Sleeping With ASMR

This week, the news that none of us (except for a lucky few) can now afford to retire. On the upside though, there is research that appears to establish that retirement is very bad for sleep. Perhaps we are going to live healthier lives, it’s just that we’re going to have to keep working.

No doubt there are other strange sleep dilemmas that will crop up in this blog but I found that one rather unexpected.

For the non-YouTube resource this week, I remember that during lockdown I used to listen to Tovi Scruggs-Hussain. I had a hunt around and it turns out that Tovi publishes meditations on Mindful. It seems I must have spent a while on this website. Here is an example article and meditation: https://www.mindful.org/a-12-minute-meditation-to-set-the-tone-for-your-leadership/

Twelve minutes for you to determine whether you like Tovi’s voice. There are other meditations and articles on that same site so if you do like Tovi then you should have plenty to listen to. I may be back for another listen in the future depending how many other artists I can find out there who do not charge for listening to their MP3 files.

This week for the professional ASMR artist, I go to one that I used to listen to a lot but have fallen out of touch with of late. The channel is Moonlight Cottage ASMR 1.59m subscribers, one hundred and forty-eight videos, sixteen playlists none of the playlists are obviously on a medical theme. The channel, of course has notes: “Moonlight Cottage ASMR

Description

Hello and welcome to Moonlight Cottage!

I’m Diane and here I share my passion for cinematic/historical ASMR & relaxation videos.

If you wish to support my channel (thank you!), you can join my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/moonlightcottageASMR

Thank you for visiting!

Links

Support me on Patreon ❤patreon.com/moonlightcottageASMR

Follow me on instagraminstagram.com/moonlightcottageasmr

Spotifyopen.spotify.com/artist/7HTOAi6IQXsE54wqgwYdFn”

This channel is a treat for people who actually want to watch rather than just listen to the videos in that the effort that goes into the historical re-enactment material is really second to none. However, most of us are here to get some sleep and so how does the voice stack up when it is not backed up by the visuals:

The video this week is this one:

Steampunk Cranial Nerve Exam | ASMR Roleplay (medical nose, eye, face & ear exam, soft spoken)

Of course it has notes: ” 28 Aug 2022

Welcome back to the Steampunk optometrist (now with many other skills, and still messy hair) for a cranial nerve exam. Music starts at 00:49, if it’s too loud you can skip to 01:40.

Many thanks to my friend Anastasia (‪@ATMOSPHEREa) for lending her voice in the intro & outro!

This video includes a lot of personal attention & unintelligible whispering.

00:00 Intro part I – phone conversation with Ada (feat. Atmosphere’s voice)

00:49 Intro part II (with music, a bit loud)

01:40 Welcome back

03:00 Testing your senses of smell & taste (unintelligible whispers)

06:50 Eye exam (close personal attention)

11:20 Stereoscopic / 3D vision (steampunk sounds, unintelligible whispers)

16:33 Chart reading, lens testing (unintelligible whispers)

20:38 Face exam / testing your sense of sensation (face touching)

23:00 Ear exam / hearing test (otoscope, close whispers, tuning fork)

27:20 Writing your certificate of aptitude (writing / paper sounds)

30:30 Outro – phone conversation with Ada (feat. Atmosphere’s voice)

31:55 A few submersible ambient sounds”

I’ve trimmed these, a lot, because otherwise you’d be spending a lot of time reading notes.

There are comments and a number seemed to be from seasoned ASMR afficionados who really rate this channel, which bodes well for this video.

The video is a little over thirty-three-and-a-quarter minutes long and so a reasonable length in comparison to recent professional videos we have listened to.

The video starts with the clicking from a rotating dial, there must be few readers who recall such a device. It does however start without music. Moonlight Cottage seems to have a French accent which is actually rather delightful. Sadly, the video then goes into quite active music which is not great when you’re looking for something for sleep purposes.

There are clicking noises, rustling noises, clonking noises and scraping noises. There are brushing noises, flicking noises, equipment sounds some of which sound like machinery. There are paper scraping noises.

The voice continues calm and well-paced; it is not whispery (that’s rather a nice find as many of these presentations are). There are breathing noises, clothing related noises, sounds of glass clicking against wood, there are some background whispers (which actually are rather nice). There is the sound of cork against glass, that mouth clucking noise that ASMR artists love so much, nail tapping noises against glass, objects scraping across a wooden surface, the guttering noise from an oil lamp, polishing noises, and metal scraping noises.

It is actually delightfully slow; some we have reviewed seem to be in too much of a hurry or seem to strain to slow the pace so that it all seems artificial. This seems to plod along at a lovely meandering pace.

There are metal latch sounds, wooden box noises. Some are quite loud, I would guess it depends how far you are into dropping off whether that is going to make a lot of difference to you. The slide viewing device makes quite loud scraping noises as the glass slide goes in and comes out. It also makes a relatively loud noise as it is raised and moved around. There are clicking noises, the chinking of glass as lenses are tried, an odd squeaking as they are returned to the box. There are the small thumps of fingers being tapped. There are tuning fork noises, which are surprisingly muted. There are paper noises and those associated with the scraping of a nib across that paper. Post examination there are more equipment noises, and the rotating dial again. The click of a pocket watch and the turning down of a gas lamp. Then the loud noise as if in an air ship or similar, which plays out the final minute or so (this latter is quite loud).

Overall, I rather liked this. Why not give it a review for yourself and see what you think.

Each week I feature a Calm recommendation. For as long as I have a subscription to Calm, I may as well make use of it. The service, however, is not free so I will not linger long over it.

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

Daily Calm

Creativity

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

This indicates that creativity comes not from intellectual effort but from stillness and silence. Tamara has an excellent voice. If you have a subscription (or are considering taking one out) why not give this one a listen.

The inadvertent ASMR this week comes from a channel which regular readers will know well as there have been visits to this channel on more than one occasion previously. It is University of Leicester, this has 90.2k subscribers,1.6k videos, thirty four playlists not surprisingly very few have any material that are likely to be of use to us.

Today’s video is this one:

Abdominal Examination – Explanation

It has notes: “14 Dec 2011

A second video can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…

This is a detailed explanation of the abdominal examination illustrating technique and patient interaction.

The film was produced by practising clinicians to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts at the point when the clinician has finished taking the medical history and begins the clinical examination.

Presented by Mr Adam Scott MS FRCS (Edin) FRCS (Eng) Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears.

More Clinical Examination materials can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…”

There are comments, there are a fair few of these and most of them seem to be from ASMR fans. So far, so good. It is a little less than eight and a half minutes so it is not going to waylay us for very long at all.

It starts without music and without excessive background noise. We find that Mr Adam Scott has an excellent voice, it is not overly loud and it isn’t too fast either.

There are nice intervals that tell what part of the video comes next, but for our purposes it makes the pacing of the video nicely slow. The patient does not get to say much but she also seems to have a good voice in what little we can hear from her. During the examination, if anything, the pace becomes even more restful and quiet, which makes it quite delightful, a small amount of air conditioning noise notwithstanding.

There are some tapping noises. These are not disturbingly loud (for me at any rate). There are the gurgling gut noises, which didn’t seem particularly disturbing.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The University of Leicester 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 Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

This week, a sleep course. It’s a paid-for thing and so I am not even going to advertise it, but once I get properly underway, I might be able to share some of the learning points, if it turns out that there are any worth having. I’m assuming anyone who is reading this blog has already read most of the interesting sleep-related news and so there is precious little extra to add. By all means feed back if you feel that not to be the case.

I thought I would put a little more leg work into the non-YouTube track this week and I remembered that I came across some meditation by Rashid Hughes a considerable long time ago. I found that Rashid has a website: https://www.rashidhughes.com/ and there are audio files located on there and those files are not based on YouTube! I did notice that they are on SoundCloud, there appears to be no download option. For those who prefer a bit of non-SoundCloud orientated meditation, Rashid also appears on mindful magazine which will give you twelve minutes to decide if you like the voice. https://www.mindful.org/r-e-s-t-a-guided-practice-for-the-tired-and-weary/

As usual, I have listened to some Calm meditation recently. As usual, I rather liked what I heard and hence I am going to recommend one. However, do bear in mind none of the Calm content is actually free, so this is a definite stump up before you listen situation.

https://www.calm.com/app/player/2o__8udpzK

Daily Jay

Check Your Ego

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Humility and Gratitude – the tools to keep your ego in check.

