Category: Physical Examination

Sleeping With ASMR

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

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

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

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

Rainy Day on the Farm

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

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

For example, this one:

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

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

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

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

and this one:

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

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

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

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

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

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

🌿 Relaxing Naturopath Visit 🌿 ASMR 🌿 Doctor RP

Gentle Whispering ASMR

2.41m subscribers

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

and

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

“8,059,900 views 16 Jan 2018

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

Email: MariaGentlewhispering@gmail.com

Gentle Whispering ASMR

2.41m subscribers”

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week’s inadvertent ASMR video is this one:

HEENT Assessment Part 1: Head, Face, and Neck

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

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

Description

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

More info

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

Joined 5 Jul 2017

3.7k subscribers

19 videos

1,126,488 views”

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

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

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

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

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

Onto part 2:

HEENT Assessment Part 2: Nose, Mouth, and Throat

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

HEENT Assessment Part 3: Ears

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

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

HEENT Assessment Part 4: Eyes

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

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

See you again next week.

The Nursing You playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

I was recently lying awake, as I often do, watching rubbish TV in the hope it will tempt the sleep fairies out from hiding. I came across something which was a TV programme covering TikTok videos. The concept seemed sufficiently low rent that it was bound to drive any idea of wakefulness screaming for the hills. I discovered that there had been a TikTok video in which there was a person who had decided that a specific individual was the one for her. He was going to have to be working in finance, physically he had to be six foot five inches and he had to have blue eyes.

The idea that selection on such a basis was the concept that would lead to a successful relationship rather appalled. But then I found that the video had been viral, had spawned a music video, a collaboration with a famous musician, and an income of several hundred thousand pounds.

This seemed to indicate a general consensus that selecting a partner for a relationship on the basis of appearance and income was, all in all, a generally good idea.

I then thought of people I found intriguing, those who gave up their lives to save the pangolin for instance. Those who worked hard to make a relationship work with much less obviously appealing material. Those who endured a difficult situation with failing health, failing resources and so on.

I realised that perhaps the reason sleep is not as much a friend is that I have found myself out of step with the zeitgeist. But then I reassured myself that, on the basis of current information, I probably always have been.

If you find that the world seems to be moving along in a direction that you no longer feel a part of, perhaps it may not be a terrible idea to distract yourself with a restful video, a music file, perhaps even a meditation. The Procrastination Pen is here to help with that.

I came across an older podcast recently on the subject of ASMR. It appealed because the artist describes ASMR in the way that I understand it. A pleasurable experience that is non sexual but can assist with sleep. It turns out that this podcast is so old that the website it linked to for the artist is no longer available. Because it was a podcast, I have no idea what Melinda Lauw looks like which I imagine makes the locating of any ASMR by Melinda slightly more exciting. However, I need not have worried because there is an entire YouTube video dedicated to her here:

which helpfully links to the relevant website.

And it would appear that Melinda is now also producing YouTube videos of her own, for example:

ASMR | Face Measurement Exercise (Personal Attention, Math Tools)

I think this week I shall use Whisperlodge ASMR as the professional ASMR artist. Even though this will make the order of this article somewhat out of step with how I have been previously doing things. (Perhaps being out of step is somewhat the message for this week.)

There are nineteen videos here and 4.29K subscribers which is a pretty healthy figure I’m sure you agree. There are four playlists, none of them on an obviously medical theme and indeed the selected video this week is a little peripheral in that respect.

The video is from a professional artist and so of course it has associated notes: “49,339 views 24 May 2020

Hi everyone, I’m finally starting to make videos!! This time, I’m using old school math tools for a little face measurement exercise. While this isn’t perfect, I know I’ll get better with more practice! A few of our Whisperlodge guides will also be contributing their videos here! More to come!

https://whisperlodge.nyc/”

Comments are permitted and, as usual, are the premium level of sycophancy that we typically find associated with professional ASMR artists. Whatever they have it should be bottled. But maybe it secures them a tall blue-eyed partner who works in finance…

The video is fifteen and a half minutes long and hence is properly short for a professional ASMR artist. It starts without music (heaven be praised) and definitely is on the quiet side of whispery. I got the impression that whispery was not the natural volume for this as if it was a little strained but that may just be me.

You may need to roll over and turn up the volume a bit to get much from this at all. For me, it is therefore not the greatest voice I have heard. However at least there are no offensive noises. A lot of ASMR videos (professional or otherwise) could learn a lot from that. Even with the volume turned way up I found it a bit quiet for me (but I do have old ears). Be aware though with the volume up when the inevitable intrusive YouTube advert kicks in, you are very likely to lift vertically off the bed in stunned surprise. Not for the first time I wish I owned the video such that I could amplify it a bit to make it more listenable.

That said, I found it enjoyable. I would return to the channel to take another look only there is precious little material to draw upon. Perhaps the future will bring more. Maybe it will even be on a genuine medical theme, I can hope…

I found the presentation relaxing and really would like to see more. Let us hope that Whisperlodge is reading The Procrastination Pen.

Slightly in reverse order this week, the habitual Calm offering (usually I write about this before the professional ASMR artist). A small subset of people may find this appealing (in that you have to pay for a Calm subscription before you can listen to the full track).

https://www.calm.com/app/player/ZChWn_-1Bl

Daily Jay

Become the Lake

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

This is about one’s mindset and how to widen perspective. As usual with Jay the content is interesting and challenging, but perhaps this one is not enough by itself to comfortably get you off to sleep.

I’ve discovered a recommendation online for some miracle pillows. Miracle anything is a bit like pixie dust; it would be incredibly useful but seems exhaustingly difficult to find. So it is with some trepidation that I put down the money. The service was excellent but the pillows smell a bit like the inside of a factory at the moment so I haven’t actually laid my head on one. I’m leaving them to acclimatise in a quiet area and they may need a spray of lavender oil before I start using them.

However, I’m not going to feedback on what they are like until they actually start living up to their claims (the leaflets in the packaging state at least fourteen days before judging). Given my partner accuses me of sounding like a hog at the trough when I sleep, it will be interesting to see if it makes any difference.

Meantime the ASMR video search continues apace. Sometimes the videos are very effective in lulling me off to sleep, but sadly, unlike pixie dust, they aren’t universally effective and sometimes there is a night of much tossing and turning and relatively little sleep. (The noise cancelling headphones are a terrific help and I recommend them).

Today’s video is this one:

Alana Haas head to toe- south university

Again, it has come up in my YouTube recommendations so frequently that I am not clear that I haven’t covered it before, but a quick search of the blog does not reveal any trace of it.

It is just less than fourteen minutes and comes to us as part of the gift that keeps on giving – the student assessment video. These are by part manna from heaven and by part noisy, irritating, and a source of many discarded videos.

Initially you will see that the video is in portrait mode and this tends to produce the more “Blair Witch” style of videos – i.e. shaky and with intrusive noises. Possibly because it is frequently a mobile phone that is in use to film it.

The medical professional is Alana Haas i.e. the person in the title and she announces that she is at South University.

South University of course has its own YouTube channel with one hundred and seventy-seven videos on the day I’m looking at it and 2.8K subscribers.

These seem to be (as is typical for such channels) material promoting the University rather than suitable ASMR material.

Back to the video, Alana does not have a typical voice for us and it starts a bit loud. We find that the filming date is 2013, and the “patient” is Jordyn Hutchinson (I’m basing the spelling on the name of the channel). The surname is less than clear and it isn’t the same as the surname in the channel as you’ll see in a short while.

The video gets into its stride and quietens down but this is no Hollie Berry. There are equipment noises but air conditioning noises are not too obtrusive for a video of this type.

The channel is Jordynlee21. I’ll make the assumption that Jordyn met a Mr Lee after college sometime, but it is feasible that the channel goes back to when she was Lee and she is now Hutchinson.

The channel has only four videos yet 3.36K subscribers (which is frankly amazing).

Given how few videos there are it is well worth our time reviewing the other three.

Jordyn Hutchinson head to toe- South university

Here the former “patient” is now the medical professional. The former medical professional is now the “patient”.

It is filmed in the same manner as the previous one and, as before, no notes and no comments. Given the nature of some of the comments that is frankly a relief and, given the number of subscribers, I think we can assume that the ASMR community has set up a tent, a fifty inch plasma screen and a seven speaker surround system around this channel.

This video is twelve and a half minutes so it looks like they are going to be much of a muchness in terms of length (I expect the remaining two to be similar).

There is knocking and a door closing at the beginning which isn’t the most restful. The air conditioning, for some reason, is more intrusive. Jordyn doesn’t have an amazing ASMR voice. Which might be a theme for this set of videos.

