

Of course, this is anecdotal. A sample size of one could hardly be called a scientific sample size. There is also a strong possibility it is all placebo effect. However, if so, I’m all for the placebo effect. It might be worth giving magnesium a try if you haven’t already.

So, again, welcome to the Procrastination Pen, the home of restful material to aid in distraction of the sleepless and, on a good night, towards gentling them off to sleep.

Of late I have been trying to find material that is not on YouTube to give you the option of avoiding some pretty sleep-disturbing adverts. One of the people who is more famous than most is Jack Kornfield. Who, unsurprisingly, has a truly excellent voice and one, which, in the past, I listened to very frequently.

Surely meditation royalty like this would not have material out there in internet land that is free of charge?

Well in fact there is a whole site of it here, including, completely at random, this one: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/85881/20240902-Jack_Kornfield-SR-a_labor_of_love-85881.mp3

We also find the odd content in the Internet Archive including this one:

I’m beginning to understand that, with all this information available, one really does not have to put up with YouTube at all.

Following the structure that was established a few months ago, at this point I tend to recommend something from Calm. I have a Calm subscription and so I am in the fortunate position that I can listen to the content there. I recognise that only a subset of the people reading this will be in that position, so I will keep this section brief:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/iViiLizTTt

Daily Jay

Soul Grow

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

This is about becoming a more extraordinary version of yourself. In it Jay explores this letter. I often find that Jay has some of the more interesting content on Calm, although not usually the most restful. I assume most people want to become the best possible version of themselves and so this may appeal.

Following on from the Calm recommendation, regular readers will know that at this point I now turn to YouTube and look for a professional ASMR artist. I am now not clear whether this is to recommend them. Many of my articles have found problems with content from professional ASMR artists. However, at the same time I have found the same artists with positive legion fans leaving sycophantic comments. I have to conclude therefore, that there are many different ears in the world and they all like to hear something different. For this reason, I persist, in the hope that at least one person who happens across this blog will like the content.

This one is unusual in that it has no notes and very few comments. That does not usually bode well, so my expectations are not high from commencement.

ASMR | Nurses Station 1: Nurse on Cranial Nerve Exam 🩺

It is from ALBERTSVOICE ASMR, which is a channel that has 16.8K subscribers, 3.4K videos, eleven playlists with some playlists quite obviously on theme for our medical – related ASMR reviews, such as:

and

and

and

This is such a huge number of videos I can only assume that the person is doing this as a full-time job. In which case all power to him.

Today’s video is a little over twenty-three minutes. It starts very loud for an ASMR video including a ringing tone, loud speech, and loud keyboard sounds. The phone gets a good clattering and the video continues in the same loud manner. This is certainly not your classical ASMR video. Although we have heard videos with excessively loud keyboards before, this is quite possibly the loudest yet.

There seem to be very loud equipment-related sounds every time a piece of equipment is selected. On the upside, there is no sign of whispering or breathy presentations. There are no mouth clucking sounds or any of those other sounds we have associated with a number of professional ASMR artists. In fact, it is so loud, I do wonder if it is in fact a parody of ASMR videos rather than an ASMR video as such. Although we have encountered videos with loud noises in them, I have rather assumed that this was a mistake rather than by conscious choice. Here it would appear that it is by design. I suspect that unless you give the volume control a healthy downwards turn you are not going to get much rest whilst listening to this one.

It is odd, when I started to review professional ASMR artists I was convinced that the content would be so good that very soon all the inadvertent material I had initially focused on would be shown to be excessively lacking. Actually, the more reviews I do, the more I find that much of this inadvertent material stands up rather well.

Perhaps I made the correct choice, quite by accident, when I started writing this review series of blog articles all those months ago.

As to that, this week’s inadvertent ASMR video is this one:

Neurological assessment video

It has no notes and comments are denied – so reassuringly quite unlike a professional ASMR artist then. It comes from the channel Lila Kalman, which has 1.08K subscribers. This is quite an achievement given there are only sixteen videos and no playlists.

The posts to this channel start three years ago, conclude two years ago and have all the appearance of student assessment videos. Today’s video is not going to break the bank timewise given it is less than eight minutes long. Other parts of the channel look worthy of investigation however, so I will most likely be returning for a further look in the future.

It starts with the typical student video pantomime knock. Usually this precedes attempts at privacy using thin air, which fortunately does not happen here. The medical professional introduces herself as Lila, so I am guessing the owner of this channel. The “patient” seems to be Lauren Hager (assuming I heard that correctly). There is no excessive background noise (somewhat of a miracle for videos of this nature). Lila seems to have an excellent voice. Lauren’s is almost as good. If I happen across Lauren’s channel in my travels I may give it a review. (Assuming that she was a nurse in the same year as Lila, which is by no means a given).

The video continues quiet, and the approach is methodical. Would that we had seen many more such videos. There are occasional equipment noises, none of which seem to me to be excessive. If anything, the recording seems a little on the muted side. One of the rare occasions in which you will be rolling over and turning the volume control up. (Whereas more usually you’ll be turning it down, often quite a long way down). There is occasional noise, which sounds like it might be traffic noise, outside of the building. In which case the building could probably do with some more insulation as it sounds unusually noisy.

There’s the odd pregnant pause, I assume while Lila attempts to recall what it is should come next in the process. So far, so typical student assessment video. There is occasional speech from an adjacent room, which is also the kind of thing that we have heard before.