Jay Shetty, not the most calming voice on Calm but someone who challenges me in all the correct places. I find myself returning to his material over and over again. But it isn’t free and so moving on.

For this week’s professional ASMR offering I am again returning to nostalgia. As a result, the video has nothing whatsoever to do with medical examinations, either real or imagined. It is simply a video that I used to listen to around the time it first came out. I thought that it was nicely paced and properly relaxing.

The channel is itsblitzzz with 834k subscribers, three hundred and eighty-four videos, and three playlists. None of those playlists are on a medical theme. A quick scan of the videos also reveals none of them to be medically based either. The video is this one:

ASMR | Night massage with Gua sha, herbs, natural oils (soft spoken)

The publication date should give a clue as to how long ago I used to listen to this. There are notes: “29 Jan 2019 #guasha #massage #ASMR

In tonight’s video, I have brought back one of my favourite humans to experiment with some new techniques and tools (our other video can be found here:   

• ASMR | Head massage and energy healing on …).

This was a spur of the moment session, and I am happy that Elizabeth was free to come over. She is such an easy person to be around, and everything felt very natural and relaxed. I use some Gua sha tools in our session as well as some natural sprays and oils. Gua sha is a skin scraping technique used in traditional East Asian medicine that can also be performed with a spoon or other smooth object. Typically, it leaves marks (petechiae) but tonight I will just be using the tools to aid in massage. I am using light to medium pressure to avoid abrasions. I will demonstrate and discuss other Gua sha techniques in the very near future on my channel.”

These are fantastically brief in comparison to most professional ASMR artists today.

Comments are permitted, and there are literally thousands of these. A lot of them seem strange. Not as many as I would have expected jump out as the level of ASMR sycophancy that we have come to expect from professional ASMR artist video comments.

This is odd, because, if memory serves, this is quite a good video. If it is as good as I remember then we may well, in the future, cover the other video mentioned in those notes.

The video is a little over forty-two minutes long and so quite a lengthy one in comparison to some I have reviewed of late. It starts without music. The ASMR professional is off-camera and background noises can be heard: a rustling, some footfalls, the odd thud.

Elizabeth, it turns out, has a great voice and she is the first to speak. Initially there is a lot of moving about by the ASMR professional together with associated noises. Sadly, Elizabeth does not get much to say during this video.

It is quite breathy – in fact a lot of the sound is breathing, together with hands running through hair and the stroking of skin. There are noises related to movement including the rustling of clothing. When “itsblitzz” starts to speak, it is somewhat louder than the noises up to that point and we cotton onto the fact that the presentation is not going to major on whispery.

It is reasonably slow; in fact, it is like there is an elongated interval between each word. Whilst not actually whispering, the voice is kept low. Rather like one I reviewed a few weeks back I do wonder if the person presenting does not find it easy to talk that quietly. But it might just be my elderly ears that can hear a strain where perhaps there isn’t one.

There are brushing noises; the chinking of glass bottles; the sound of spraying; clicking noises; rubber pipette teat noises; the sound of the Gua sha tool against skin; the sound of oil on skin; a plastic lid being tightened onto a glass bottle; the sound of sage being ignited and subsequently being firmly extinguished; the sound of warm tea being poured into a metal container.

I felt it was almost hypnotic and I found myself drifting off to sleep several times during the video, which for this blog I would say was a great success. I would certainly give it a review yourself. It was certainly great to reacquaint myself with this one and I can remember now what I liked about it. Medical themed or no, I think I will be coming back to this channel in the future.

It will be hard to follow that with anything inadvertent I fear, but still, this is the way that I traditionally round off an ASMR themed blog post.

We are back again at a channel that I have reviewed a few times before MGA Nursing has fifty-five subscribers, forty-three videos and two playlists. Not unsurprisingly one of those playlists is on a medical theme but it contains just one video:

This week’s video is this one:

Head and Neck/ Mouth, Nose, Throat, and Sinuses Video by Megan Morrow

It is a little less than seven minutes long; no comments are permitted such that it is not feasible to determine if any ASMR fans have arrived here before us. There are no notes, simply a posting date of 28 Sept 2017.

It won’t keep us long and other than the name of the medical professional we really know very little about it.

It starts without music but with a fairly advanced background hiss. In fact, Megan sounds like she is recording at some distance from the microphone. The setting is domestic (probably someone’s kitchen). This is one of those videos where you are going to need to thumb the volume up a bit. The captions appear not to be working so I’ll make a guess it sounded like the patient was Adrienne Michelle Thompson with D.O.B: 9-6-1968 so probably 06 September 1968 given it is a US video. However, it was hard to hear and so the name and the D.O.B could be almost anything. The patient has an even quieter voice than Megan’s. That or the microphone is even further removed from the patient than it is from Megan.

There is the normal student fake hand hygiene, which seems to be a requirement in many such videos. Megan’s voice is not at the restful tone we have heard in some student videos but as I have pointed out it is not loud. The background hiss seems to be typical of an air conditioning sound.

The examination appears to be gentle and well-paced. Perhaps Megan raises the tone of her voice a little too often for it to be truly restful. At intervals the conversation is not quite as slow as is fully desirable. However, these are minor quibbles. The main issue is that having thumbed up the volume to listen properly, the subsequent advert is highly likely to bend your eardrums. I think this is worth trialling in the Procrastination Pen playlist and it can be banished subsequently to the archive list if it turns out to be one of the ones that is hard to live with.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The MGA Nursing 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 Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I have a bit of a cautionary tale which indicates that not all supplements are harmless and perhaps careful perusal of the label is required.

I’ve been reading about magnesium and discovered an article indicating that some people are low in magnesium and taking an extra supplement might work well for them in terms of resolving any sleep difficulties.

I decided to start doubling the dose. I was taking one pill per day so I resolved to take two. This worked fantastically well for about five days. I got to sleep quickly; I remained asleep all night, in fact I had trouble getting up on time in the morning. I believed I had cracked the problem, magnesium was the wonder drug and I was going to write an update for this blog about it.

On the fifth day I dragged myself out of bed and my head was swimming like a post-alcohol daze. I have had vertigo before (due to an inner ear infection). It felt exactly like that. About mid-way through the morning, I began to feel thoroughly sick. I had to go and stand in the cold air to stop myself from throwing up.

It took a while to work out what had changed. However, when I asked my favourite AI what an overdose of magnesium would do, dizziness and nausea were two of the key ones. In addition, it was a miracle that I was not suffering with diarrhoea at the same time. I checked the pills and they definitely said one only per day. For five days I had been taking double the recommended dose.

Since then, I have been off the magnesium and it shows; my sleep is broken, short and problematic just as it was before. On the upside I am not waking up feeling nauseous. Magnesium may help but an excess of it does not help more, or at least in my experience not for very long.

Hopefully this will stop someone else needing to learn the lesson the hard way as I did.

Each week I have been listening to Calm because I have a subscription to Calm and it would be rude not to. I post recommendations here on the understanding that one person in a great many may find them of use.

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

Daily Jay

Critical Thinking

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Do you need to rethink something, do you have to go more deeply and reframe? Do you have to think about your attitude about something and consider alternative points of view?

I often come back to Jay Shetty; he has a lot of fascinating material. But if you are in search of the best voice on Calm, I would think that maybe Tamara Levitt (assuming you have a subscription, of course)

Today’s professional ASMR is something of a bright contrast compared to the material that I am used to dealing with. The gender, the age range, the voice of this ASMR professional is somewhat different to the kind of material I have happened across of late. Let’s hope it is a positive change.

The Channel is Feel Better Now. It has 26.5k subscribers eighty-seven videos, six playlists of which this one would be on theme for the blog to date:

The video is this one:

Grandpa Gives You a Mental Health Assessment #asmr #mentalhealth #roleplayasmr

Of course it has notes; it’s from a professional ASMR artist: “236,258 views 27 Mar 2026 ✪ Members first on 27 March 2026 ASMR #asmr #relaxingasmr #lofiasmr

Grandpa Bob uses his clinical skill to relax you and reduce your anxiety, all while taking your blood pressure and checking for signs of head trauma. Paper scratching, Velcro, whispered and softly spoken words. Flashing lights, pouring water.