There are equipment noises. Some of the conversation sounds designed to fulfil a brief rather than the empathy that perhaps you might expect. It quietens down but still no Vicki Scott.

Callie Donnay head to toe- South university

This is just over fourteen minutes so assumptions about video length seem warranted (they’re all about the same length, well, within a couple minutes). Callie is the medical professional. Straight away Callie seems to have a better voice. The patient is Ashley Brehmer. The air conditioning, though, is building up to full Shakespearian drama. (this is a constant hazard with such videos)

Ashley seems a bit noisy in this one but she isn’t the main player.

There are equipment noises, some of them are really quite loud. Obviously, a video that would profit from some healthy editing, if I was disposed to steal someone else’s video, (which I’m not). Part way through Callie begins to sound a bit tired of proceedings, or nerves are setting in, one way or the other.

Ashley seems quite amused by it all and there is the odd mouthed comment which I cannot make out, probably my elderly hearing equipment.

Head to toe Ashley Brehmer- South University

Again, a reversal of roles Ashley Brehmer the medical professional here and Callie Donnay the “patient”. This is just over twelve and a quarter minutes.

By now we are familiar with the format. Door noises at start – tick, air conditioning ramping up its role – tick – lack of real empathy – tick.

It settles down to become almost muted, barring the inevitable equipment noises of course. There is a sense that at intervals the participants are just going through the motions. Who knows how early or late this is being filmed. However, everyone participating could just be very tired (that or a rather energetic night in the bar the previous night, let’s hope it was the latter for their sake).

I suspect that this video is likely to be the one that more fully stands the test of time in the Procrastination Pen playlist, notably because obtrusive noises are less in this one. (sometimes one clang is enough to wake me from sleep and that condemns the video from that point onwards).

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

The Jordyn Lee playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Daily Jay

A Full Life

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

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

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

This week’s video is this one:

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

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

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

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

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

✩ get exclusive videos and support the channel:   / gwengwizasmr  

WEBSITE: https://www.gwengwiz.com”

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

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

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

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

Medical Training Videos

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

The next one in the series is this:

Intramuscular and Subcutaneous Injections – Clinical Skills

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

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

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

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

Blood Transfusion and Intravenous Infusion – Clinical Skills

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

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

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

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

Wound Care – Clinical Skills

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

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

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

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

Shoulder Examination – Orthopaedics

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Oxford Medical Education playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

I am poised to go on a trip. As with every trip that anyone takes anywhere, the payment in cash is a mere fraction of the payment that is required. There is the use of time you do not have, for booking, for checking, for verifying, for transferring and/or for communicating.

There is the dedication of additional time in the workplace to prepare for what will be an onslaught of material that you will have been unable to manage during your absence. There is then the consequent impact on sleep, for if your day was already busy (and whose isn’t), where is all that additional time coming from?

If you have a similar experience you may retire in a state of higher “excitement” than is useful for proper sleep. You may have spent longer than recommended on the screen evaluating places to stay or flights to catch. You may have some bad news about some aspect of the trip that has left you disappointed.

You may be concerned that the funds you thought were available are now going to have to be found via credit card, overdraft, or borrowing elsewhere.

Each item in its own way can impact your sleep. So, if you find yourself decorating the nighttime air with expletives over your inability to sleep, perhaps it is time to distract yourself with something restful.

For just such a purpose did this range of blog posts commence, rather a long time ago now. Just occasionally I receive feedback, even more occasionally it isn’t of the scam variety. If you feel the blog has strayed from where you would like it to be by all means feedback about it. I might even do something about it.

Of late, I have been linking to a meditation on Calm. I have a Calm subscription, and I rather like it. The reason I like it particularly is because I am fed up of the loud and intrusive adverts that are thrust into a great deal of web-based browsing. In particular, if you are relying on a playlist of restful videos, the inclusion of intrusive adverts is just not going to help.

The downside of Calm is that you have to pay for it. The slightly more minor downside is that the web-based version has no way of chaining the material together (say, in way of a playlist) and so it is strictly one thing at a time.

Given my recommendations of late have been meditations of no greater than ten minutes then I think (rather like this article) anything I have mentioned from Calm recently would be something of an appetiser. The YouTube content (which is generally longer) very definitely forming the main course.

Here is today’s Calm recommendation:

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

Daily Calm

Thinking

Narrator

Tamara Levitt

Author

Tamara Levitt

Tamara’s voice is one of the voices I prefer on Calm, it is very restful. Some of the other artists produce material that I prefer, but Tamara would be my go-to voice for relaxing most often.

This one is a little less than eleven minutes, so you’ll need to be quick if you’re going to fall asleep to this. It is about obsessive thinking, which maybe something keeping you from sleep and so probably directly of relevance.

I have been, recently, evaluating a professional ASMR artist in these articles, rather as a counterfoil to the inadvertent ASMR material that I prefer. Today we have:

ASMR Roleplay | Your First Therapy Session (help for stress, anxiety, intrusive thoughts)

Straight away we get the impression that is going to be one of the more whispery of offerings. Nothing spectacularly wrong with that. However, I often remark that if this is supposed to be a genuine therapy session I’d be quite surprised if anyone providing therapy did so by whispering at me. But I live to be surprised and Whispering Bob’s therapists could turn out to be a genuine thing.

It is nearly forty-six minutes long, so substantial amongst videos we have recently reviewed. And it has notes: “996,903 views 15 Dec 2022

Hi guys! This is a roleplay I’ve been wanting to do for a while now! It’s a therapist roleplay in which I whisper, type, ask lots of questions, calm you down, give you mental health tips, light a candle, do breathing exercises, flip through a workbook with you, write notes, demonstrate EFT tapping, and much more. 💜

Please note that this ASMR video is a *roleplay* – I’m not a mental health professional. I did try to recreate how my first ever therapy appointment went though. 🙂

Until next time!

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☀️Support☀️

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As is usual for a professional ASMR video, a healthy set of notes and a healthy set of self-promotion. So far, so expected. Comments are permitted and as you’ll know (if you have read any other articles recently on this blog) the aura around professional ASMR artists is such that all commentators seem to have left their nastier tendencies at home and praise is heaped upon the video.

It comes to us from: Sarah Lavender ASMR, with 474K subscribers, three hundred and seventy-five videos and ten playlists. Sarah Lavender is a hard-working ASMR artist.

There is a whole playlist dedicated to medical style videos:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLymIhVfp2ZPx4yTyy4412qeylQ1YjI0bi

This is a subject which has been the grist to our mill for some months. It might be that you’ll want to give that playlist a try.

All that being said, I tend to have high expectations of professional ASMR artists and, of late, those expectations have not really been met. There are some interesting decisions around sounds which I do not like (but I am sure only exist because so many ASMR fans do like them).

In this case the voice is excellent, and often I wish that the video would stop right there in terms of included noises. Here we have ceramic noises, clothing-related noises, various clicks, taps, crackles, keyboard noises, clucking noises, writing noises, scratching noises, liquid noises, even fingernails on glass. I’d prefer that none of these had been included but I think I’m safe in assuming there will be an ASMR devotee somewhere that loves every one of those noises.

It has a tendency to be a bit on the breathy side. However, on the plus side, it seems a lot less visual-orientated than videos reviewed on this blog of late. This makes listening to it as an aid to sleep substantially more worthwhile. Sadly, it ends with music but it is neither loud nor extended. You might want to give this video a try.

The core purpose of this blog article like the many before it, has been to focus on inadvertent ASMR videos – i.e. videos that are restful despite the fact that they were created for quite another purpose (of late, habitually videos on a medical theme).

I think the Procrastination Pen playlist is beginning to graduate into the more serious leagues given how large it is getting and the number of videos that I have now archived from it in the drive to capture continued quality from it.

Hopefully you are finding this to be the case, and I would encourage you to comment if you are not finding it as workable as you would like.

I thought I should explain the named playlists as these are not as dynamic as the others, and this has always been by design. The rules have been that where I find a YouTube channel which has more than one video that might be useful for sleep, I create a playlist which is named such that it references the original source of those videos. This is not as common as you would imagine. Not infrequently I find that there is one gem of a video on a channel which is the sole diamond in the coalmine. Hence no named playlist is created.

Where named playlists exist, however, they remain static as at the point the blog item is published. There is no further reviewing of it and no attempts to weed from it. This was by design. I reasoned that people who choose the named playlist over the main Procrastination Pen playlist are doing so because they have a fondness for that set of videos and probably do not want to have anyone messing with them.

I still recommend that you focus on the Procrastination Pen playlist as this has the focus of attention. It gets updated regularly and videos which turn out to contain irritating noises are despatched to the archive list. The aim being that it remains pristine, usable, restful.

Today we are back to eye exams with this video:

Easier Ophthalmoscopic exam

A little over six and a quarter minutes so it isn’t one to delay you for long.