All told I think a rather good video for us and it is going into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

On that basis, just one video on this occasion.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

YouTube has intermittently started to require me to log on. This only seems to happen on the tablet; it does not seem to happen on the laptop. The upshot is that whilst I am reviewing the videos (on the laptop), I can play what I like and I can write these articles. However, when I go to bed, I try to play the playlist and I get stopped and asked to log on. My password is a lengthy one; I am not at all interested in raising myself from a partially sleepy state to start typing in passwords. I’m sure it is possible, I just don’t value the change in requirements, and I have alternatives that do not dictate to me in this fashion. (Not least a number of videos I have found on the Internet Archive – some of which I have featured of late).

For example, this week I found this one:

Sadly, it is in a language I do not understand. The person is listed as “Emma Smith” but the content sounds Russian to me. I only worry in case I recommend something which contains language that I wouldn’t recommend if I did understand it. If anyone understands this content and finds it to be filled with undesirable language, let me know and I’ll delete the recommendation. It references a channel, I tried that for further details but found it did not exist. So not a lot of help.

The voice is not what I would call tip-top, but the video does lack background noise, startup (and tail end) music. It is an odd one in that I have seen a few head-to-tail videos (usually by medical students), and this content does not look like any I have seen so far. It is possible that it was extracted from a much longer video. Have a listen and see what you think.

For this week’s Calm recommendation, I am back with Jeff:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/DDw6S3ZLMF

Daily Trip

Can You Live with This the Rest of Your Life?

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

As Calm dailies go this is quite a long one. It is close on 11 minutes, possibly even enough to drop off to. However, the thing I love about Jeff is how often he comes up with something which reflects some of the things I have either dealt with or am dealing with. Even where he doesn’t do that, I find the subjects that he brings up to be fascinating in any case. This one is about being able to welcome anything that happens to you in your life. This, to me, sounds like a rather daunting expectation. Even where what has happened will last for the rest of your life. As I get older, I begin to understand there are a number of changes that are just not going to go away. In which case, I think practices like this may increase in relevance.

For this week’s professional ASMR video I have been looking at this one:

Removing a foreign object from your Arm | ASMR Medical role play

It is odd for a professional ASMR video, in that it does not have a description. There are comments but they are decidedly on the surreal side – very normal YouTube then. It comes from the channel sillystarASMR. This channel has six hundred and fifty-seven videos and 7.63K subscribers. There are seven playlists none of which obviously fit with the medical theme which we have been following for a while now.

The video is just less than seventeen minutes in length; it starts without music and straight away we hear that this is not classical ASMR. For a start there is no whispering involved and definitely no breathy moments. There is some mouth clucking noises and some background keyboarding happening. There are, of course, other noises: equipment noises, hand sanitiser noises, plastic sheet noises, beeping noises, Velcro noises, rustling noises, clicking noises, even the occasional clunk.

I would say that the voice isn’t high on empathy (this is in common with a number of student videos we have seen). Which shows how valuable a person who has some empathy in their voice actually is. At one stage there is even some sighing going on, as if the person is tired of the whole thing.

For the inadvertent ASMR this week I’m looking at this one:

Health Assessment

It is from the channel Dylan McCollough. This has four videos, 1.54K subscribers and no playlists. That seems a fair few subscribers for so few videos. Hopefully this bodes well for us.

Today’s video has no notes (usually a sign that it is not a professional ASMR video). Comments are permitted. There are a number of these and quite a few are uncomplimentary. That does not sound good for us.

The video is just less than twenty-two minutes. It starts without music but does have some strong background noise – almost certainly air conditioning. Unlike some of the commentators I rather like the voice. Some parts of the presentation are a mite hesitant so it strikes me as one of the student assessment videos which we are so familiar with. The voice then gets very quiet indeed and personally I was straining to make out much. The auto subtitles seem quite good for that if you really want to watch (I assume you’ll just be listening). Fortunately, it becomes a lot more listenable quite swiftly.

There are noises from other people (presumably in adjacent rooms in the medical establishment). These are unwelcome and quite loud. There’s the occasional clunk from equipment and slamming of doors sufficiently nearby to be quite loud. There is the sound of water running at one point in an adjacent room. There are noises from the patient moving around when requested. I would say that the patient does not have such a great voice and he is a bit louder than the medical professional here as well. However, he is very respectful in his responses so I was quite taken with that. Whoever is operating the recording equipment occasional thumbs the microphone, fortunately that isn’t too loud. The examination is methodical, even gentle, shame about that air conditioning and those extraneous noises, but it is often thus with student assessment videos. I can see why people take videos and edit them to retain only the quiet bits, but how they get over the copyright issues I have no idea.

On that basis, just one, video on this occasion.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

I am getting the opportunity recently to converse with people who are a generation older than I am, and the news for people reading this blog is not very settling. I’m afraid the interruptions to sleep get worse. The length of sleep gets shorter. The feelings of tiredness persist. It therefore seems to me that there is some value in The Procrastination Pen, in that this blog keeps pursuing restful sounds that can assist a person into sleep.

I have been exploring audiobooks of late (there seems a rather vast amount of Agatha Christie on CD, for instance). Those so disposed can probably get something similar from Spotify or some similar subscription service. I am actually finding that a story droning away in the background can be quite restful. However, it is a good idea to miss out on books that might include elevated, dramatic noises. A sudden loud noise probably having completely the opposite effect to that which one desired, by listening to such a thing at bedtime, in any case.

I notice that Calm is pushing its sleep app. I have found the material in the Calm App dedicated to sleep a bit variable. I find much of the material dedicated to sleep actually has no such effect on me. Regular readers will have noted that where I do make recommendations from Calm, it tends to be the Daily Calm meditations that I draw from. I find these superior in sound content, but sadly they are designed to be around ten minutes in length. That is probably an insufficient length to drop off to and, so far, I have not found a method to chunk then together into a vast long playlist.