Please subscribe, stay up to date

   / @feelbetternow 

Coffee anyone? ☕Chip in for a cup of coffee and get a personal video from me saying thanks

https://buymeacoffee.com/bobnixon48d

Be an early member of our special group, Feel Better Now! 😃😃 Sneak peeks at new videos and more

Member link:    / @feelbetternow-o4t “

However, these notes are refreshingly brief compared to some we have seen.

There are a lot of comments; some are strange, some are positive, some wander off into subjects of interest only to the poster. So, normal YouTube comments then.

The video is a little under twenty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes and starts without music.

The voice of course is an elderly one but I would still say it is whispery (and not just as a result of a few decades alive). Whispery is fine, but I do prefer non-whispery videos if I can find them (they are comparatively rare). This video has a fair amount of silence in it which makes the pace actually quite lovely.

There are some non-vocal sounds, the odd click, some mouth clucking noises (ASMR artists love these). There’s the odd clunk, scribbling on paper noises, some whirring noises (from a blood pressure machine), Velcro noises from the cuff of that machine (those are a tad loud). Hissing from a fizzy water being opened and subsequently poured, fingers tapping, hands clapping together, nails clicking, paper flicking,

At intervals I did feel that I could be doing something else, which is not a great sign. That said, if you’re lying there awaiting sleep, this might be just the sort of thing. I would certainly say it was worthy of review.

Grandpa does not seem to appear in the Internet Archive (well, that I could find) and so it is on to try and find a more general ASMR video which is available outside of YouTube.

This week I happened across this one:

Bluewhisper 2020 06 08 ASMR ♥ Wellness Checkup Doctor Roleplay Gum Chewing Mxhb YtesWQ 396 MB [55ED29D7]

https://archive.org/details/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

https://dn721803.ca.archive.org/0/items/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq/Bluewhisper-2020-06-08-ASMR%20%E2%99%A5%20Wellness%20Checkup%20Doctor%20Roleplay%20_%20Gum%20Chewing-mxhb_YtesWQ-396MB-%5B55ED29D7%5D.mp4

There are notes of course: “by    Bluewhisper

Publication date    2020-06-08

Topics    ASMR, female, roleplay

Language    English

Item Size    647.1M

channel_url – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7wT_mqUvCHEIWm1cuw_T1Q

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

A gum chewing physical exam for you 🙂 Thanks for watching.

✨✨✨

Instagram ~ https://www.instagram.com/bluewispy/

Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/bluewispy

Goodreads ~ https://www.goodreads.com/bluewispy

Patreon ~ https://www.patreon.com/bluewhisper

Song

Night Walk – Gavin Luke

#asmr

Equipment Information 🎇

Audio recorded with Tascam DR-40X (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/377cQ7S

Video recorded with Canon 6D Mark II with 24-105mm IS STM Lens (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/3h5mQmI

Addeddate    2020-06-09 17:18:05

Collection_added    social-media-video    additional_collections_video

Identifier    bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

Scanner    Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4 “

This is just shy of forty-two minutes and starts with music which fortunately isn’t too energetic. The video is very quiet indeed, one of those you will probably have to elevate the volume to hear well. The quality is a bit on the hazy side (I assume it was recorded from a source online perhaps YouTube).

The voice is excellent with a spot on intonation. It does spend quite a while on the whispery side of whispery, however. There is the occasional mouth clucking sound which, as we know, are a favourite go to of the professional ASMR artist.  Perhaps due to limitations of the recording there is a persistent background hiss but this is not excessively loud. However, I did not really get the point of the gum chewing – possibly it is of great appeal to someone, just not to me. The pace is lovely and slow; it is possible to feel internal systems slowing to keep pace with it.

There are clothing rustling noises, the scratching of pen on paper, the moving of equipment, the occasional tap, some glove noises (I’m not a great fan of these), there are Velcro noises, clicking noises, a blood pressure bulb sound (that is not too restful), an escaping air sound (which reminded me of a slow puncture), plastic crinkling noises, and, of course the occasional chewing noise.

Fortunately, it does not end with music. In all I would say rather a good video, and well worth a review and without the need for loud or energetic adverts.

Onto the bread and butter of this series of blog articles, the inadvertent ASMR video from YouTube. This has been the sort of video that I have consistently reviewed since this series of articles began, rather a long time ago now.

We return to a channel that has had quite a lot of attention from this blog, mainly because of the quality of the video content. However, there has been, and no doubt will be, quite a lot of music associated with such videos which is the main downside of them.

The channel is Stanford Medicine 25. This has 345k subscribers, one-hundred-and-thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists which, unsurprisingly, are all on theme for this blog (they’re all medical, it’s a medical channel).

Today’s video is:

Stanford Medicine 25 Lymph Node Exam (Part 1)

It is just under eleven minutes long, and so not very long at all, in fact. It has notes (professional YouTube videos often have notes). “281,041 views 6 Jan 2016

A video recorded many years ago showing Stanford pioneer and hematologist, Saul Rosenberg demonstrating the lymph node exam. “

So, very succinct notes indeed.

UK English persons may note the spelling of haematologist. Apologies, that is definitely what it says and I assume is the accurate United States spelling.

Comments are permitted. There is not a huge number and those that have commented are not universally complementary, which might be a bad sign for us.

As a pleasant surprise there is no introductory music with this at all. The presenter, though, is a little loud and this is one where the volume is going to need to be turned down, I think. The presenter is not introduced either by himself or as a line of text in the video. Fortunately, there are the notes with the video and a comment which states: ” Saul Rosenberg, MD, Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor Emeritus, who pioneered highly successful treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, died Sept. 5 2022 at 95.”.

Despite the volume I think the voice is a good one. There is definitely no whispery presentation here.

The camera sweeps about in a most disconcerting manner. The best advice is not to watch but just to listen to it. The pacing is reasonable, not too rapid which is a mistake made by many video presenters. There is a monologue presentation to start with and for the first four-and-a-half minutes which seems to drag a little (some commentators have noted the “real” start which seems to indicate they are prompting people to jump forwards past this section).

The presentation quietens a tad during the examination proper. This is in keeping with the majority of such videos that I have reviewed thus far. It is still not what you would call truly quiet. The voice, though, remains calm and well-paced.

The camera still seems, at intervals, to have a life of its own, sweeping about when there appears little need for it to do so.

So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Stanford Medicine 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 Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

I was watching in amazement this week as a colleague edited together a video for use on Instagram using only his phone. I was recognising why the age of the blog has truly sailed. Although it was obvious that the video editing took skill, and it took time, the output was so easy to consume. I could recognise, instantly, why thousands of followers migrate towards channels which produce video content.

It is quite easy to understand why people who, at one time,

 would have read a manual or would have looked at a diagram, are now watching a YouTube video to try and get the same information. However, I cannot see myself producing YouTube material reviewing material which is also on YouTube.

Luddite I maybe, but I am not yet ready to give up on the idea that there is value in writing things down. Even if by so doing I am missing out on the more skilful operation of my mobile phone.

I hope, if you are reading this, you agree.

I have not changed the format of these posts for a while now (perhaps it is overdue for a change). This week, again, I recommend something from Calm for no better reason than I have a subscription to Calm and I listen with reasonable frequency.

(You should be aware that relatively limited free material exists on Calm and the following isn’t part of that).

https://www.calm.com/app/player/ns0e03Lo4U

Daily Calm

Recreating the Past

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

The tendency to want to re-live perfect memories, attempts to recreate the experience never quite measure up. Comparison of the new experience with the previous one tends to make it less enjoyable. Resisting the urge to compare can improve the involvement in the present by leaving the past behind.

For some time, I have been on the lookout for material outside of YouTube because I would rather like the ability to leave adverts far behind. In practice I have found the results a bit variable. In some ways paying up for a service to get an advert-free experience may be the better approach. But, assuming for whatever reason you do not wish to do that, I remembered that during lockdown I came across a track by Rhonda Magee who I recall had a good voice. However, of course, I could not remember where I had come across Rhonda.

It turns out that Rhonda has a website and that there is a part of the site dedicated to meditations. But sadly, this just redirects to YouTube: https://rhondavmagee.com/meditations/

However, I did find a podcast page with a recording which is quite open to a listen for free:

https://dharmapodcast.libsyn.com/dp-1953_rhonda-magee_metta-in-a-time-of-warmp3

There is a small amount of hiss on the track but I think there is enough material here to get an idea of the quality of the voice.