In terms of a playlist the length of the video matters little as the next video pops up automagically. I have noticed two downsides of short videos however:

One is that the volume of any two videos is unlikely to be the same, meaning that as the new video pops up there is a possibility of being deafened. Or worse, woken up just as you were drifting off.

Secondly, YouTube tends to choose the between-video moments to slot in some of its louder and more energetic adverts. These seem not to take into account time of day, video theme, (if I’m watching relaxing videos do I really want a video to start loudly or at two hundred miles an hour?) or, despite apparently using your info for advertising purposes, the preferences of the viewer. It surprises me the number of adverts I get that are totally of no interest whatsoever and loud, so – so loud.

Therefore, these shorter videos may expose you to more of the energising, “crush your goals” nonsense that seem to act as click-bait on such adverts. If so, I apologise.

For this week’s video, notes do exist, but are refreshingly brief: “76,075 views 27 Jul 2017

This video shows how to easily find the optic disc in less than 5 seconds”

Comments are permitted and for a change are mostly positive. However, there are no ASMR-related comments – which is usually not a good sign, frankly.

The medical Professional is M. Kyu Chung MD. Dr Chung has a great voice. The video starts without startup music, there is not background noise discernible – so far, so good. The “patient” is not introduced.

The Channel Myung Chung for that is where this video is found, contains playlists which are really of no assistance to us. There are five videos including the one first reviewed, so it is quite within the scope of this one article to cover them all.

I notice that none of them are particularly long either. I hope the adverts that you are “gifted” are restful ones…

Korsakov method dilutions

This is just under eleven and a half minutes long. There are brief notes: “7,401 views 18 Mar 2020

Demonstration on how to make a Korsakov dilution for virus management.”

As usual the comments have somewhat variable (and not always helpful) content. This time the microphone seems to be fighting against a very large space. The video sounds distant and muted. An alarm starts to go off and no one attends to it. That is quite distracting.

I’m also not clear whether homeopathic content is likely to encourage many readers to listen to it. The evidence against homeopathy seems to have been overwhelming.

There is no medical examination here as such. Adding those factors together I do not think that this video is a suitable member of the Procrastination Pen playlist.

How to use the otoscope/pneumatoscope

Just slightly over five minutes, so we won’t be held up long in listening to it. The notes associated with the video are equally brief: “84,702 views 27 Feb 2018

This video describes a neat trick to effectively use the pneumatic insufflator.”

The usual array of comments, some affirming a number less so, some just whacky, no ASMR related feedback though I notice.

The video starts without introductory music – which is a plus. The sound is a bit muted as if a less than optimum microphone is in use, possibly use of the inbuilt microphone rather than a lapel mic, for example.

Mr Chung’s voice is a good one. It isn’t loud, fast or hesitant.  However, on the downside this is more of a tips for using equipment video rather than a medical examination video as such.

Easier IV Placement

Just a little less than six minutes. Already, I am feeling that the subject matter might not be that restful. The notes are again brief “4,687,387 views 17 Feb 2017

Easier technique for IV placement”

The comments are variable as expected but a number of commentators report that they did find it off-putting.

Dr Chung remains consistent voice wise. But again, this is a description of a technique rather than a medical examination as such.

Although there is no extraneous noise in the video and the presentation is as measured as in previous videos featured in this blog post, I think the subject matter is such that it will not be a comfortable member of the Procrastination Pen playlist. Therefore, I am discounting it.

An Easier Thyroid Exam

Just over seven and a half minutes. The notes continue to be brief: “683,734 views 17 Dec 2014

A demonstration of a more accurate method of performing the thyroid exam using an anterior approach.

By M. Kyu Chung MD

http://www.chunginstitute.com”

Which makes a change from the enormous number of notes used to market a product.

It is quite refreshing in fact.

The comments if anything are more unhelpful than associated with other videos in this blog post, including the odd comment which indicates a person really should be consulting a medical professional rather than watching videos on YouTube.

The video starts in a muted fashion, which is very welcome given we are so used to funky start-up music.

Again, Dr Chung has a great voice for our purposes. There are elements of the video which are silent which might be distracting (these are used for explanatory content, but you won’t know that if you are listening rather than watching).

The examination is gentle and careful. The explanation of what is happening seems to be thorough (and some of the comments confirm that to be the case).

Occasionally the microphone sounds like it is a long way from the Dr (a lapel mic would have helped, I suspect).

The Dr Myung Chung 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.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

If you have had an interaction in which you do not feel you came off well, or even that you did not behave like an adult, it can be hard to let that go when it comes time for sleep. The pillow may feel like it has been welded together from jagged metal. The mattress, as if it has been ebonised. The temperature in the room will be just that level of uncomfortable that means tossing and turning seems a much better choice than real shut-eye.

In such circumstances it can be best to distract the mind from any self-perceived lack of emotional control and, instead, to listen to a soothing voice. Especially if it is there to convince you that nobody died and tomorrow you get a fresh start. Perfect doesn’t exist, after all.

It is for such restless night-times that this blog has recently (and for some time) been exploring resources that may help to settle the runaway wagon that can be the thought processes when the bedroom is not as welcoming as perhaps it could be.

A little while ago I started listening to Calm, mostly because it does not have the advertising load of a YouTube track. The downside is that you are going to need a subscription. I realise for some people that buying the groceries is something of a struggle, and so an extra few pounds on such a luxury item is just not realistic. If you are one of those people, scroll past the next section and onto the stuff that is supported by advertising and therefore “free” (for a given value of free).

Today’s Calm track is taken from the Calm dailies rather than from tracks dedicated to sleep. This is because I cannot currently get on with the tracks on Calm dedicated to sleep. I am not finding them restful enough to make a difference on the days when I have acquainted myself with every patch of the ceiling that I should have repainted years ago and, somehow, have never got around to doing so.

The other benefit is that the Calm dailies are brief, typically hovering around ten minutes. The advantage being if the one selected is not for you, well, it is a matter of very little time before you can move onto another one.

So far, I have not found the functionality to create a playlist of such tracks (it may well not exist). So, I’m afraid that is a limitation of the interface. (At least via the web in any case).

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/PTAKI4ZSz_

Daily Jay

Self-Stories

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

This is about the stories that you tell yourself and how to weed out the less helpful ones. (Say, that message you’ve been feeding yourself about how childish you have been recently).

It is less than eight minutes and I do think worthy of review, assuming that you have a Calm subscription anyway.

If you have been reading this blog at all in 2025 you now realise that after the Calm suggestion, I move on to examine a single video on YouTube from a professional ASMR artist.

I am not as kind to the professional ASMR artists as I am to those participants in an inadvertent ASMR video. The latter are probably unaware their video is going to be used for ASMR purposes. I can hardly be damning about the incidence of unwelcoming noises therefore (although I often use such noises to exclude them from consideration).

Professional ASMR artists, meantime, are creating the video specifically to appeal to those who enjoy a calming experience. I wouldn’t expect, therefore, for such videos to contain unwelcome noises. You can be certain if the video does contain unwelcome noises that I am going to raise the fact in a very pointed fashion.

Today’s video is this one:

ASMR｜Blending herbal medicines at an old pharmacy🫚Teaching true healing｜roleplay｜sleep｜relax｜Japan

This commences with a very brief tune. Although I dislike startup music in such videos, I think this is forgivable and it is hardly intrusive. The comments are largely in Japanese which is a new experience, in that I cannot tell you if the participants are really rating the video or giving it a right going over for being terrible.

There are notes, which are somewhat extensive, for which reason I have hacked them to pieces (if you would like to see the (much) longer version they are available on YouTube: “270,858 views  Premiered on 11 Aug 2025  #TwitterとInstagramのフォローもぜひよろしくお願いしますっ

This work was inspired by Uirō-uri, one of the “Kabuki Jūhachiban” (The Eighteen Great Kabuki Plays).＿🖋️

In the story, the protagonist Sukeroku disguises himself as a merchant selling a medicine called Uirō and comically delivers a rapid-fire speech about its effects.

…

ASMR is all about delicate sounds.

But since my ears haven’t been in great shape, I edited the video by watching the sound waves (dB meter) instead of relying only on listening—so the production was quite a struggle.

Also, maybe because of that, the pitch of my comfortable speaking voice keeps getting lower.

I never liked my voice to begin with, and now I like it even less, which makes me sad…

But I’d be happy if you keep watching as always!

(Even if my voice turns all raspy, you’ll still be here for me, right? 🙂←)”

The notes do not seem to bode well but we’ll bravely soldier on. The channel is dot okome._ch / maika ASMR which has 109K subscribers – wowee. This achieved with only ninety-three videos and eight playlists. My goodness, what kind of a wonder is this channel.