I have now subscribed to the regular Calm email in the hope that it will produce great material, and I notice that this one has been in this email of late:

Rainy Day on the Farm

https://www.calm.com/app/player/NMJNYgZbbi

This is thirty minutes in length but on a loop, so it appears everlasting. No artist is given. I do not really find rainy backdrops to be that restful. However, a number of people seem to do so. There are a number of offerings on YouTube in the same vein.

For example, this one:

It is all a bit noisy and stressful in my opinion to be really conducive to sleep. However, if this is your thing, by all means, fill your boots.

I have been trying to find material that does not depend upon YouTube (because I’ve decided that I do not like the adverts). This is purely an addition to the YouTube-based material because, for the moment, there is little else that is free and has a ready supply of sound-based material which you can use to distract the mind addicted to wakefulness.

I remember that during lockdown I used to receive emails from a site called Mindful on which a number of people published meditations. Sadly, this does not line up into a playlist and, from memory, they did not offer a download option. So, it may be of only passing interest. I also know that I followed specific artists at the time and one of these was Elaine Smookler. It turns out that Elaine does a few twelve-minute meditations such as this one:

https://www.mindful.org/a-12-minute-meditation-for-embracing-your-inner-mountain/

and this one:

https://www.mindful.org/a-12-minute-meditation-for-navigating-grief-anniversaries/

and of course there is a great deal of material on YouTube:

and I also see that MP3s can be obtained from here:

https://player.fm/series/the-mindful-podcast/gratitude-practice-savor-the-moment-by-tapping-into-your-senses-with-elaine-smookler

As expected, if you choose that route you will need to download the MP3s and assemble into some kind of playlist yourself. The advantage being that you can normalise the inter-MP3 volume so you don’t get any mid-sleep nasty surprises.

At this point, for some weeks, I have been reviewing professional ASMR videos. Akin to the mindful material I can remember, some videos that I have listened to in the distant past including this one:

🌿 Relaxing Naturopath Visit 🌿 ASMR 🌿 Doctor RP

Gentle Whispering ASMR

2.41m subscribers

Gentle Whispering ASMR is one of those powerhouses of professional ASMR artists. there are 2.41m subscribers and eight hundred and twenty six videos, there are fourteen playlists of which the odd one is on theme for material we have been covering of late. For example:

and

This week’s video is an oldie as you can tell by the notes:

“8,059,900 views 16 Jan 2018

Hello sweetheart! 🙂 Today I welcome you to my naturopathic medicine practice 🌿 I will shortly give you an overview of your visit then at 03:00 I will perform a check-up of your hair, your ears 06:30 , I’ll put on my gloves and examine your skin 08:50 , your sinuses 11:25 , your lymph nodes 13:03 , neck muscles check 14:10 , I’ll gently test your eyes reflexes with a flashlight 16:56 , I’ll tell you about Eyeology 19:29 and check your eyes 22:26 , then I will perform a check of your tongue 29:55 after I explain how you can read your health by your tongue 27:47 ,  I’ll tell you a bit about tension headache that you’ve been experiencing and how to deal with it 32:32 ,  I’ll recommend you some essential oils 34:34 , and herbal supplements 36:16 that even sound good and at the end I will relax you deeper with gentle hand movements to help you doze off 38:29 . Enjoy ♥ Thank you for watching! 🙂

Email: MariaGentlewhispering@gmail.com

Gentle Whispering ASMR

2.41m subscribers”

So the standard professional ASMR huge set of notes then. As usual I have trincated these a whole lot as they really are very long. In this case comments are not only permitted the first comment is also from GentleWhisperingASMR:

However this comment simply replicates a good deal of the notes so I will not repeat it here.

There are literally thousands of comments and a number of these are the standard YouTube level of strange. A number of them are the standard professional ASMR artist level of sycophantic. We are on familiar ground here.

The video is forty-one and a half minutes long, so of a reasonable length. There is no startup music and the presentation is the now familiar professional ASMR artist level of whispery. I would not say this was my favourite voice, but it is restful. There are of course extraneous noises, rustling, equipment noises, writing noises, keyboard noises, clothes brushing against other clothes, breath across the microphone noises, mouth clicking noises, glove-related noises, paper-related noises, rattling noises.

It gets a bit breathy and there are those mouth-clicking noises I have noticed some similar videos using before. I don’t find a need for them but you may love this sort of thing (close to two and a half million people obviously do so). I would say that this one requires a small increase in the volume, when listening. Another one where the disgruntled listener is rolling over and thumbing the volume up button. I’m also not that certain how well it works without the video content. Obviously, you don’t want to be watching if you’re also trying to close your eyes. There are also a few close-to-microphone moments where the sound seems more abrupt and louder and I would think that might not be a pleasant surprise if you are already snoozing.

I’d say that this one is certainly worthy of a review.

This week’s inadvertent ASMR video is this one:

HEENT Assessment Part 1: Head, Face, and Neck

Straight away we can see that this forms part of a series. Even though this blog post is already on the long side, I therefore feel I’d better review all four of the videos in this series.

It comes from the channel NursingYOU 2.0 this has 3.7K subscribers nineteen videos zero playlists. It is not the hugest channel we have ever reviewed. The channel description is: “NursingYOU 2.0

Description

This is a nursing education channel led by a Masters prepared Nurse Educator. This channel offers videos on health assessment, skills, lecture series, and NCLEX test taking strategy. The videos presented by NursingYOU 2.0 are intended only for education of healthcare professionals.  Previously called Nursing YOUniversity.  See the updates!!  Enjoy.

More info

http://www.youtube.com/@nursingyou2.073

Joined 5 Jul 2017

3.7k subscribers

19 videos

1,126,488 views”

A quick scan indicates that all of these videos were posted eight years ago. So, it also appears to be a channel that is no longer maintained. Grab your video views while ye may.