Recently when I have been reviewing professional YouTube ASMR artists, I have been going back into the past to re-listen to some tracks that I used to listen to years ago. At the time I was not sticking to a medical theme. The idea of reviewing ASMR videos had not even occurred, so the odd one has cropped up which is not even distantly medical. Today’s is like that:

ASMR Back Tracing w/ Scratch, Brushing, Buds & Oil Massage

So not even remotely medical then. Normal service will resume fairly soon.

It is from the channel WhispersRed ASMR. This has 1.12m subscribers, nine hundred and one videos, twenty nine playlists of which none at all seem to be on a medical theme. This could be the reason that WhispersRed has not appeared previously on this blog.

The video has notes (of course it does) and as usual (for a professional ASMR artist) these are extensive:

“10,592,056 views 3 Jun 2018 #whispersred #asmr

An ASMR Back treatment with nail tracing, a back scratch, brushing and oil massage.

Uploaded with love, Emma

Other back pampering videos –

   • Childhood ASMR Triggers – #1 Back Tracing … 

   • ASMR Back Pampering | Brushing, Oil, Massa… 

—————————————————————————————————————- 📚My ASMR Book – Unwind Your Mind: The Life-changing power of ASMR https://campsite.bio/whispersredasmr  Published by Ebury/PenguinRandomHouse in the UK and Harper One in the US and Canada.

🎧 ASMR albums are available to download or stream on all services worldwide Search – WhispersRed ASMR 🎧

Spotify – https://spoti.fi/2EugqJo

Google Play – https://bit.ly/2JwXP34

Itunes – https://apple.co/2qhg6Zb

Amazon Music – https://amzn.to/2Ev7R0E

——————————————————————————————————————————————

💎Crystals & ASMR Gifts – https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/WhispersRed

🌟 Merch –  https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/wh…

🌺Other items from this channel – https://bit.ly/2ICABXR

🎤Live ASMR events – https://whispersredasmr.com/events/

——————————————————————————————————————————————

🌟Please LIKE if you do and SUBSCRIBE if you’d like to! This makes sure that new videos show up in your feed. Click the bell if you would like notifications for new uploads🌟

💜My other Channels💜

❥ Vlog Channel –    / mypurplelife 

❥ Channel intended specifically for younger audience at adult carer discretion – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgL7…

🌟Connect🌟

Website – https://whispersredasmr.com

Facebook –   / whispersredasmr 

Twitter – @WhispersRedASMR

Instagram – whispersred_asmr

Email – emma@whispersredasmr.com

————————————————————————————————————————————–

🌹Contribute translations! – http://www.youtube.com/timedtext_cs_p…

❥ To reach the UK & Ireland ASMR Community!

Facebook Group – ASMR UK & Ireland –   / asmruk 

———————————————————————————————————————————-

Disclaimer – This video is not intended to replace any medical care, therapy or counselling that might be needed. The benefits of ASMR in terms of a therapy is so far anecdotal and in the early stages of published research. This video is intended for a mature audience for the purposes of mindfulness, relaxation and entertainment.

Product links – These are usually affiliate links. Anything you purchase through them will help in the running of my YouTube channels. However, I only link items I bought myself and/or use regularly.

#asmr #whispersred”

So, we have now discovered that WhispersRed is called Emma. Later on (whilst watching the video) we find that her subject is called Stephanie. Comments are permitted, and there are literally thousands of these. One that stands out for me is one that asks for YouTube to ensure that ASMR videos are not accompanied by loud adverts. A drum which I have been banging for a considerable time now.

The video is in excess of forty three minutes which is long for one we have reviewed of late.

It starts in full-on whisper mode accompanied by that strange mouth clicking sound that ASMR artists love so much. It is not off-putting though.  At intervals it does get a little breathy for me.

There are of course noises not associated with the voice – nail clicking (these seem to go on a bit), hand rubbing, liquid noises, the sound of skin being brushed, squelching noises (I am not a great fan of these in ASMR videos, but I read comments that indicate some ASMR fans come to YouTube for just such content). This comes back to my theory that artists are hammering in every ASMR “trigger” that they have managed to think of in the hope of gathering more fans. I still feel that a video focusing on the gentle voice tone only would be more appealing but 1.12m subscribers seems to indicate that I am in a group of one…

The voice (as we might expect) is properly relaxing and I can hear why it was that I used to listen to this all those years ago. The pace is lovely, even slow in places; the volume is spot on. It is quite old-school now, in that there are not artificial breaks in the video to permit an (objectionably loud) advert to butt-in part way through. For me this makes the experience far more calming.

Around the half hour mark I did feel that I was ready to listen to something else, but then I was reviewing the video rather than trying to fall asleep to it. I’m sure if you’re reviewing it as a sleep aid you will find it is absolutely ideal.

Following the theme of recent blog posts, I will now turn to inadvertent ASMR (which has been the theme of this blog for some while now).

It probably should not be unexpected, but to me is still surprising, when people post medical videos some of the comments are from people who are really looking for a medical diagnosis. Perhaps this points to an area that people could home in on. A whole audience of people whose needs are not being satisfied and I doubt that they can be satisfied by those persons who are posting videos.

As you can probably tell from the above, we are back in the professional medical video category i.e. videos created with a purpose which is unrelated to ASMR. Historically some of these are quite good for ASMR purposes, some are barely adequate, and some are just awful.

But that is the reason this blog exists, to try and identify the odd diamond in all that refuse. Regular readers will have seen videos reviewed, videos trialled in the main Procrastination Pen playlist and videos retired into the Procrastination Pen archive list.

At the same time the video content is itself dynamic. We have seen videos, lauded by ASMR fans, removed on copyright grounds. Channels, apparently with thousands of fans, which disappear and some videos so popular that they disappear (often with their respective channel) only to appear again on another channel sometime later.

This blog will attempt to navigate these changes by maintaining a list of videos that can be played prior to sleep with the intention of allowing you to relax and minimising, as much as is feasible, jarring noises that might disturb that restful state.

Today’s video is listed in the order found, however, it is obvious from the title that it is the third in the series:

Neurology – Topic 3 – Sensory aspects of gait including Romberg’s test

This is a short video at less than four minutes. We seem to have arrived at the point in this review process where short videos have become the norm  but I never know what I will find next, so you may find an hour-long video in the next review.

In common with the majority of professional videos we have seen recently this one has some notes: “20 Dec 2012

Sensory aspects of gait including Romberg’s test”

Not the most comprehensive notes but notes, nonetheless.

The comments, as usual, are a bit variable; I have previously concluded that permitting comments with a video is a brave move indeed.

The video is from University College Dublin and, as we expect, they have a YouTube channel eight hundred and twenty eight videos as at the time of review which is rather too many to examine in one sitting. Habitually such channels are university promotional vehicles which is exactly what we would expect.

The presenter is flagged at the start as Professor Niall Tubridy, Consultant Neurologist

Sadly, the video has startup music. Startup music is the bane of any ASMR video research. In this case it is not as offensive as some. I have, in the past, weeded out videos purely on startup music. I am hoping that in the future YouTube will introduce a function which allows me to add parts of videos to the playlist; in which case a great many will be subjected to top and tail behaviour. i.e., removing any funky music inclusions from these videos.

Professor Niall has a great voice; there is minimal background noise, not your classic ASMR but it should be calm enough to be relaxing (funky startup music allowing). Sadly, there are periods where it gets louder as if Professor Niall is presenting to a lecture theatre. It is quite fascinating, which is not the reason we are here, but causes me to stick with it.

Thankfully there is no tail end music to this particular video. Good enough for the Procrastination Pen playlist I think, although I aways reserve the right to weed it out if after a few reviews it doesn’t stand the test of time. There’s a couple in there right now that I am mulling over with a view to foisting them out.

The channel is UCD Medicine which has one hundred and sixty-three videos. That is a few I’m sure you will agree. Small wonder then that the channel has 52.7K subscribers.

There are five playlists and none of those seem to be connected with Professor Niall or with Neurology.

However, scanning the list of videos there are at least thirty-one videos on this subject and probably a great many more than that. I’m not sure I would feature thirty-one videos at one time in a single blog post even if they were all to feature Hollie Berry. On that basis therefore I’ll select the first five (including number three, which we just reviewed) and the later videos can form the basis of subsequent blog posts.

Neurology – Topic 1 – Brief neuro anatomical background

We are now into classic cranial nerve examination – which has been the subject of several blog posts previously

This is less than three minutes and yet again with the startup music – grr.