The video itself is somewhat more than forty-three minutes in length. Professional ASMR artists seemingly either go in for epic videos of the type requiring commitment to get all the way through, or ASMR “shorts” which whistle by and barely make an impression.

There are various additional noises, ceramic noises, items being moved around, rustling noises, crinkling noises, water pouring noises. None of these are particularly distracting.

I am here, of course, to review the voice, which, for me, is the main appeal. As expected, it is well-nigh perfect here.

The presentation (should you be watching rather than just listening) is rather beautiful. The interior and the objects within it obviously selected for their visual appeal.

The voice is quiet but rarely strays into true whispering.

Despite the concerns echoed in the notes I would say the tone of the voice is reasonably consistent (certainly to my elderly ears). Of course, the presentation is in Japanese which may put off some listeners. There is music at the tail end of the video but it is hardly alarming or nippy. I would say that this video is definitely worthy of a review.

Of course, a loud and obtrusive advert banged straight in afterwards and destroyed the atmosphere completely.

For the more usual material (for this blog), I have been looking at medical videos habitually. The aim is to find videos designed for medical tuition that are also relaxing.

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here, here and also here.  It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh, and so in this week’s article.

The dedication to this channel has been because the videos here seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case). They have a tendency to be quiet. However, there is the regrettable tendency for the odd distracting noise to crop up in them.

Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). However, in order to cover the notes for new readers, I will give a precis version with the first video.

As for previous incidences of blog article featuring this channel, I am only going to feature a subset of the videos on offer. There are just too many to make a blog article of anything like a readable length. Plus, the review will have a tendency to be repetitive, and hence dull, I would think.

Abdominal Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

The notes associated with this video are very long, the edited highlights are as follows:

“178,182 views 31 Aug 2022 Gastroenterology OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to palpate the abdomen including assessing the bowel, liver, spleen, kidneys and aorta. Abdominal palpation is commonly performed as part of a full abdominal examination in an OSCE station.

You can read our guide to abdominal examination here: https://geekymedics.com/abdominal-exa…

…

Always adhere to medical school/local hospital guidelines when performing examinations or clinical procedures. DO NOT perform any examination or procedure on patients based purely on the content of these videos. Geeky Medics accepts no liability for loss of any kind incurred as a result of reliance upon the information provided in this video.

 Achieve success in your medical school OSCEs, UKMLA CPSA, and PLAB 2 exams with our free clinical skills videos. Subscribe to our channel to be informed of our latest releases. 🙂

….

CPSA OSCE Guides https://geekymedics.com/the-clinical-…

 UKMLA AKT Notes https://geekymedics.com/ukmla/

 PLAB 2 OSCE Stations https://geekymedics.com/plab-2-osce-s…

Revise for the Simulated Consultation Assessment (SCA) with our collection of high-quality SCA cases written by GPs and Training Program Directors. Check out our SCA revision cases and prepare for the MRCGP https://geekymedics.com/sca-cases-ban…”

All the notes associated with the videos are similar so I won’t repeat them for the other videos in this article. (Regular readers will be familiar with the style from previous blog articles about this channel).

This video is a little over three minutes long so barely enough to whet the appetite. It begins with startup music (which frankly it does not need). As usual, it is the voice here that is excellent. This one does feature equipment noises, but fortunately the background noise is muted to the extent that it is not noticeable.

In the examination phase there are, in fact, extended periods of silence which I actually found quite restful.

In common with previous OSCE videos there are on-screen medical notes for medical students. Of course, these are of no interest to us. There is funky tail end music which is loud, distracting, and unwelcome to ASMR listeners. Sadly, in my case, the end of the video heralded a loud pumping advert as well.

Axillary Lymph Node Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is one- and three-quarter minutes so there isn’t going to be much time to note a great deal. I think in this case they have actually slowed the video right down. But they still found time for the startup music, sadly. This time there is excessive background hiss in the moments of interaction interspersed by absolute silence. Again, there are on screen medical notes, and, again, the tail-end music is unwelcome and loud.

Head & Neck Lymph Node Palpation – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is less than one and a half minutes. It has startup music, limited interaction, during which time there is an extensive background hiss that sounds like something from a 1980s cassette recorder.

The music remains at each end and, of course, the shorter the video, the more of the time given to that video is proportionately taken up with that music.

Monofilament Assessment of the Foot – OSCE Guide | Clip

This is a little over one minute and twenty seconds. Music as before, background noise seems a little more muted but is most definitely there. I would say that these shorter videos are extracted from much longer videos that I have reviewed before. I suspect that you get more ASMR bang for your listening buck by sticking with the much longer ones. (It would not be such a problem if the top and tail music interludes did not exist.)

Schober’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

This is the same length as the previous one. The participants are the same, the music is the same. The background noise is the same. Again, there is silence between the periods of verbal interaction but I found these moments to be quite welcome. It’s a shame that the videos this week have been so short. I think it is a sign that we are running out of new Geeky Medics videos and very soon we will not be returning to this channel any longer.

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

The Geeky Medics playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

Unfortunately, the available time for writing articles is shrinking. So I have the benefit now of being fully aware what it is to be under stress and to find that there is little time, post work, for the stress level to abate, before it’s time to close the eyes.

Life did not come with an off switch, and I have not yet developed the mental discipline to force the mind into quiescence against its will, as it were.

Still, this does mean that I can tell you that some nights, no amount of ASMR is going to help. You may have to take refuge in a Nytol or similar, and allow for the fact that you’re going to feel like a hibernating bear in the morning.

In which case, you have my sympathies.

For all those other occasions, can I suggest the Procrastination Pen playlist. If that does not work, by all means, feedback.

I was recently reading about the beneficial effects of certain mind-expanding mushrooms but personally I am way too cowardly to try them. Assuming I even knew where to buy such things. I assume I’m not going to find them in Tescos any day soon. Whether, as a result of all that mind expanding, you also can work out how to step through the doorway to sleep on demand was not made clear. However, if it were a reliable outcome there are some evenings I would be sorely tempted…

Today, again, I am making recommendation from Calm. Given a subscription is required, I am not certain just how useful to you this kind of recommendation is. If you find that such recommendations simply remind you of your impecunious circumstances, do feedback. The feedback is free, of course, and I will try to accommodate reasonable (or potentially unreasonable) requests dependent upon what they are.

Daily Jay

Chase the Future You

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Ga3PYvH2pG

This is about role models and whether you are able to be one. I find Jay Shetty to be very good at inspirational material. Perhaps, though it isn’t always as great as Tamara Levitt in terms of calming. If you already have a Calm subscription, give it a try.

I have been, recently, evaluating a professional ASMR artist in these articles. I tend to be quite tough on them because they are professional ASMR artists. Where I would give latitude to an inadvertent ASMR video, I will not do so when the video is set up to have ASMR content. So far, I have found that many of the problems I find with inadvertent ASMR videos I also find in professional ASMR videos, and I wonder why this is the case. I also wonder if other people have noted the same thing. Please feedback about your own listening and preferences and what you find are the high points/low points of the current professional ASMR video offering.

Today’s selected professional ASMR video is this one:

The Steampunk Orthopaedist | ASMR Roleplay (medical exam, adjustments, personal attention)

It is just shy of thirty-four minutes in length and given it is from a professional ASMR artist it has notes (with the inevitable self-promotional material). Here is a brief extract: “293,422 views 7 Sept 2025

Welcome to a new doctor’s office! Tonight, we will be examining and treating your shoulder, arm and wrist using both classic and more unusual tools.

No music / no intro version:    • No music | The Steampunk Orthopaedist | AS… 

This video includes lots of personal attention, fabric sounds, unintelligible whispers and writing sounds.

Disclaimer:

This video was created for relaxation / entertainment only. For any serious trouble with sleep, stress etc., please consult your physician.

For more information about ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response), please have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonom…”

I rather like the disclaimer. I cannot remember seeing anything similar before.

It is from a well-seasoned channel Moonlight Cottage ASMR with 1.49M subscribers, one hundred and thirty-nine videos, sixteen playlists. I can declare straight away that in the past I have spent quite a while listening to videos from this channel and generally quite liking what I was listening to.

No doubt I will feature the odd-one in the future. That bias declaration out of the way let’s evaluate what this offering is like.

It starts with music which has shades of the Harry Potter about it, or maybe Bucks Fizz circa 1981. You know by now that I do not like startup music. As they go, this one is not the most disturbing I have come across. The video incorporates equipment noises, knocks, rattles, vibrations, paper noises, scribbling noises, rustling noises, clicking noises. These are not my preferred content for a video, but, no doubt, there is an ASMR fan out there that laps up this kind of material.