The video itself has notes: “319,367 views 5 Jul 2017

In this video, the head, face, and neck are assessed on an adult client.  This video is part 1 of 4 for the Head Ears Eyes Nose and Throat (HEENT) system of a complete health assessment.”

The comments are, as usual, of various types including the off-the-wall. Some ASMR fans are here way before me, though I notice.

The video is just slightly less than six minutes in length. It starts with no startup music but an absolute ton of background noise. Also, the presentation is pretty loud as well. Currently I am less than clear why ASMR fans have been listening to this. I would say that this is not classically ASMR. For example, there is a fair amount of background chatter going on. Simply turning down the volume is not going to eliminate that. There is also the sound of paper being rustled throughout (although I know this is a sound that some ASMR fans go in search of). There are sounds from motion – the participants moving around. There is, at one point, the sound of a prop driven aircraft passing over head. For me this is all a bit busy to be that relaxing.

Onto part 2:

HEENT Assessment Part 2: Nose, Mouth, and Throat

The notes are similar to the last set of notes so I won’t go into them here. The comments are the usual level of unhelpful and no ASMR-related comments this time, which is not uncommonly a bad sign. It is five minutes in length and starts without music. The background noise remains but at least the background conversations seem to have abated. Again, it is a bit loud for me. The voice of the medical professional isn’t ASMR-y from my perspective. However, I would say that this one is a slight improvement on the previous video in this series. Part way through the background noise gets substantially worse, as if the air conditioning has been switched into turbo mode, this obscures the voice to some extent and is moderately distracting.

HEENT Assessment Part 3: Ears

Three and a third minutes so quite a bit shorter than the two previous ones. This one starts with the level of background noise where the previous one left off i.e. quite substantial. The medical professional now sounds to be at some distance from the microphone as if the entire video was shot in a tube station. In fact, I think it is an open area within a hospital, a hospital with very powerful air conditioning.

The noise is now getting quite distracting. This one has minor and brief equipment noises.

HEENT Assessment Part 4: Eyes

The last one in the series and, at just less than six and a half minutes, the longest video as well. The voice is now quite subdued and distant in relation to the background noise. This really does sound like the medical professional is at the end of a long tunnel. If you get your feeling of restfulness from air conditioning noises this is definitely the video for you. This time you can hear background chatter at a reasonably elevated level. This is quite distracting as well. There are equipment noises as the “patient” moves around. Due to the muting of the entire soundtrack these are not excessively loud.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

The Nursing You 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

Sleeping With ASMR

The moments when sleep provides relief have to be truly given thanks for. So easy it is to take the things in life which are most meaningful for granted. The ability to make tears, the ability to see well. The ability to hear well, particularly in a crowded room. Moving with ease and without pain. Falling asleep easily and staying asleep once you get there.

All of these things, and many more besides cannot be taken for granted as, for many, they are not gifted for a lifetime but only for a swift few decades.

I’m afraid I cannot help you if you live in pain. However, I do hope to provide some assistance if you are struggling for sleep. This blog reviews material for its relevance, calmness, relaxation potential and as a bonus, occasionally I find some material that may be of use to people who get ASMR symptoms.

Habitually I have reviewed YouTube videos because they embed well in this page and make the blog look pretty. However, it turns out that YouTube has to make a living like the rest of us and part of that is ensuring that we pay attention to each and every advert that pops onto the screen.

This is distracting enough in the daytime but, I have found, very deleterious when trying to get to sleep.

Hence, I have been wracking my brains of late for the material that I used to use before I started to explore the world of YouTube. In the days when MP3 players had no screen and the best you could hope in the darkened room is a restful voice crackling through a set of cheap headphones.

One of the people that came to mind is someone called Martyn whose MP3 material I used to download from a retreat called Moulin (the clue is that it is in France, I think).

Armed with that information I realised that the site is this https://www.moulindechaves.org/. The name of the place is Moulin de Chaves and the name of the man is Martin Aylward. Sadly, my exploration did not reveal any MP3 files though. In all probability, over the elapsed time, the site has changed beyond recognition.

However, I did find some at https://dharmaseed.org/retreats/5369/. It is a meditation retreat so expect some Buddhist content and some of it might be challenging. If you find that off-putting, scroll on down as there is more material reviewed below. However, if you do not find it off-putting then I’m sure you’ll agree that Martin has an excellent voice.

Regular readers will have noted by now that I habitually review something from Calm. Calm is not free but it is free of adverts.

https://www.calm.com/app/player/-B5yiokpfS

Daily Jay

A Full Life

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Which, unsurprisingly, is on how to live a full life. As usual an interesting subject from Jay. Certainly, worth a review, I think, if you have a Calm subscription that is.

OK, and so habitually I now review a professional ASMR artist, and I’ve been doing this for a while. Mainly to see if you get more relaxation per minute than with an inadvertent ASMR video. Of late, I have not found that to be the case.

This week’s video is this one:

ASMR EAR NOSE & THROAT DOCTOR | tingly medical exam role-play

It is from the channel GwenGwiz ASMR, this has 497k subscribers, twenty eight videos and eleven playlists. One of these playlists is on a medical theme and so is in line with the focus of this blog for the last few months:

The video is a little over thirty four minutes in length, so not one of the longer ones that we have reviewed.

It has a vast long set of notes so here are the edited highlights: “154,308 views 16 Apr 2025 #ASMRForSleep #asmr

Welcome to the clinic! Relax as Dr. Gwen conducts a thorough examination of your ear, nose and throat. There’s lots of tingly #asmr triggers in this video including: personal attention, inaudible whispers, latex gloves, keyboard typing, light visual triggers and more! Hope you enjoy XOX Oh and sorry for the background sounds, it was a veryyyyy windy night!