This time Professor Niall seems a bit on the loud side. I have the sense that this video captures a presentation to a class.

The location does not seem to assist in this respect I suspect a large room with a slight echo via the microphone. I always wonder why lapel mics are not more frequently in use. But I imagine additional microphones=additional cost.

Neurology – Topic 2 – Brief neuro anatomical background with notes

This is really a re-run of the above with some notes as well – no doubt great for students but it makes no odds for us, I think.

Neurology – Topic 4 – Cerebellar Syndrome Examination

A much more substantial video in that it is nearly nine minutes but still short in terms of some of the videos reviewed previously.

I think we can now take it that all of these will share the irritating startup music. Here again we encounter Professor Niall at his best in terms of his voice. We discover that the patient is “Peter”.

Unfortunately, Professor Niall gets louder. It’s a shame because at the start the video is lovely and quiet. If only I felt empowered to take the video and edit it down but I have no doubt a number of solicitors would be delighted if I tried that and the Procrastination Pen would be added to the channels on YouTube that disappear without trace.

However, there are long periods where Professor Niall settles into what must be his default which is a lovely voice to listen to. Perhaps in the future I will look for other material by Professor Niall as there might be the odd one which is properly quiet throughout.

Now, the assurance that we would cover up to video five was made without understanding how the videos progress on this channel, whilst videos one to four were individual videos there is now video 5a to 5j with some of the videos appearing both with and without notes.

I feel it is fair therefore to split the approach to video 5 I think your attention muscles probably will have had enough if I push too far so I think as far as 5c in this blog item and then pick up a future blog item at 5d.

Neurology – Topic 05a Cranial Nerve 1

Here Professor Niall is obviously presenting to a class, it is loud. Again, there are moments where the voice is excellent. Each one of these videos is tantalising in that it is not quite excellent for ASMR but has the potential to be so.

Neurology – Topic 5a Cranial Nerve 1 with notes

A duplicate of the above video – with notes included.

Neurology – Topic 5b – Cranial Nerve 2

A truly substantial video in excess of eighteen minutes. It starts loud and continues loud. Fair doos, the guy at the back of the class needs to hear what you are saying but it makes it less than gorgeous from an ASMR perspective.

Here the patient, in fact has a better intonation for the purposes of ASMR (well he is quieter). I think his name might be Donnacha (with apologies to Irish readers if I messed that name up).

It is even possible that Donnacha may have a channel all of his own but that is for a future blog item if so.

Neurology – Topic 05b – Cranial Nerve 2 with notes

As before a duplicate video to allow for the addition of notes.

Neurology – Topic 5c – Cranial Nerve 3,4,6

A little over seven minutes in length but sadly no quieter. Shame about that classroom setting. I suppose we can take succour from the fact that there are no infernal air conditioning noises.

Neurology – Topic 5c – Cranial Nerve 3,4,6 with notes

With notes

And that’s it this time, I think I’ll come back and give it another try Professor Niall probably has a few gems to offer.

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 discovered this week that supplementing magnesium may not just help with sleep but may also assist with attention during the waking moments of the day. From the same source I discovered that supplementing zinc intake could assist in the same way. I have not yet put this to the test (to be honest in search of a benign sleep cure I am getting to the stage of taking so many supplements that I rattle). However, I am going to try this next and will report back as to whether it makes any noticeable difference.

This week a Calm selection which illustrates the reason that I so frequently listen to Jay Shetty, even though he very probably does not have my favourite voice on Calm. This one I found inspirational:

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

Daily Jay

Soul Grow

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

It is about becoming a more extraordinary version of yourself. As part of which Jay explores this letter: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kurt-vonnegut-xavier-letter_n_4964532.

Today’s professional ASMR offering comes from an artist that I used to listen to all the time. Indeed, the video itself is an oldie but goodie.

The channel is Isabel imagination ASMR this has six hundred and thirty four videos, 379K subscribers thirty three playlists of which the following seems to be on theme for this blog so far:

The video is this one:

ASMR Doctor’s Visit Memory test (soft spoken/whisper/personal attention)

It has notes, and oh, what notes: “428,480 views 28 Sept 2016

Hello! My name is Isabel and I’m Dutch. I’ve been crazy about ASMR for about 4 years now and I am finally posting my very own ASMR videos since the 20th of June 2016! This is video #28. I hope you like it!

I’ve recorded this video with a JVC camera and an audio recorder. Here are the links:

Cam: http://www.videocamerashop.nl/product…

And it’s recorded on to an audio recorder called: Roland R26 portable recorder

Editing program: http://www.magix.com (I used Magix video deluxe 2016)

In this ASMR video Dr. Clarck will examine you because you are forgetting lots of things lately. You will answer some questions, and Dr. Clarck will perform a few memory tests on you and you will have a smelling test and a listen and memorise test. So, lots of personal attention and soft spoken and whispers included! Sleep tight and enjoy the tingles!!!

Instagram (to stay updated on new ASMR projects of mine):

  / isabel_asmr 

This video is meant for relaxation and can also help relieve anxiety, depression or stress, however I am not a psychiatrist, so if you are dealing with severe anxiety, depression or stress I suggest you go to a professional. “

It would not be a professional ASMR artist if they did not feel the need to write a novel with each and every video. Comments are permitted and seem to major in the “odd” feedback rather than sycophantic, which is not unusual for YouTube, but is unusual for a professional ASMR artist. This usually does not bode well, to be honest.

The video is thirty and a half minutes and so is reasonably substantial for videos that we have reviewed of late. It starts with a strange crackling background noise as if it was played on a badly stored vinyl record and straight away it gets into whispering. We’re on fairly well-established ground then. The voice is excellent and indeed the setting of the video itself looks rather professional (not that I expect any readers of this blog will be doing much in the way of watching given that you’re using this material to fall asleep to).

It occasionally gets a bit on the breathy side. It also seems to be falling prey to the “how many triggers can I get into this video” approach to sound recording. There is the stroking of paper, that mouth clicking sound that ASMR artists seem to love so much, nails clicking on a glass jar, but that said we have heard videos where the artist tries to feed in every squelch, tap, and scratching noise that they have heard some ASMR afficionado would rather like. By comparison I’d say that this was a much more measured approach to inserting spurious ASMR triggers and I did not find it obtrusive. However, as I have related before, I am only interested in the quality of the voice personally and additional noises are, for me anyway, merely a distraction.

That said the enunciation is spot on. Quite amazing that a Dutch person speaks English much better than a number of English ASMR artists that I have heard. As some commentators relate, it is interesting that a person from the Netherlands speaks American rather than English but it does mean that Isabel has an interesting accent to listen to in this video. I think I will be coming back to Isabel in the future for any further medical-orientated ASMR videos that come up.

For the ASMR offering which does not involve YouTube, I thought I would try the Internet Archive and see if they had anything for today’s professional ASMR artist. And they do:

Isabel Imagination ASMR 2020 06 12 ASMR For When You Feel Down [ Hugs, Cuddles, Kisses & Positive Affirmation ] JVu4gmugEPk 497MB [CD99985A]

https://archive.org/details/isabel-imagination-asmr-2020-06-12-asmr-for-when-you-feel-down-hugs-cuddles-kisses

Just like professional ASMR videos on YouTube, the person has gone mad with the notes in connection with this one:

“Publication date

    2020-06-12

Topics

    ASMR, female, hugs, kisses, positiveaffirmation, personalattention

Language

    English

Item Size

    618.3M

video_url – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVu4gmugEPk

channel_url – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGfbWCJjPwcAlBNkHT3gQ6w

In this triggering ASMR video, you can sit back and relax with headphones on!

In this relaxing ASMR cuddle & positive affirmation video, you can relax to the sound of my close-up ear to ear breathy whispers and get tingles from the warm hugs. Hopefully this calming video will comfort you for sleep!!

Triggers are: scratching, tracing, brushing, wet mouth sounds, whispering, ramble, mouth sounds, hair sounds, visual triggers, hand movements, tapping, shiny objects, crinkle, deep ear whispers, soft spoken, mouth sounds, tapping, finger flutter, whispering ear to ear, breathy whispers, binaural sounds, personal attention, close up tingles.