The voice is very good and for once (mostly) avoids whispering. I find the less whispering, the more believable, but perhaps the more whispering the better the ASMR effect…

That is not to say the voice is not intonated quietly. But then this is what we came here for.

The accent is interesting. I’m not sure where it is from but a quick browse tells me that it is France. I do like the sound and I’m sure I am not the only one. As expected, there are comments, equally expected they are nearly all in paroxysms of adulation over the video. (ASMR artists seem unique in holding at bay the darker comments I otherwise see on YouTube). I am not as easily impressed, but pretty close.

I do like the inclusion of the tuning fork. I’m sure there will be some who disagree. Habitually I am all about the voice, and I would say this is a good one. There has to be a reason for that high number of subscribers after all.

There are various beep noises from steampunk equipment and clunks from heavy objects being moved, none of which I find particularly welcome. No doubt it makes the situation authentic and that was the reason behind including noises of this kind.

If you are watching the video (say you were reading this blog and you’re not ready for bed yet) you will find that the presentation is amazing in its care and detail. Moonlight Cottage ASMR could otherwise double as a film set, every aspect is so carefully prepared. This puts many a video filmed from someone’s sofa to shame.

The steampunk era equipment (for that is where the video purports to be from) is very believable. The layout of the room very minutely detailed to present the theme of a mythical time when all medical procedures were somewhat different than we would expect today.

It was so peaceful in fact that together with the absence of any tail end music (heaven be praised), I had a nasty surprise at the YouTube advert which came up immediately afterwards.

I would say that this one is well worth a review yourself.

After a period of listening to the Procrastination Pen playlist I find that it is easy to get certain favourites in terms of videos and to disregard the others. The temptation is to keep only those few and dispatch the others. However, I suspect if I followed that philosophy after a while, listening to the playlist would be very dull indeed with the same few videos repeating over and over again.

The defence against this seems to be to continue to discover restful videos and to add them to the Procrastination Pen playlist, such that each night time’s playing brings a fresh surprise.

Today, we are back with a channel that we have reviewed before and it seems to consistently bring up restful videos. It is quite likely therefore that we will be back here again in the future.

The video is this one:

Approach to Nevi (Moles) – Stanford Medicine 25

and it is quite a short one at just over four- and three-quarter minutes. It is a professional video rather than, say, a student assessment video as such it has notes: “65,987 views  22 Jan 2016

From our dermatology series, this video covers all the basics you need to accurately describe complex and multiple skin lesions.

Related webpage: http://stanfordmedicine25.stanford.ed…”

(The notes are considerably longer than this, but I have edited them for length. I doubt you will be interested in spending an extensive period reading notes).

The related webpage is this one.

This informs us that the medical professional in the video is Jennifer Chen there appears no record of who the “patient” in this video is.

The video starts with more than one incidence of music which, as usual, is somewhat unwelcome, but at least it is somewhat muted. Jennifer has a good voice for our purposes but her voice is consistently accompanied by that music. I still have no idea why people recording videos do this, it is distracting.

The video ends with yet more music.

The channel, which regular readers will probably already be aware, is Stanford Medicine 25.

This has eighty-eight videos on the day that I am checking it. The video that we looked at above is the first of a playlist called “Stanford Medicine 25: Dermatology” https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE6bR3gooUQvSTs1iQuK6T5eyMTMf2kWl

This contains four videos and we have already reviewed the first one, so let’s cover the remaining three.

Diagnosing Acne vs. Rosacea (Stanford Medicine 25)

A sample of the notes is: “123,974 views 22 Jan 2016

From our dermatology series, this video covers all the basics you need to accurately differentiate between regular acne and acne rosacea.

The Stanford Medicine 25 program for bedside medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine aims to promote the culture of bedside medicine to make current and future clinicians and other healthcare provides better at the art of physical diagnosis and more confident at the bedside of their patients.”

The video is just over three minutes and stars Dr Chen again (the “patient” is not introduced). These videos are certainly fond of their background music, but in this case, Jennifer’s voice seems completely drowned out by it. This is a shame as it is almost the opposite of what we would like to hear. The balance between music and voice is completely off (assuming anyone wanted the music at all). It would have been preferable to delete the background music altogether and just to have Jennifer’s voice here.

Approach to the Dermatology Exam (Stanford Medicine 25)

An extract from the notes is: “154,988 views 22 Jan 2016

From our dermatology series, this video covers all the basics you need to accurately describe and diagnose any skin lesion.

The Stanford Medicine 25 program for bedside medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine aims to promote the culture of bedside medicine to make current and future clinicians and other healthcare provides better at the art of physical diagnosis and more confident at the bedside of their patients.”

This one is just less than eight minutes in length.

Comments are permitted and as expected they are somewhat variable, with limited contributions which add very much. There seem to be no comments that are feeding back from ASMR fans and given ASMR fans are like a squirrel in a hazelnut store when it comes to ASMR videos, this may not be a great sign.

Again, with the music, sigh. This time our medical expert is Dr Justin Ko. He is again in competition with ongoing background music. On the plus side he has a good voice – well paced in presentation, nice and calm. On the downside, at intervals, the music wins the competition. Please stop doing this Stanford.

The subject matter is quite off-putting. I can’t imagine skin conditions becoming top of the pops on any ASMR review. I certainly recommend that you don’t spend time watching this video, but only listen to it.

Some of the featured images are so unpleasant that I think, despite the quality of Dr Ko’s voice, this one cannot make it into the playlist. Too many people listening are likely to find it disturbing material, I think.

Approach to Multiple Rashes (Stanford Medicine 25)

This video is a bit over four and a half minutes. The (abbreviated) notes state: “57,958 views 22 Jan 2016

From our dermatology series, this video covers all the basics you need to accurately describe complex and multiple skin lesions.”

The comments do not lead us to suspect that ASMR fans have adopted this one (that might not be good for us). The now expected music at the start and, again, it continues as the medical professional is talking. Bernice Kwong who it turns out has a nice gentle voice (at least in this video).

Had the background music desisted, this could well have been a very good video indeed. There is again the finishing music. I am left with the sense that this set of videos could have been so much better without that music. I’ll trial them in the Procrastination Pen playlist, but I have a suspicion that they are going to get weeded in the future.

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.

If you liked this blog article why not subscribe to this blog.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

A bit of shock this week. Fresh from a recent Procrastination Pen article discussing Melatonin as a sleep aid, an article describing the concerns about it and why it is not available off-prescription in the UK.

Daytime drowsiness is certainly something I have found, but I reasoned that compared to a night with minimal sleep it was not that terrible a side effect.

I leave it up to you to do your own personal risk-assessment, no doubt taking into account how badly your insomnia is affecting you.

Today’s Calm track is again, taken from the Calm Dailies rather than from tracks dedicated to sleep. That will probably continue for a while. Quite a lot of the material that organisations seem to think assist with sleep do not seem to work for me at all. That might be why I often find myself on the sofa watching dirge TV in the early hours rather than listening to “restful” music tracks.

The Calm track is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Wi1C26rnLi

Daily Calm

Bird by Bird

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

It is an excellent guide to taking each thing in its time. It comes from one of my favourite voices on Calm, Tamara Levitt. It seems certainly worth the few minutes it takes on the assumption that you have a Calm subscription, that is.

On the day I am looking at it, Calm seems to be priced at £39.99 a year (in the UK anyway). I can’t argue it is good value; indeed, I would not try to sell it to you. If it fits with the kind of material you would normally listen to, I leave it up to you to assess whether you want to spend that.

Established readers will know that for a little while (in the history of blog articles on the Procrastination Pen) I break off now to review a professional ASMR artist and to subject them to laser-focused critique. After all, they are setting themselves up as the pinnacle that ASMR can achieve.

Of late it has been a little disappointing, as I am finding the genuine ASMR artist’s videos have the shortcomings of the inadvertent ASMR videos. In addition, there will be a great deal of self-promotion and advertising thrown in.

I’m sure that I just haven’t found the real quality material yet and, any day now, an artist of truly awesome ability will dumbfound me.

Well, I live in hope.

Today’s video is this one:

ASMR POV You Visit the Sleep Clinic – Medical Exam for Insomnia

It is a little over thirty four minutes and so quite substantial, but we have noted of late that these professional ASMR artists do tend to produce videos of a healthy length.

Of course it has notes: “40,406 views 15 Aug 2025 #ASMR

🔔 *Don’t forget to subscribe* for more ASMR roleplays and relaxation content! Hit the notification bell to stay updated on our latest videos.

Thank you for watching, and I hope this ASMR experience brings you peace and comfort! 🥰

#ASMR

⤖ INSTAGRAM   / sophiemichellegoodall 

BUSINESS ENQUIRES: sophiemichelle_asmr@outlook.com

Lots of love x”

Refreshingly short notes there, and for a change it does not try to sell me anything.