✩ get exclusive videos and support the channel:   / gwengwizasmr  

WEBSITE: https://www.gwengwiz.com”

Comments are permitted but there are not the usual terrific huge number of these. As is usual for a professional ASMR artist, the comments seem to be predominantly positive.

The video commences without startup music, which is excellent. Personally, I think the presentation errs a bit on the slow side as if the person is deliberately slowing down the intonation of each and every word. Not off-putting, just a little unusual. Presumably with this number of viewers most people do not agree with me. It does tend to vie towards the whispery, which is something we are used to hearing with professional ASMR artists. Judging by the feedback this is also what ASMR fans are demanding. It is all a bit breathy, which again, is not untypical for a video of this type.

There are, of course, other noises; glove noises, that strange mouth clucking come clicking noise that seems to be popular with ASMR afficionados. There are clicking noises from equipment and keyboard noises. Despite the warning in the notes though I would not say that the background noise is at all excessive. I was either tired or this is very effective because I found myself nodding to this one. Definitely worthy of a review, I would say.

You may recall a previous post in which I mentioned a URL which linked to thirty two videos. The URL is this one:

Medical Training Videos

It has thirty-two videos (discounting the introductory one). Last time we managed to review just seven of these, so there is a fair few left to look at..

The next one in the series is this:

Intramuscular and Subcutaneous Injections – Clinical Skills

This is seven and a quarter-minutes. The notes are: “1,527,565 views 29 Nov 2012 Most Popular

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates the principles and techniques underlying intramuscular and subcutaneous injections. It is part of a series of videos covering clinical skills and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

Again, the start is with an introduction but this time the narrator has a louder voice. Despite this I think it would be suitable for the playlist. The demonstration itself is silent, which actually makes it quite a relaxing video. (If you do not like needles for goodness’ sake do not watch – just listen).

Blood Transfusion and Intravenous Infusion – Clinical Skills

A little under twelve minutes in length. The notes are: “520,998 views 29 Nov 2012 Most Popular

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates the principles and techniques underlying intravenous infusion of fluids and the safe transfusion of blood. It is part of a series of videos covering clinical skills and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

It starts with a narrator again and the narrator has a pretty reasonable voice for us. The actual examination involves a medical professional with another fairly good voice for us. The patient has very little to say. This video is suitable for the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Wound Care – Clinical Skills

Just over eight and a half minutes the notes are: “245,926 views 29 Nov 2012 Nursing Skills

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates the principles and techniques underlying basic wound care. It is part of a series of videos covering clinical skills and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

It has a nice quiet introduction by a narrator with a good voice for us. The narration is nicely quiet and not over fast.

Shoulder Examination – Orthopaedics

Just over nine and a half minutes in length. The notes are: “604,900 views 28 Nov 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates how to perform an Orthopaedic examination of the shoulder joint. It is part of a series of videos covering Orthopaedic examinations and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

Again, it is introduced. The voice is perhaps not quite as good as the last video but still reasonable enough for the playlist, I think. During the medical examination we find that the voice of the medical professional is also reasonable for our purposes (if anything slightly better than that of the narrator here).

I think that I will conclude the blog post at this one and continue in another post. Failing that this blog post would become really large indeed, to the point of boredom, I imagine.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

The Oxford Medical Education 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

Sleeping With ASMR

As life rushes onwards and time disappears, there come little points at which one starts to re-evaluate whether the activities one has been engaged in were ever worthwhile. Occasionally I get enlivening feedback. More usually not. I am not clear how many people I have reached and if any of them had better sleep as a consequence. It is also clear that the amount of time to deliver content is slowly disappearing.

In the present, I continue to try and evaluate sources of restful content and give you my opinion of it. I hope that it may help on the evenings when your mind will just not be quiet. If only as a distraction regarding the hours that are passing, and in which you would have preferred to have been sleeping.

A little while ago, rather foolishly, I did mention that I would look for resources that were outside of YouTube and did not require payment (such as the Calm subscription that I keep banging on about). The time for locating new sources is at a premium so in a bid to satisfy this statement I am falling back on material that I have used in the past (pre-YouTube playlist) most notably during lockdown. One name that I recall was Gil Fronsdal. I have no idea how I first came across him but I do recall that he had a splendid voice.

Of course he appears on YouTube for example:

and

but the point is to find material that is outside of YouTube and subject to less of the godawful advertising that dogs the heels of each and every video.

One amazing resource is this:

https://www.audiodharma.org/teacher/1/

and here we find the audio equivalent of the YouTube series I just outlined. For example:

https://www.audiodharma.org/series/19711

Gil has a beautiful, relaxing voice. As we would expect, the content has a definite Buddhism leaning. You may find that off-putting. In which case this review will probably stand to put you off. I am not particularly worried that it has a religious focus as long as the content is relaxing. I would say almost anything from Gil is likely to fit the bill. Some people may miss the video aspect of YouTube (I can understand that). However, this might be compensated for by the fact that you are not likely to be ripped from your sleep by some objectionable advert.

I may return to Gil. Re-acquainting myself with some of his material today I remembered how much I used to like it.

Those who read this blog reasonably often will know that I have been reviewing material from Calm.com for a little while, with the understanding that some people will not have (nor want) to have a subscription to Calm. This is reasonable, in which case after this brief overview of something from Jay Shetty we’ll get back to some YouTube content.

Today’s Calm content is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/OJtPBsWToz

Daily Jay

Humility & Curiosity

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

It is from Jay Shetty and I have found that whilst Jay does not have the voice I most like on Calm, he quite often has the most interesting content.

This is quite short (it is less than eight minutes). It considers what happens when you are lost or adrift in the world (and who isn’t). It reflects how temporary everything is and how facing that successfully requires humility and curiosity. (The world is interesting, not threatening).