What is ASMR? Check out this short explanation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc-SCxXdI0Y

All my info:

Webshop: https://www.isabelimagination.com/nl/

Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/isabel_imagination

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabel.imagination/

My email address for questions or business deals: info@isabelimagination.com

Patreon (if you’d like to support me, get early access and see patreon exclusive videos) : https://www.patreon.com/Isabelimaginationasmr

Tingles (to avoid advertisement and support me at the same time): https://www.gettingles.com/

The Tingles app is available on IOS and Android!!

For a look behind the scenes visit my other youtube channel “isabel backstage”!! This is the link to my 2nd channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_R9MQkCOSew6FswsZtHOEw

I’m always trying to improve the quality of my video’s, if you’d like to contribute to this purpose, than that’s possible via donations on PayPal. My email is: isabelimaginationasmr@gmail.com

Who am I :

My name is Isabel and I’m Dutch. My approach to ASMR video’s is combining entertainment in a form of imagination and fantasy (almost movie like) with relaxation. All wrapped into one video for you. This way you can enjoy my videos either before you go to bed to drift off easier, or you can just take a moment of relaxation during the day to calm down and relieve stress.

I’ve been posting ASMR video’s since the 20th of June 2016! I hope you like it!”

I’ve edited them a bit as they are really long.

Sadly, it is not on theme for the medical series I have been pursuing, so I’ll leave you to try it out if you so wish.

For the inadvertent ASMR video which really is what this blog has been about since the ASMR reviews began, I am looking this week at this one:

The Dermatology Exam

I have reviewed a number of videos from this channel previously it is Top Hat Tutorials with 67k subscribers, one hundred forty one videos and all three of the playlists are on theme for the material that I have been covering in this blog:

and

and

the notes on the channel convey what it is all about:

“Top Hat Tutorials

Description

Clinical skills videos for medical professionals and students

More info

            http://www.youtube.com/@tophattutorials9113

            Joined 3 Sept 2015

            67k subscribers

            141 videos

            10,408,946 views “

There are also notes with the video although, thankfully, they are not excessively long: “296,857 views 22 Jan 2016

A video of the main points of the Dermatology Exam.

The video was created as part of the Top Hat Tutorials app, a new doctor and student designed guide to the clinical examinations in medicine and surgery.

‘TOP HAT TUTORIALS’ is available in the Apple, Google and Windows app stores today.

Reached number 1 medical app in its first week of launch!

A must have for medical students no matter where they are studying.

Download using the following links:

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/top-h…

Google: https://play.google.com/store/apps/de…

Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store… “

The video permits comments and as with the previous video I find that the comments are more strange than sycophantic. This may not be a great omen of what is to come.

It is another brief video at just over four and a half minutes so it isn’t going to keep us long. It begins with my personal bugbear: startup music which seems even more sacrilege given we have such scant video real estate to begin with. However, once Dr Tom Branigan introduces himself, we realise we have a safe pair of hands. Tom has a great voice. The patient is Dermot (or assuming this examination is located in Ireland more probably Diarmuid). There is some background noise, probably air conditioning. It is very calm and measured, just the kind of thing I like to hear (music excepting). Sadly, we get the music once again at the close of the video.

So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.

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 notice that to add to the pressure one might otherwise feel about getting a good night’s sleep, there is now direct scientific evidence that digestion is also impacted. With that impact comes the potential for obesity, diabetes and some of the longer-term effects that you might expect. If ever there was a need to fight tooth and nail for every spare minute in the bedroom it would sound like that is where we have arrived at.

In which case I think we can be unapologetic about being revolutionary about things and suggesting that other things in life should be allowed to wane in order to get the level of sleep that your body needs.

To that end, for a very long time, the Procrastination Pen has been reviewing material for its helpfulness in gentling you off to sleep. Sadly, frequently finding it as much assistance as bright light and a brass band backing track but just occasionally there is a gem that makes it all worthwhile. I’m not certain that there are any gems of that quality this week. However, I will continue the reviewing in the hopes of turning up the odd one.

As I promised some weeks ago, some relaxing material that does not involve annoying adverts. I’ve been listening to Susan Piver for a while now and besides being a highly famous meditation guru, I also think that she has a very good voice. A great deal of her material is also educational which is an added bonus.

Of course there is a wealth of material on YouTube, for example:

Indeed, Susan has her own YouTube channel. But given I am trying to avoid adverts that is hardly a good start.

I did find that Susan now has a podcast which is available on Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/buddhism-beyond-belief-with-susan-piver/id1798818779 

At the time I am looking at it there are fifty-two episodes available which should give you enough of a taster to determine if this is going to be a voice that you like.

Turning to the Calm recommendation this week, I have:

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

Daily Jay

Gossip

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Jay is perhaps not my favourite voice on Calm; I think that might be Tamara Levitt, but I find his Calm Daily to be one I drift back to again and again because of the importance of the material that he covers.

This one is about the prevalence of gossip and how harmful it can be. How you should avoid gossip, how gossip spreads, and how it is impossible to take back.

Moving onto the professional ASMR artist, I notice that there is quite a lot of criticism of older ASMR videos, as if everything completed some time ago is necessarily worse than anything completed today. No doubt persons of a certain age believe this to be the case. Going with that trend I am covering this week a video posted only recently. However, I can feel my stubbornness tendency coming on and I suspect I’m going to try to feature some older videos more frequently in future.

ASMR Doctor Physician Complete Medical Exam – Whispering RolePlay

It is from the channel Tingles Maker ASMR. This has 13.1k subscribers, one hundred and thirty six videos, eight playlists. One of these playlists seems relevant to the medical theme I have been covering:

The channel has notes: “Tingles Maker ASMR

Description

Hello and Welcome to Role-Play ASMR Channel – Tingles Maker

My name is Renat (or just Tingles “Maker) and I do ASMR, probably with some accent)

I am learning English and this Channel is my homework.  Welcome aboard! 

Links

Donatedonationalerts.com/r/asmrclub

More info

            Sign in to see email address

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

            Kazakhstan

            Joined 9 Mar 2022

            13.1k subscribers

            136 videos

            1,369,709 views”

The video also has notes: “5 Apr 2026 #ASMRROLEPLAY #ASMR

ASMR Doctor Physician Complete Gentle and sleepy Medical Exam – Whispering Role Play for tingles and sleep

Welcome to Tingles Maker ASMR.

   • Role-Plays ASMR 

   • ASMR Whispering 

   • ASMR Medical Exams 

   • ASMR no talking 

#ASMR #ASMRROLEPLAY”

By now we are used to a healthy number of notes whenever we are looking at a professional ASMR artist. My guess would be in the cut and thrust world of ASMR; some self-promotion can only help.

Comments are permitted. There are not a huge number but those that there are – are the normal level of ASMR sycophancy that we know and love. This bodes well for this video.

The video is a little over eighteen minutes long it starts at the level of a whisper and straight away we are on familiar territory ASMR wise. The voice is excellent. The presentation occasionally becomes breathy and there is the odd mouth-clicking sound that some ASMR fans seem to be positively transported by. There are, though, as expected, extraneous noises; clicking noises, rustling noises, the odd clatter from equipment being moved, the sound of a tuning fork is actually quite loud, the odd tapping noise, hands rubbing together, paper-related noises. None of which did I find excessively distracting.

I found this quite restful. It seemed very well done actually and, even with the extraneous noises I think this is well worth reviewing.

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

Last time we managed to review just four of these videos, so there is a fair few left to look at…

The next one in the series is this:

Nose Examination (Inspection) – ENT

This is less than a minute long so perhaps we are on the home straight and picking up speed now

The notes are: “83,932 views 17 Feb 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the nose. This part covers inspection only.

All videos on this channel are 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 is a continuation of the nasoendoscope one and the same people participate. The comments made for that video still apply, including the initially quiet and subsequently slightly louder presentation.

Neck Examination – ENT

This is just less than four minutes so a little more substantial (but that just goes to prove how short some of the other videos have been). The notes are: “248,747 views 17 Feb 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the neck. It also demonstrates the lymph node regions of the neck.

All videos on this channel are 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

We go back to the format in which there is a narrator for the video. The narrator has a reasonable voice for us. However, the video has some nasty interference which affects the sound as well and will be off-putting to anyone listening. This one does not belong in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Mouth Examination – ENT

Just under one- and three-quarter minutes so not overstaying its welcome. The notes are “242,014 views 17 Feb 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the mouth.