It is from the channel SophieMichelle ASMR, this has seven hundred and three videos and 645K subscribers – crikey.

I am no longer commenting on attractiveness of artists, I’ll let you know if I come across someone of average appearance.

Of course, this channel features on the ASMR Index. I realise I am giving that site a mass of free promotion, feel free to ignore this…

It starts with music, but this is so subdued I think that you’ll barely notice it. The voice as you would expect is perfect, although as we have come to anticipate, veers a little too closely to whispery to be really believable (in a realistic medical context in any case).

There are comments and, given this is an ASMR artist, these have the halo of pleasantness so infrequently found elsewhere on YouTube.

I am not into rubber glove noises, I don’t find clucking sounds that appealing, and I find beeping from equipment to be off-putting. Against that, there is no air conditioning noise, noises from an adjacent road, or people talking in nearby rooms. There are, in addition, no noises from the moving of heavy equipment. I wouldn’t expect any of these in a professional ASMR video but sadly, some of them have decided to include one or more of those sounds.

There are crackling/crinkly noises, noises from paper/page turning and from the rustling of clothing. There are tapping noises, which I find wake me up if anything.  I suspect some ASMR devotees are rather fond of one or more of these sounds. I am about the voice. This one is excellent. It does make me wonder how much of a medical-themed video this is. I have wondered this in connection with hair brushing in other videos, which seemed out of place other than to maximise ASMR “triggers”. I have the same suspicion here too.

Moving on to inadvertent ASMR videos (mostly medical videos – at least so far).

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here, here, here and also here.  It is Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh and so below.

The dedication to this site has been because the videos there seem to be of a reasonably consistent quality (given that they are inadvertent ASMR videos in any case).

Of course, some readers will not have read the previous articles so I should mention that Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. The videos will all have notes that are similar (this has been established in those past blog articles). However, in order to cover the notes for new readers I will give a precis version with the first video.

How to Feel a Pulse | Radial & Brachial Pulses – OSCE Guide

A sample of the notes with the video: “120,381 views  16 Jul 2022  Cardiovascular OSCE Guides | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to assess upper limb pulses in an OSCE station including:

    Introduction 00:00

    Radial pulse 00:06

    Brachial pulse 00:30

You can read our guide to peripheral vascular examination here: https://geekymedics.com/peripheral-va…

Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources including:

• 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec…

• 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-..

• 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

• 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…

Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about our latest content: https://geekymedics.com/newsletter/ ✉️”

This video is a little less than one and a half minutes and yet sadly, it still finds time to squeeze in some startup music. It seems to be one of a sequence of short guides taken from earlier videos. I suppose that in some cases the advantage is that it avoids some of the less desirable noises.

The presentation is quiet, apart from a constant background hiss. The voice is nicely measured and calm.

Sadly, it concludes with more obtrusive music…

Lower Limb Pulses – OSCE Guide

I won’t put the notes in again, they are all similar. This is a little over two minutes and again has the same two participants. All of these videos would be improved by the removal of the music, of course. This is another short guide and I would say it is taken from a much longer video. (In fact, most probably one I have already reviewed – see the above blog articles for details). It is a lovely slow presentation and the voice is as good as in the previous video. The background noise is as before, and I think I’d be safe in saying it is going to be present in every one of these videos.

Neck Lump Examination – OSCE Guide

This one is nearly four minutes long. This time I do not think I have seen the content before. The background noise is, if anything worse than before. There are lots of on-screen sentences which provide guidance for medical students but, of course, these are not of interest to us in the slightest.

I would say that without the music, a string of these shorter videos chained together would be excellent night time – fall-asleep – material. Sadly though what with music and inter-video adverts, I am including them in the Procrastination Pen playlist under strict review. I maybe binning them in the future if they prove to be excessively intrusive.

I think I will make the next one the last one, to prevent this blog post stretching on too long.

It is this one:

Percussion & Auscultation of the Lungs – OSCE Guide | Clip

I am pretty certain this is a subsection of an earlier video. It is four minutes long and it contains breathing noises. These are intrusive and unwelcome and I think this means it can be discounted from the Procrastination Pen playlist.

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

The Geeky Medics playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping with ASMR

This week I found a podcast episode which I am going to use to supplant my usual Calm track recommendation. I feel a bit easier about this, given the podcast episode is free to listen to and the Calm site/app requires a paid-for subscription. However, in the end I decided I would include it and details of a Calm track. So, it is a two-for-one deal this week.

This is the podcast:

Inner Safety and Sleep with Dr Nerina Ramlakhan

It’s from Action for Happiness, which, if you have not become familiar with their work by now, certainly is an organisation worthy of some familiarity. This latest is on a relevant subject – sleep. However, there are many engaging subjects worthy of listening via podcast channel or YouTube.

This is just under an hour long and, of course, has notes:

“In this enlightening episode of the Action for Happiness podcast, host Mark Williamson engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. Nerina, a renowned physiologist and sleep therapist. With over 25 years of experience and several acclaimed books to her name, Dr. Nerina shares her expertise on how feeling safe can significantly improve sleep quality. The discussion explores the vital role of the autonomic nervous system, introducing listeners to concepts such as neuroception and interoception, and the science behind creating a safe internal environment.

The episode delves into practical techniques for cultivating inner safety, which not only enhance sleep but also overall well-being. Listeners are guided through exercises like the soothing Havening technique and reminded of the powerful effects of love and gratitude on the nervous system. With a focus on realistic sleep expectations and a compassionate approach to self-care, this episode provides valuable insights for anyone looking to improve their sleep and lead a more balanced, happier life.”

Hopefully you will find that it is of assistance with your sleep-related struggles.

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/YEvPMJC9wh

Daily Jay

Crossroads

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

I’m not certain that Jay is the most restful voice on Calm. I would say for me, at the moment, that is Tamara Levitt. However, Jay seems to cover such interesting material that you find yourself distracted from whatever was on your mind. I am still finding that the short Calm-daily material is more restful for me than the longer material dedicated to sleep. It would be great though, if Calm allowed you to setup a playlist of all these shorter tracks, as it would then mean you would have an advert-free playlist. Kind of like YouTube, but without the disadvantages (well other than the cost anyway).

It is less than eight minutes so isn’t going to take you very long. This one is about evaluating options and choosing the best way forwards.

I am still doing a brief foray into professional ASMR review with the following:

[ASMR] Real Person Head to Toe Physical Assessment with ‪@ediyasmr| Soft Spoken Medical Roleplay Exam

It is from channel Semide ASMR. This channel has 341K subscribers, two hundred and ninety-three videos and eighteen playlists. Wow, this is a hard-working ASMR artist. As expected, it is also found on the ASMR Index.

The video has notes, of course, mostly given over to self-promotion (as is usual for a professional ASMR artist), so here is a brief selection from those:

“5,292,031 views 4 Jul 2020

Assessing my cousin @ediyasmr “Head To Toe” with a skin exam, scalp check, eyes, ears, nose and throat exam, respiratory, cardiac, abdominal exams and more! Enjoy and be sure to check out her channel as well! 🙏🏼🙏🏼 Some exams were adapted for Ediya’s comfort. Technique and information is not accurate so please don’t study from it! Also, please excuse my bare feet 😂 (English subtitles are available for this video)”

As you can see it has been around a long time, but for some reason only today popped up in my recommendations. Fortunately, now it’s in this blog, you know about it, and you don’t have to wait as long as I did.

Comments are permitted. Oh, such a lot of comments. They are, thankfully, predominantly positive.

The video is a little less than three quarters of an hour so reasonably extensive. There is no startup music – hurrah, but there is a fair amount of background noise. The participants are not whispering though, so they can be heard reasonably well above what must be air-conditioning noises. It is calm, measured and, as you would expect the vocal tone is more-or-less perfect.

The setting is a little odd – I would say domestic – with the “patient” on a sofa, I think, and not the variety of sofa with which Freud would have been familiar… (more the watching television variety).

The manual blood pressure bulb is a bit loud and there is a sound like passing traffic in the background which is a tad unwelcome. I’m not that keen on rubber glove noises (other ASMR listeners seem to be) and I don’t personally get any joy from hair-related noises (again, others do seem to get ASMR “triggers” from this). There are noises from equipment, from opening packaging, from the participants moving around, and the rustling of clothing. There is humour (one of the participants starts to drift off). There are loud tapping noises when the chest is percussed. Some of those maybe just what some ASMR devotees are looking for in a video.  

I do like the voices however, and I can certainly see that if the focus of this blog was professional ASMR artists then this would be one ASMR channel I would come back to again.