At this stage, for quite a while in this blog now, I have been reviewing a professional ASMR artist. The results have been a little so-so. Not actually disappointing, but I have had to ratchet my expectations down a little. I am sure that people in YouTube videos are universally attractive but they do not universally have attractive voices. They do not always know how to create a consistently restful video. In this way, my original decision to focus on inadvertent ASMR does not look as crazy as perhaps at one time it might have done.

This week’s is a little left field in that it is only vaguely to do with examinations (medical or otherwise). I saw the title and I was intrigued…

It is from a channel called gumoochie. This channel has 192K subscribers and one hundred and thirty-two videos, so a pretty respectable subscriber per video created ratio. To be honest though, I have not always found that translates towards high quality content. I am not certain why that is, but it does seem to be a valid finding.

This is the first time I have encountered a channel from a professional ASMR artist where there are plenty of videos but no playlists. I’m guessing there is a reason, I do not know what it is.

The video is:

iq test but you’re an idiot (asmr)

a little less than twenty three minutes, the setting appears to be domestic – probably a bedroom from the background, not that I expect you’ll be watching, but listening instead. The video-associated notes are refreshingly brief: “430,120 views 24 Apr 2025

if you want a non-idiot ver, check out the bonus vid on my patreon!!

————————- ♡ ————————-

SOCIALS

email: basicklegwp@gmail.com

insta:   / gumooochie  

letterboxd: https://boxd.it/9z0jz

patreon: / gumoochie 

tiktok:   / gumoochie “

The comments are suitably off the wall, with a low count of dedicated sycophancy. That, in itself, is unusual for a professional ASMR artist.

The voice, as you would expect, is relaxing. There is no introductory music. The participant does engage in that strange clucking behaviour which ASMR artists believe is a trigger for someone. In which case they are probably right. Just not me. I would be happier with just the voice. This voice does not dwell on whispering, which is refreshing, although some ASMR afficionados no doubt will disagree with me. Not to say that there is no whispering because there is some but it does not predominate.

There are no offensively loud noises. People who enjoy pencil on paper noises or mouth-clicking noises are well served here. There is no tail-end music and no content dedicated to sponsors.

I’m not sure I am up to IQ tests any longer (assuming that I ever was) but I do recommend the video as being worthy of review.

At this point I review a video that is inadvertent ASMR. Since I have been looking at non-YouTube content, these blog posts have got rather long. I am conscious that perhaps I soon need to start dropping something.

This time, however, I am going to limit myself to just the one video and that one being a very brief one at that.

Assessment of abdomen & blood vessels

It is a bit over ten and a half minutes in length. There are no notes and relatively few comments. The Channel is Cassidy George which has 1.07k subscribers but only eight videos – that seems a very high performance for so few videos but perhaps there is a reason for that. The video seems to be one of the student assessment videos which is a type of video that has been reviewed on this blog multiple times previously.

The video was posted on 12 Apr 2023 but already has 30, 786 views. Cassidy seems to me a bit loud to be honest, and the background noise similarly. If it is air conditioning it is really working hard. I am not sure that those views were by ASMR fans. I am thinking not. The presentation is as if presenting to a huge room and yet I would think the recording equipment was nearby and this would have been unnecessary. As the examination is performed, the voice does get quieter but, if anything, this just demonstrates how loud the air conditioning is. The setting is domestic, as far as I can tell it is someone’s front room and examination is performed on their sofa.

I tried turning down the air conditioning noise (which also muted the vocal track) and found that the whole thing was a great deal more palatable. As one of the people commented, there is a regular beep which could be a low battery warning for example from a smoke alarm.

This appears to be another situation in which any listener will be reaching for the volume control in a disgruntled fashion. It is a shame about that air conditioning (how many times have I said that on this blog).

So, not startling. However, I notice the channel has eight videos. If I had not used up so much space reviewing Gil at the start of this article I would have reviewed some more. I think I will be returning to this channel in the future.

On that basis, just one, video today.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

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

Sleeping With ASMR

The amount that has to be achieved in a day is increasing. As a result, I have to turn these reviews around more quickly than of late, and certainly more quickly than I did even last year, for example. It is likely that these reviews are going to be a little shorter going forwards but I will do everything to keep the quality high. (Well as high as it has been to date anyway, readers can decide at what level of quality they perceive that to be).

I have been reviewing an offering from Calm for a while now. I have a Calm subscription and, in many ways, I prefer listening to Calm content in order to get off to sleep. It is the lack of advertising in the content. It isn’t as if I have any objections to adverts, as such. It is the insistence that I give them my full attention. This is forcefully applied by making them louder than the video I was just listening to; fast paced, often with bright, fast-moving images and not taking into consideration the time of day. At 3am I want restful adverts, not some catchy tune or person loudly telling me that only they have the answer to this or that life problem.

However, Calm is not free and I do occasionally come across free resources that are not weighed down with adverts. Mostly they have no associated video so they will not embed well in a page. Often the ones I have located concern meditation, rather than ASMR, so a slight change of focus. But if people like the idea I will feature the odd one. Let me know what you think.

Today’s Calm is the following:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/OJtPBsWToz

Daily Jay

Humility & Curiosity

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Jay has some of the more interesting and challenging content on Calm. I would not say he had the best voice on there for me that is probably Tamara Levitt. But I find myself listening to him more often than not and trying to adjust my mindset to the message (I am often nowhere near calm enough for a start).

This is a little under eight minutes in length, so will not keep you for long. It concerns the qualities that assist a person in navigating a world as confusing and challenging as ours is. I hope that you enjoy it (if you have a Calm subscription in any case).