All videos on this channel are 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

This is also narrated. The person narrating has an ok voice but not amazing; the medical professional participating in the video itself has a better voice for us.

Hearing Test (Rinne and Weber Examinations) – ENT

Less than one and a half minutes, the notes are: “1,233,808 views 17 Feb 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform tuning fork examinations for hearing loss.

All videos on this channel are 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

This is narrated again and the narrator has a good voice, if a little loud here. The tuning fork nises are non-too off-putting – your mileage may vary. It might be one that is weeded on subsequent review.

The medical professional in the video, meantime, has a great voice.

And last, but by no means least:

Otoscopy (Ear Examination) – ENT

Less than three and a quarter-minutes, the notes are: “1,603,425 views 17 Feb 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the ENT faculty – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the ear using an otoscope. It also demonstrates the anatomy of the tympanic membrane.

All videos on this channel are 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, this is narrated, and here the narration seems to be quieter. The medical professional in the video itself has a good voice for us.

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

The Oxford Medical Education Hospitals 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

Urged on by my recent account about attempting to using magnesium supplements to assist with sleep, a friend recommended that I took ashwagandha. Not two minutes after that recommendation, I got a recommendation for the same supplement from an alternate person. It sounds like it is a supplement which I should give some attention to.

I do not know of ashwagandha, and I still don’t really know how to pronounce it, but it was available at Holland and Barrett and so I have been taking it. I’m about fifteen capsules into a thirty-capsule container and it purports to be five hundred milligrams (by the label).

There are several claims for the benefits of ashwagandha however, I notice that slipping off into nod-nod land is not one of them. So it has proven. I had variable results with the magnesium and I have had variable results with the ashwagandha.

It seems to have a small effect on wake-time calmness. Either that, or some recent training I am attending is having the desired effects.

However, it does not seem to have affected my annoyance at different aspects of life, nor the fact that I occasionally need the television to still my mind enough for sleep.

I continue with it and I welcome other recommendations for sleep, preferably those I can share on the blog. Any substances which are “controlled”, presumably, I am not going to be able to find and far less write about if I could.

(Although I’m sure some of the drug-related relaxants probably do work).

This week I saw mentioned a former monk by the name of Scott Tusa. I wondered if it would be possible to find any relaxing material outside of YouTube that I could direct you to. It appears some are available for download (if you also wish to sign up for a newsletter) on his website, here: https://scotttusa.com/.

I did find some resources in the Internet Archive though which are more readily accessible

https://archive.org/details/ggbc-2020-04-24-scott-tusa-mindfulness

https://archive.org/download/ggbc-2020-04-24-scott-tusa-mindfulness/GGBC 2020-04-24 Scott Tusa Mindfulness.mp3

https://archive.org/details/GGBC20180915ScottTusaMakingLifeMeaningful

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20180915ScottTusaMakingLifeMeaningful/GGBC 2018-09-15 Scott Tusa Making Life Meaningful 1-of-3.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20180915ScottTusaMakingLifeMeaningful/GGBC 2018-09-15 Scott Tusa Making Life Meaningful 2-of-3.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20180915ScottTusaMakingLifeMeaningful/GGBC 2018-09-15 Scott Tusa Making Life Meaningful 3-of-3.mp3

https://archive.org/details/GGBC20180914ScottTusaResilienceAndHappiness

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20180914ScottTusaResilienceAndHappiness/GGBC 2018-09-14 Scott Tusa Resilience and Happiness.mp3

https://archive.org/details/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind/GGBC 2019-04-12 Scott Tusa Calm Body Clear Mind.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind/GGBC 2019-04-13 Scott Tusa Calm Body Clear Mind 1 of 4.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind/GGBC 2019-04-13 Scott Tusa Calm Body Clear Mind 2 of 4.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind/GGBC 2019-04-13 Scott Tusa Calm Body Clear Mind 3 of 4.mp3

https://archive.org/download/GGBC20190412ScottTusaCalmBodyClearMind/GGBC 2019-04-13 Scott Tusa Calm Body Clear Mind 4 of 4.mp3

It looks like these are freely available to download, such that you can use them to build up a night-time listening playlist of your own, quite independent of YouTube adverts, and indeed this blog come to think of it (although I hope you will return for the next instalment).

This week’s Calm recommendation is from Jay Shetty, who often has something fascinating to say:

This one is about self confidence

https://www.calm.com/app/player/v-BzceA7Vs

Daily Jay

Sing Your Own Praises

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

or how bigging yourself up can have some positive effects.

I try not to dwell on the Calm recommendation. It does take a Calm subscription and I recognise a number of those reading are never going to be interested in taking out such a subscription, no matter the cost.

So, moving swiftly on…

I tend at this stage of the article to look at a professional ASMR artist in the hope that I can find one that actually beats the inadvertent ASMR material into a cocked hat. Thus far it’s been something of a curate’s egg.

This week I am drawing on a memory in which I remember an ASMR artist I saw a single video of many years ago and I think I have located the same artist (although almost certainly not the same video).

It is this:

Arctic Secret Base ASMR Physical Therapy |#42

A video that comes from the channel ATMOSPHERE this has 768k subscribers, two hundred and sixty videos, a quick scan of which seems to indicate a heavy Sci-Fi theme to a number of them. I’ve been focused on medical style ASMR for a while, although there are fourteen playlists none of these are on a medical theme as such.

The video is just shy of twenty six minutes in length so not huge. It has notes which are the standard ASMR professional length, i.e. verbose in the extreme: “Arctic Secret Base ASMR Physical Therapy |#42

ATMOSPHERE

768k subscribers

740,803 views 22 Dec 2021 #asmr #relax

#asmr

#relax

ATMOSPHERE summary by TemplePhoenix: https://templephoenix.weebly.com

This is a part of a story. All the videos and characters are interconnected.

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

Arctic Base. Room #14

Previous episode:    • Pulling Spy Bugs out of Your Hair | ASMR S… 

Next episode:    • Relaxing Ambush ASMR |#45 

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

Created by Anastasia

My Gear (affiliate link):

My best friend Laptop: https://amzn.to/3vZY7sy

Camera: https://amzn.to/3Wd47sF

Two Microphones: https://amzn.to/3CJrpPW

Lighting: https://amzn.to/3w2Wuuf

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

If you wish to support me and get a behind-the-scenes access:

  / atmospherea 

More ASMR videos:    / @atmospherea 

✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

Instagram:  / anastasia_atmos “

I’ve edited the notes down a bit, I do tend to find that ASMR professionals produce encyclopaedic notes.

Comments are permitted; there are a great number and the habitual fan worship of professional ASMR artists is well represented here. So far – so good.

The video starts with extensive background noise which, given the content of the video seems by design. The voice is great but so muted I could not really make out every word. One of those videos where you either need to relax and hear some of what is going on or turn the volume up. However, if you do the latter you are going to get a number of extraneous noises turned up to eleven.

This is a video aimed at creating an effect and there are glove noises, rustling noises, whirring noises, clothing-related noises, noises related to the weather (which appears snowy), there is the odd clunk, water dripping, scrunching noises, a robotic sounding voice making announcements, glass stirring noises, strange technical noises – various whirrs, boings, plinking and digital-style feedback noises, noises like a metal can being oscillated, a noise which sounded like a transformer hum, a sound like two plastic surfaces grating against one another, equipment noises including a kind of motorised hum, a sound like plastic beads being rolled over a surface, and plenty more besides.

All of this fits with Sci-Fi style of presentation but perhaps not the best for dozing off.

The presentation is on the whispery side of whispery. That is fine but I do prefer a non-whispery presentation personally. The noises are probably way more than I could tolerate when trying to get to sleep but I am betting that some ASMR fans love this one. Worth a review I would have thought.

The inadvertent ASMR this week is this one:

Quick neurological examination

it comes from the channel Khaled Farrah three hundred and fourteen subscribers, thirteen videos, twenty two playlists of which this one seems firmly on the medical theme:

The notes are fantastically brief: “69,678 views 26 Jul 2020

rapid neurological examination to be used in the setting of GP in under 3 minutes”

There are comments. Some are quite strange, and I notice some ASMR fans are here way before me, which hopefully is a good sign.