One of the disadvantages of working for this long on blog postings is that you cannot tell where you have effectively written the same subject twice. I have had some near misses already and a few discarded articles where it just got too close. There is no trail for me to verify that that video has been covered. I rely on a file listing already published items. I’ve found that reliance on memory is not that bright a move.

I appeal to your observation skills therefore. If you do spot that I am covering the same video over and over (and there seems no logical reason why I would do so) do point it out. At the very least, I can pull the video from the playlist as I am sure it is annoying to have the same video play more than once as you are trying to sleep. I suspect with the playlist growing every week that it might take me a while to spot duplicates.

My main weeding criteria are based around noises I find irritating whilst trying to sleep, so I may never weed out duplicates. (I tend to play a randomised order using the YouTube shuffle function).

As at today’s date, I also find that YouTube has pulled twenty videos from the main Procrastination Pen playlist so some duplication is obviously self-healing. One channel disappears with all of its videos, another channel starts up, often with many of the same videos. Many of the channels list the same videos sometimes with minor tweaks – a different start image here, a different title there. Just enough to confuse the unwary.

I’ve written duplicate articles (same videos written at different times and often with quite different commentary) at least twice already, but in each case, I spotted it and removed the articles before publication.

Today’s video comes from a channel I cannot remember seeing before and so I think we are on safe ground (elderly memory permitting).

Health Assessment – Midterm check offs

It is very brief at just shy of four- and three-quarter minutes. The health professional is Patrick (a nurse) and Patrick has a lovely quiet voice – almost too quiet, the microphone seems to be struggling with volume a little here. His “patient” is not introduced. Patrick is not slow in his approach sadly; he seems very much on the hurry up. Perhaps these assessments require something in the way of time efficiency.

However, given how great his voice is and the very muted background noise I think this one is a good video for us.

The notes are informative: “10 Jul 2013

Demonstration of the Midterm check off used at Palm Beach Atlantic University School of Nursing.  Covers skin, respiratory, cardiovascular, and abdomen.

http://www.patheyman.com/nursing/heal…”

The URL leads here which has links out to other relevant videos.

Palm beach of course has its own YouTube channel with thirty-four videos which might be worth a view on another occasion.

There are a few equipment noises as the “patient” changes position. There is a very loud conclusion which I’d love to cut off altogether, but I am currently unclear how.

The channel is Patrick Heyman Zhuravel with one hundred and four videos and 8.6K subscribers – so a fair amount to get through.

I suggest that in order to limit the videos covered by this one blog post, we go back to that URL and examine the videos therein. There is the video above and two more.

Health Assessment – Final Check Off – Head to Toe

This starts a bit loud and then settles down. It is a bit less than fourteen minutes and descends into laughter quite quickly. All of this does not help in its use for getting some sleep. There are a couple of false starts (which it would be great to eliminate).

However, once Patrick gets into his stride, it is a lot quieter. The angle suffers a bit if you choose to watch instead of listen, as they appear some way from the camera (unlike the first video above).

There are more equipment noises and a certain amount of presenting (presumably to a class off camera).

Health Assessment – Bed Assessment

This is just less than six and a half minutes and heck, the air conditioning has decided to have a starring part in this one. Patrick is a lot louder here.

The camera position is better than video two above but is fighting for focus. Not that I imagine many of you will be watching.

There are some quite loud equipment noises.

These three videos are covered in this playlist

(This is also linked to from the above website.)

The Patrick Zhuravel 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.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

With articles clamouring about the necessity of getting more sleep to avoid dementia, one can hardly ignore the warnings about insomnia. Get to sleep on time day in day out. Sleep a good eight hours. Do not wake up in the early hours of the morning…

Scant succour to anyone who struggles to get the allotted sleep hours and seems to have an internal clock that wages war against the working day. If you are such a person, welcome. Even if you bounce into bed and fall instantly to sleep, welcome. Perhaps you can provide a contrast to any that are suffering for sleep.

The Procrastination Pen is a resource for those that find ASMR useful as a relaxation aid and potentially a sleep aid as well. For quite a while now it has focused on YouTube as a source of free YouTube videos. Indeed, within YouTube, there are a number of playlists linked to the Procrastination Pen, some of which are designed to assist in this regard.

There is also a weekly article which attempts to find a further video which may prove useful in this respect. This is one such article.

I have also taken out a Calm subscription in the hope that some of the material there might be useful for sleep. (Some of it is helpful, but that doesn’t mean you should all hammer over to the Calm website and lay down your spending loot).

I have also found that a number of audiobooks are helpful if you find yourself lying awake. I personally have enjoyed some of the Miss Marple recordings on CD. This is just because I prefer this approach to a subscription (because I am old). I also am getting tired of the nature of adverts online, in that they have become so intrusive that they now detract from the actual material.

Script blockers are helpful against some of them. A pi-hole (should you be so disposed) can help against others. So far, there is no assistance that I have found with YouTube adverts (I am told that they are incorporated into the stream and so cannot be separated from the videos themselves). However, technology keeps improving so I am certain that someone will crack that problem one of these days…

Meantime, you can subscribe to YouTube if you feel it to be of sufficient value. I’m not sure to what extent it obviates intrusive adverts. One would hope, absolutely.

Alternatively (and I’m sure that it is heavily frowned upon, so I dare not recommend it). I see that certain YouTube downloading softwares will download an entire playlist locally enabling you to bypass the adverts in their entirety. Again, I don’t recommend it. Given it affects a company’s revenue, I can guarantee somebody official in a very expensive suit will be quite upset if I did recommend anything of the sort, so I don’t.

However, if you decide to ignore my advice and download the entire Procrastination Pen playlist, then do feedback what it sounded like and any improvements you would like to hear.

Calm today was very inspirational; it was in fact so energising that I am not clear whether it will be soporific-inducing. I’ll risk it as I rather like Jay Shetty, and I enjoyed the material.

Daily Jay

Chase the Future You

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Ga3PYvH2pG

If you have a Calm subscription, give it a spin and see what you think.

I have been, recently, evaluating a professional ASMR artist in these articles, rather as a counterfoil to the inadvertent ASMR material that I prefer. Today we have:

ASMR Head to Toe Exam [Real Person] Medical Assessment | Cranial Nerve, Feet, Scalp, Abdomen Tingles 

This is a little less than forty minutes. One thing we have found with professional ASMR artists is that one tends to get a substantial video. This can be great, but sadly sometimes just means that it seems to go on, and on, and on…

KatieASMR is the channel and this has 415K subscribers (which is a fine achievement I’m sure you will agree). Of course, KatieASMR features in the ASMR Index. We can almost take that as a given nowadays. That ASMR Index site seems to do sterling work, this little blog could aspire so high…

The video has notes: “91,191 views 24 Apr 2025 #relax #asmr #asmrvideo

In this video I give Joyce a head-to-toe exam!  This real person role play includes soft spoken tingles to help you relax and sleep. Please enjoy and consider being a patron ❤️‍🔥

Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/user?u=80985362

TikTok:   / katieasmr00 

For Business Inquiries: ilovekatieasmr@gmail.com”

Brave putting an email address down I would have thought, as is the decision to permit comments against the video. That said, professional ASMR artists seem to have great loyalty in the comments department and so here. A definite absence of negative and downright nasty.

Of course, again, the participants are attractive in fact it is so common it is barely worth mentioning. If I come across a video with an unattractive guy in his fifties doing ASMR a) it will probably be me b) the comments will most likely be of a calibre that would dissolve rust.

As usual we find that there is background noise, in this video it is rather loud too. An interesting choice for a professional ASMR video. There are also noises coming from outside of the room, potentially from a nearby road.

As we’ve come to expect the participants are vying towards the whispery style of presentation. I suspect that this makes for great ASMR but poor believability. Although if my GP whispers at me the next time I visit, I will at least know that he reads the Procrastination Pen.

As the video advances the background noise drops off, and we get the time to admire the cute dog who is remarkably quiet. There are various intestinal noises, and I’m not convinced featuring them was intentional. It does however, make the presentation a bit more realistic.

Also realistic is the inability of the “patient” to pass the smell test. I have wondered how people manage to distinguish certain smells when challenged. This just proves the test is not as easy as some other videos would have us believe.

The combing (of hair) section I am now convinced appeals to ASMR aficionados that get their ASMR sensations from the sound that comes from combing hair. I’ve come across it before and it never seems to belong in the video. I therefore think it must be included through popular demand…

Sadly, the video is interposed with adverts which appear to pop in at five-minute intervals and, as usual, YouTube does not seem to be selecting them for their restful content, quite the opposite in fact.

The personal attention, of course, is exact. The pace is more or less perfect. I got to like the whispered approach in this one as well.