Recently I read that Gen Z has the edge on persons of my age in the sleep habits that are recommended. What strikes me is the ability to compare apples with apples. As a young person I could sleep, within seconds, anywhere. Noise did not disturb me. I could go to bed early and sleep right through to the alarm. I could sleep all weekend going to bed on Friday after work and rising to the alarm on Monday morning. I could also go for days without sleep and apparently have few ill effects.

There is nothing like passing fifty to show the weaknesses. I now find that the least noise will wake me, if I go to bed at nine, I will wake at three. If I go to bed at any time I will always wake at my old work wake up time of 4am and then I need to make a special effort to go back to sleep because I no longer wish to wake then.

I have trouble getting to sleep at all some days and lie awake/do some reading/watch television, whatever seems to work. The Gen Z person is also not the only one to feel tired limited by such habits. Old people feel equally as tired I can assure you. The point being I have no doubt that a young person has better sleep habits. It is just that older people often have limited choices because they just sleep a lot worse – age seems to just do that. It was for this reason that the Procrastination Pen blog started looking into restful videos in the first place.

That, of course, brings us to where we are now.

At this stage I always review a professional ASMR artist and so today we have:

ASMR Soft Spoken Medical Exam

This is twenty-two and three-quarter minutes and so a little shorter than we have watched of late. Comments are permitted and are filled with the normal weirdness we have associated with YouTube, interposed with the normal comments we are used to for professional ASMR artists which are always positive, as far as I have found thus far.

There are notes, of course. These ones are a little different to the type of thing we are used to from professional ASMR artists:

“571,112 views 28 Aug 2025

♡ A SPECIAL thank you to my channel members who help make these videos possible ↓

THANK YOU!! :DD

I hope y’all enjoyed this one!! I’ve been listening to a lot of Avril Lavigne lately 😛 specifically the albums: under my skin, let go, the best damn thing, & goodbye lullaby

FAQs:

What is ASMR? A feeling of well-being combined with a tingling sensation in the scalp and down the back of the neck, as experienced by some people in response to a specific gentle stimulus, often a particular sound.

Why soft spoken? I loveee this type of ASMR and many others do too!!

Where are you located? East Coast of the USA!

Instagram: caitASMR

TikTok: caitASMRofficial

All of my links: https://linktr.ee/caitasmr?utm_source…

Transcript

Follow along using the transcript.

cait ASMR

401K subscribers”

However, you will notice no less lengthy for that. (I’ve heavily edited them or they would be pretty huge). It is from the channel cait ASMR. This has 401K subscribers, two hundred and sixteen videos, five playlists. None of the playlists are on a medical subject and so they are not in keeping with the theme we have been following for a while now.

As we would expect the voice is excellent, with a tendency towards the whispery. We have heard that this is a tendency that a number of professional ASMR artists make use of. I can only assume it is exactly the voice level that the majority of ASMR fans are demanding at the moment.

(Perhaps they always have).

There are, as we have heard before, a number of non-voice related noises, clicking noises, liquid noises, tapping noises, container unscrewing noises, tape measure noises, glove -related noises. I have, to date, assumed that these are exactly the noises that some ASMR fans are demanding.

I am only really interested in the voice. The voice here is very good and I may well come back to cait ASMR in the future. Why not review it for yourself.

I noticed this week that WordPress has a little AI button that is there to tell me all the things I did wrong when publishing a new blog article. It would seem that a great deal more work is needed in introducing, summarising, and concluding.

I sometimes wonder if I start to obey other people’s (or in this case a machine’s) recommendations, is the blog still mine? Does it then become a product of the AI which in fact I have simply fluffed a bit to give it a Procrastination Pen piquancy?

There are probably a great many people who do not bother to ask such questions. To guard against the circumstance in which the machine is correct and I am not a little more in the way of introduction. Just in case you have just landed from Oumuamua and wonder what the heck is going on, a few words on the blog.

Way back in the dim and distant it seemed to me I’d rather like to write something and, if I was going to write something, wouldn’t it be marvellous if some people would read it and better still, provide feedback.

It seemed obvious that the way to go was to put it on the Internet because wasn’t everybody doing that? Reviews seemed to suggest WordPress was a great platform for that – because wasn’t everybody using it? A life of posting articles and getting feedback glistened.

If anybody else has tried this, the next stages are probably familiar. Firstly, it is quite difficult to know what you want to call your blog. Secondly how do you go about getting a logo, what should you write about yourself and more to the point, what should you write about in terms of the blog?

Life goes on, pages turn, and people didn’t descend in their millions to praise and criticise and the purpose for the blog was lost. Anyone viewing the archive will probably notice that I quit blogging in 2018.

Then I realised that if the only reason to write was to get something back from other people, then there probably wasn’t any point in writing at all. One of the sagest pieces of advice I ever read is that people just don’t care about you. People care about themselves. For that same reason I wasn’t about to try to determine what people wanted me to write about. Because even if I found out, I wouldn’t be interested, unless (and this is probably quite unlikely) it also spoke to me.

That was 2022, and since then I publish a blog post at pseudo-regular intervals and sometimes people read it.

There was at the time, a huge number of ASMR videos on YouTube (and if anything the number has subsequently grown). I found some of them effective, a great many off-putting and I didn’t have the time to spend my days listening to them. It became obvious I was only ever going to be able to use them to get off to sleep at night.

It seemed to me that I am probably not alone in being bemused in navigating the YouTube wilderness of video recommendations. There might be, say, one other person out there with a similar taste in videos who also needs some material to use in getting to sleep.

I was going to need to navigate the YouTube video recommendations. To store the videos I found, I was going to need a playlist. If I made that playlist public, other people could also use it.