Despite the notes indicating three minutes the video is a little over eight minutes in fact. There is loud startup music which is thankfully brief. The medical professional is apparently Giles Elrington Consultant Neurologist Barts Health NHS Trust

His is not the quietest of voices, but on the upside, he isn’t whispering. The tone is good and is also level. No nasty surprises here (well, excepting that music anyway). There are silent intervals where text is displayed (after all this is supposed to be a teaching video). If anything, I felt this made the video more calming. As the video proceeds it seems to get more measured and quieter. I also notice that Dr Elrington is quieter during the examination proper (which I have noticed others do as well, there must be something about medical examinations).

One great thing is that it does not end with music.

I think this one was is 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

In the drive to understand how my own thinking affects my ability to sleep, I often find myself exploring inspirational outlets on the Internet.

This week came across the following quote which may help to reset the expectations that bedevil the waking hours:

“How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?”

It is credited to Logan Pearsall Smith but one has to take credits with a pinch of salt. Take, for example, the large number of sayings credited to the Buddha (a number of which are far more recent).

One of these days I would not be surprised at a quote relating to iPhone use being credited to Jesus Christ. The Internet is that flaky.

In any event, if one is able to lessen the expectations down to the level that you survived this long and that has to be a great measure of success then perhaps some of the overthinking that dogs the interval between awake and fast-asleep can be lessened. Perhaps it might ease the slide from one (alert) state to a more restful one.

In case such thinking is not natural for you, I will persist in trying to find restful things to distract the mind whilst giving you time to doze.

Following a rash promise made weeks ago now involving finding material that does not need advertising support, I thought I’d try to remember people I have found with a great voice who have content that does not appear on YouTube. (The aim being to avoid as many unnecessary adverts as it is possible to achieve).

This week I was remembering content by Mark Bertin that I downloaded during lockdown. Is it possible that any of that content is available outside of YouTube and, if so, is it possible to get access to download it? I found that he has a website and that there are resources available.

A number of these do point to YouTube, admittedly. Some of them do not. There seems enough here for you to get an appreciation of the voice without having to endure adverts:

Switching across to the Calm app; as regular readers will know, I have a subscription to Calm.

Other resources exist and I only mention Calm at all as I have access to it. No doubt in the future I will subscribe to something else that provides meditation and relaxation resources. For the moment though, it is Calm, and today’s choice, yet again, is drawn from the Calm dailies:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/HxslQ-MFnA

Daily Trip

Simple Good Things

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

What simple good thing is here for you right now.

I have been a bit samey of late in that I keep recommending Calm dailies involving Jeff Warren. I do like his voice, but mostly I like what he has to say. No doubt it will not be long before I go back to Tamara Levitt however, as I rate her voice a bit above Jeff’s.

I notice that researchers have used sound to change the content of dreams. On the face of it, not a million miles from using sound to get some sleep in the first place. Perhaps though, the ability to change people’s dreams has some greater potential for negative uses than the occasional duff sound in a video which you’re using to help you doze off.

I will try to stick to sound-related recommendations that are not linked to some corporate’s designs to market their latest piece of nonsense at you.

On which note, it is time we listened to a professional ASMR artist and see what we think. Taking into account that I have not been that impressed in general with this area of ASMR-i-ness.

This week the video is this one:

ASMR PRE-MED STUDENT DOES A CRANIAL NERVE EXAM ON YOU! 💓

It is not huge at just a little less than sixteen minutes. It is from Livs ASMR 💕. This channel has 1.55k subscribers, and only six videos – an achievement which seems properly fantastic. At the moment this would seem to be the only medical-themed video on the channel so there is no chance I’ll be returning (unless that situation should change).

Alternatively, I could change the approach of the blog and start covering wood-carving videos or something.

The notes on the channel are interesting:

“Livs ASMR 💕

Description

ASMR videos 💕

More info

            http://www.youtube.com/@asmr.byolivia

            Joined 12 Jan 2026

            1.55k subscribers

            6 videos

            66,116 views”

So, this channel has only been in existence for a few months and yet all of those willing fans have flocked to it. This has to bode extremely well for the quality of this video.

Today’s video has minimal notes: ” 56,531 views 29 Jan 2026

tastes: 2:05

smell: 3:50

hearing 6:28

sight: 9:21

touch 12:55″

Short notes – that is refreshing in itself.

The video permits comments. There are a fair number, some are whacky, some are odd, some are sycophantic. All represent the style of comment we have come to expect.

The video starts at the whisper, which is something we get from a number of professional ASMR artists. However, the delivery is at the hurry-up. It was therefore not as restful a video as I had hoped. In addition this is one video where turning up the volume is likely to be more effective.

There are, of course, distracting noises, scribbling noises, gloves-related noises, that strange mouth clucking noise so beloved of ASMR artists, clicking noises, finger tapping noises, the odd clunk. This is obviously a potpourri of ASMR triggers assembled into one whole.

I’d prefer focus on just the one trigger. I would love a video that consisted solely of a calm, empathetic voice but I am probably asking too much.

It would be great if the presentation was at a slower pace, I think it would be much improved. Inevitably, it was interspersed by the odd loud advert when I was listening to it.

The setting strikes me as domestic; it could even be filmed under some kind of bunk bed (perhaps not but that is what it looks like). There is the odd cut, in which the artist appears to move an inconceivable amount but as you will be listening and not watching I do not think that matters.

I liked the voice. I would watch the video again, but, as I have mentioned before, I do not find the professional ASMR artist, in general,  is producing content which is markedly preferable to the inadvertent ASMR videos which I have been following.

Recently the pace that videos are being taken down means that the pressure is on to get more videos reviewed – or the playlist is going to be a sad and wilted thing. There has obviously been a change whereby some channels will only allow access to persons from a specific country (United States). I’m not certain what the change has been but I saw that twenty videos disappeared from the playlist recently – so no doubt there are a number of blog items with blank spaces where the videos used to be. This is not the first time this has happened but I will keep the efforts going to maintain a playlist of a reasonable size.

The news regarding the miracle pillow is that initial tests reveal it is helping with snoring, however, my neck feels that I may have the wrong size. Not the fault of the supplier, but mine. I will not reveal further details (and review it), therefore, until I have sorted that problem out.

I was interested to read recently that writing is likely to remain a hobby for a great many people (rather than a professional pursuit). I have reflected before that there is a great deal more attention given to media (music, video and similar) today than there is to reading.

This in a sense is liberating. I am freed from the need to make huge pots of cash from writing and hence whether I persist, or not, is likely to come down to whether it feels a worthwhile thing to do.

For the moment my interest is in trying to find more ASMR material and conveying what I have found. It is great when new people subscribe because that tells me it is a worthwhile activity for others. In between times, people will meander onto the site via search engines to pick and choose items that they find of interest to them.

Today’s video is taken from a channel that regular readers will recognise.

Visual Fields

There is of course background (most likely air conditioning) noise. But no funky intro music – tick; medical professional has a great voice – tick; comments are disallowed so there are no deleterious comments – tick.

However, of course, the absence of comments means we cannot tell if the video is already on the list of those known to ASMR fans – very probably so – Hercule Poirot’s famous brain cells is not their equal when it comes to locating new ASMR material.

This is brief at just over half a minute so not about to set any blog item on fire.

The site is MDforAll and whilst it is replete with medical-orientated videos a lot of them have medical professionals in them who major on the loud side of presentation.

It is probable that as an ASMR resource most of its useful material has been yielded up by the time we had previously visited.

Therefore, I am going to use this article to mop up videos on this channel by going through all the remainder and pointing out those which are of interest for our purposes.

Temporal Artery Examination

A different medical professional but an equally good voice, I think. Again, just half a minute. I’m glad these short ones are in a playlist or they would not be worthwhile at all.

Comments are permitted and there are no obvious ASMR fans so perhaps a new one for them too.

Sinus Percussion

The same medical professional – the same “patient”. This time it is just quarter of a minute so there is not even time to take much in, such as who the participants might be, for example.

Frontal Sinus Transillumination

This is another half minute one with the same participants.

It is a shame that these are not a bit longer. No doubt an ASMR channel somewhere has already taken them and combined them into one longer video.

The remaining one I will include for completeness but it will not be in the Procrastination Pen playlist for the reason that it requires age verification (and that should be obvious from the title).

Breast Examination

Just a little less than two and a half minutes long. It has a gentle approach to it. If it were not for the content, it would be likely to be included in the playlist. I’ll add it to the age verification playlist for people who can be bothered jumping through that hoop.

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

The playlist for MDForAll (On The Procrastination Pen channel) 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

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