I was going to have to listen to each video to work out if it was worthwhile. Were there jarring noises, was the background drone too oppressive, had someone dropped the lapel mic into their pocket so it sounded like it was recorded through a filter? It might be useful to document the process; some people might agree; some people might vehemently disagree; most people would ignore it altogether.

As I have gone along, the playlist continues to grow. I keep listening to it at night. Occasionally one of the videos wakes me up or grates so much I find it hard to get to sleep in the first place. Such videos are ejected from the playlist and put into an archive list, in case someone, somewhere was listening and finds their favourite video gone. It also acts as a trail of the process; at least those videos made it through the initial critique (many more do not do so).

And so today, another video and another review.

People who have been reading the blog will possibly remember a blog item on Ayesha Mattu in which I was quite glowing about the quality of her voice.

Following that blog item, I have been meaning to make time to go back and seek out any videos featuring Ayesha to determine if there is any content which has an equally relaxing feel to it.

Women of Spirit and Faith: Ayesha Mattu

Just less than six and a half minutes it has a very relaxing tone to it. However, it incorporates an ongoing background music track – which is quite jarring. I’d prefer we just had Ayesha’s voice. The voice is really one of the better ones I have heard so it does not need adulterating with additional music.

It has notes “4,631 views 23 Oct 2013

Ayesha Mattu, writer and co-editor of “Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, explores universal questions of love, intimacy and spiritual co-leadership with her husband, Randy, leading up to the release of the companion anthology, “Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex & Intimacy” (available Valentine’s Day 2014 from Beacon Press!). In sharing her own story, she hopes to spark interfaith dialogue and confront leading myths about Muslim-American men and women, and their search for Love.

Visit her blog at: http://loveinshallah.com

To hear more voices from Women of Spirit and Faith visit our web site: http://womenofspiritandfaith.org

and

The Divine Feminine Blog at www.patheos.com”

Despite the music, I think I’ll tolerate this and put it into the playlist, Her voice is really that good. (It might get weeded in future, however).

Ayesha Mattu & Nura Maznavi: Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy

At over an hour, this is a bit longer than the types of video I usually review. It is also a professional video and as such it has associated notes:

“8,744 views  12 Feb 2014

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi, editors of Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, along with four of their contributors: Ahmed Akbar, Dan I. Oversaw, Mohammed Samir Shamma, and Sam Pierstorff for a discussion of Mattu’s and Maznavi’s latest work, Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy.

From the editors of the groundbreaking anthology Love, InshAllah comes a provocative new exploration of the most intimate parts of Muslim men’s lives.

By raising their voices to share stories of love and heartbreak, loyalty and betrayal, intimacy and insecurity, these Muslim men are leading the way for all men to recognize that being open and honest about their feelings is not only okay—it’s intimately connected to their lives and critical to their happiness and well-being.”

This is a presentation and as such could not be said to be muted. Ayesha actually does not get a massive amount of air time. This is a shame as when she does contribute, her voice remains really calm, quiet and measured.

This one doesn’t belong in The Procrastination Pen playlist.

Ayesha Mattu and Ali Eteraz on Diffused Congruence Podcast: The American Muslim Experience

This also has notes “

49 views 2 Jul 2019

Ayesha Mattu, Co-editor of “Love, Inshallah” and its new sequel “Salaam, Love” talks about reactions to the books and what she’s learned from her audience. Also, Ali Eteraz, author of “Children of Dust” and the upcoming “Falsipedies and Fibsiennes” talks. about his book. 

This is an unofficial channel created by a fan to create more awareness about the excellent “Diffused Congruence Podcast: The American Muslim Experience.” I do not own the audio interview or images.

The podcast explores and celebrates the many facets of the American Muslim experience with scholars, activists, and thought leaders. It has been hosted by Parvez Ahmed and Zaki Hasan since October 2013. This is episode 11 that was released on September 23, 2014.

You can stream or download other podcast episodes at: https://diffusedcongruence.podbean.com

Please donate to keep this great podcast going at:  https://www.patreon.com/diffusedcongr…

Learn more about this podcast at http://www.facebook.com/diffusedcongruence or http://www.diffusedcongruence.podbean.com”

This has probably the most energetic startup music I have had the chance to review. Straight away I knew it was not going to be suitable for our purposes and at over one and a quarter hours I think I’d have to be really content with it to feature it more fully on the blog.

(Shame I couldn’t set the start and end time of the video, as I could have wiped some of that content out).

American Muslim Women Tell All About Love and Sex

which also has notes “39,694 views 1 Mar 2012

Twenty-four American Muslim Women, in a collection of published essays, open up on the issues of love, sex, religion, cultural norms and family expectations. Frances Alonzo of VOA Middle East Voices speaks to the co-editors of “Love InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women,” Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi.”

At less than five and a half minutes it isn’t going to take long. Again, it has startup music, which is thankfully brief. There is a fairly strong set of background noise on it. I’m unclear why, as it seems to have been professionally recorded.

Thankfully Ayesha gets a reasonable amount of air time and that voice is worth tolerating challenges like background noise. The video might, however, get jettisoned after a protracted review.

Salaam, Love: American Muslim Men on Love, Sex, and Intimacy

Notes again “4,263 views 30 Apr 2014

Ayesha Mattu and Nura Maznavi discuss the process of compiling and editing Salaam, Love – a collection of essays written by Muslim men about love, sex and intimacy.”

A bit less than three minutes, so blink and you’ll miss it. Again, with the startup music and this time it is quite loud, but fortunately brief. There is a reasonable amount of air time for Ayesha so it is worth a spin in the Procrastination Pen Playlist.

That seems to be the best of the material available. It also marks an end to any series I might do on Ayesha. It’s a shame for our purposes that she does not have a channel (that I can find), as it would be one worthy of following.

Onwards till next week.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

The Ayesha Mattu 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