Anyway, it is worthy of a review I think. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Moving on to the part of the blog that started the review process all those months ago; the locating of, and the review of inadvertent ASMR videos and to date this has mainly consisted of videos on a medical theme.

This week we are back to a channel that has featured multiple times on this blog here and here and indeed here.  It is of course Geeky Medics. The videos so far have featured Dr James Lower and Dr Andrew Pugh.

However, at this point the videos are more recently posted and hence there have been some changes. The first such video is this one:

Peripheral Vascular Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

The video notes are all pretty much the same but given some people may not have read those earlier blog posts, I’ll feature the ones associated with this video in precis form, in any case, so that you get an idea:

“444,692 views 14 Jun 2022 Cardiovascular OSCE Guides | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB | MRCS

This video provides a demonstration of how to perform a peripheral vascular examination in an OSCE station including assessment of key pulses (e.g. radial, brachial, femoral, posterior tibial, dorsalis pedis). Read our guide alongside the video here: https://geekymedics.com/peripheral-va… Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources including: • 🔥 Geeky Medics Bundles (discounted products): https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • ✨ 1000+ OSCE Stations: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 🏥 Geeky Medics OSCE Revision Book: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 📝 150+ PDF OSCE Checklists: https://geekymedics.com/pdf-osce-chec… • 🗂️ 3000+ OSCE Flashcards: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 📱 Geeky Medics OSCE App: https://geekymedics.com/geeky-medics-… • 🩺 Medical Finals SBA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/… • 💊 PSA Question Pack: https://app.geekymedics.com/purchase/…”

The startup music on this video is different to that in the videos reviewed in the earlier blog posts. However, it is equally loud and equally unwelcome. The participants seem identical to those in the previous blog posts – I mean in appearance as well as identity. It is as if no time had elapsed between those videos posted some time previously and the more up to date ones featured here. I’ll make a guess that earlier videos have been sampled to create shorter videos focused on a specific subject. Perhaps this is a posting of some left-over older footage.

This video is just over seven minutes in length and so is not huge. However, it is a more substantial video than some we have featured from this channel.

Comments are permitted and we know what that means by now. The commentators are beginning to notice that this pairing has been around for a while.  Cue some comments about age and believability. However, surprisingly comments are predominantly positive.

Either there is a great resource of older material which they can keep plundering or James and Andrew are the most diligent pair I’ve encountered in a long time.

Dr Lewis Potter is the founder of Geeky Medics. He is at Newcastle University and it seems sensible therefore to conclude that the filming was completed there. So, we have a where, and a who, but not necessarily a when. However, I think Poirot can safely go back to bed.

There is background noise – I would say it is more the level of a recording hiss than of air conditioning. In my opinion Andrew has the better voice in this one. It is a good voice too (it must be why I keep returning to this channel then).

The examination is calm and well-paced and it takes mere moments to feel relaxed. Shame about that startup music though and the fact that the music comes again at the end of the video. Perhaps surprisingly, the seven minutes were not interrupted by random adverts whilst I was watching. YouTube made up for it as soon as the video concluded though.

Diabetic Foot Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)

There seems to have been a surge of posting of videos on Geeky medics in 2022. This is another one from that year. As I mentioned there is no point in reiterating the notes here. James and Andrew feature again and I am pretty sure this is a rehash of some older material. The commentators are convinced of that as well. A number of comments focusing on the apparent Peter Pan nature of the participants.

This video is just over five minutes in length and the format is exactly as before (except for the startup music). By now we are used to periods of absolute silence in the video– it is quite a restful approach. We are now used to the voices and remain on safe ground in terms of level, presentation and pace. In this one the background hiss seems more intermittent. There are periods when it actually seems quite a bit quieter.

Sadly, there is still concluding music – shame it doesn’t avoid music altogether.

Measuring Jugular Venous Pressure (JVP) – OSCE Guide (Clip)

This one is just one and a quarter minutes, long so don’t blink. There are various negative comments – so far so normal YouTube, including this time I notice some dissent about the use of the term “tummy”. Crikey, people are fascinated by details.

It features James and Andrew and by now we are used to how it goes. Despite the shortness of the video they still find time to slot in startup music – grrr. Then they go and finish with music as well. Still, that was the perfect introduction to a very loud advert in my case.

Rinne & Weber Test – OSCE Guide (Clip)

This one is a little over two minutes long and has the same two participants as before. I have many more videos on this channel to review but I think I will stop it here for fear of posting a humongous long post. Given how consistent this channel has proven to be I think that I will be back here again (perhaps on several occasions). Notes remain similar, comments remain similar including the fact that people are noticing that Andrew should have aged a good deal more by now (In the comments). It isn’t long enough to provide much in the way of material of course (in common with several other videos on this channel).

It still has startup music of course more’s the pity. I think Andrew has a great voice and I assume someone will chain these together without music and put it up on YouTube somewhere. I don’t usually like such videos but in this case I might be prepared to give it a try if I come across it.

They also publish a guide to these tests if it is of interest. (I’m assuming most people reading this blog are not medical students so I would guess not…

The Geeky Medics playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this article why not subscribe to this blog:

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

Of late I have been finding that just shutting out all noise using the Bose QuietComfort headphones has been enough to allow me to sleep. However, this has been right on the tail end of a period where I was using the Procrastination Pen playlist extensively.

For each of you I imagine that sleep varies, and it is doing what you can on the day to get the maximum rest.

I have been recommending the odd track on Calm based on the fact that I found it helpful. I recently tried “The Hidden Life of Mushrooms” read by “Alan Sklar” https://www.calm.com/app/player/iM8hEBPaao. As expected, Alan has a restful voice and so it makes some good bedtime listening. However, Calm is not free and I am not encouraging you to pay for it.

I am actually finding that for me one of the Calm Dailies is often more listenable than the dedicated sleep presentations. If you do find that the track isn’t for you, the other advantage of the dailies is that they tend to be ten minutes or less.

Recently, of course, I have decided to inject a little variety into the blog by reviewing one video by a professional ASMR artist. The outcomes have been a somewhat variable even amongst those that I have reviewed. Even more so in those that were rejected.

It’s interesting to find that the very criticisms I level at inadvertent ASMR videos are often found with professional ASMR videos as well. This leads me to suspect that I maybe looking for something esoteric in such videos, which others care less about.

However, given the main characteristics for me are a quiet, calm voice with little extraneous noise, I find that a bit surprising.

Today’s video starts with music, and I am not keen on startup music as you know.

ASMR Clinical Trial Medical Assessment for Headache Pain | Trigger Test Assortment on Real Person

The musical start is being used to advertise a Patreon page and as you also know, I’m not rabidly keen on advertising either. However, it could be worse. No one stops the video to declare that their sponsor is “Tod’s burgers”, or similar.

The channel is: Siesta with Sarah ASMR the channel has four hundred and sixty-nine videos and 44k subscribers so I think we can say that Siesta with Sarah is a hard-working ASMR artist. However, at least at the present time, I was unable to find the channel on the ASMR Index.

The video is just over forty-three minutes long, so a substantial one. The voices as you would expect are excellent and the tone great. It is, again, too focused on whispering. I say again in that other ASMR professional videos have also focused on whispering. I would not expect an actual medical professional and patient to be whispering together, unless they were sharing something clandestine.

There is a background noise which is probably air conditioning. I do find it odd that ASMR artists decide to include this as it is one of the factors that tends to mar genuine medical videos.

Wherever the video was recorded there is a reasonable amount of traffic noise, presumably from a nearby road just outside of the building.

There are many rustle noises from clothing, which some people probably find restful.

The concluding music is thankfully brief. Of course, I do not really have a playlist for these videos as the intent of the blog (to date anyway) has been to review inadvertent ASMR videos. However, I will put this one in the sweetie jar playlist in case it is of interest.

But enough of these distractions. The business of this blog of late has been to review inadvertent ASMR videos.

Today’s video is:

How do you do an Eye Exam on an Infant?

This one is a professional video and so has notes associated with it: “131,644 views 28 Mar 2017

Tons of parents ask Dr. Luke Small how he can do an eye exam on a 6-month-old! With a guest star Kenzy, Dr. Small shows you the steps he takes while examining your infant’s eyes.”

Comments are permitted and, for once, they are supportive. The video is eleven and a quarter minutes, so it’s not going to break any length records. It starts without music – hip-hip. However, there is some very impressive air conditioning noise, boo. By impressive I mean intrusive. Dr Luke Small is a tad loud to start but he gets a much milder voice when dealing with the infant.

There is a whirring noise from a small toy used to attract the attention of the child. It is a very quiet and gentle presentation however, whenever Dr Small interacts with the child.

The channel is: Armstrong & Small Eyecare Centre it has seven hundred and ten subscribers twenty-nine videos and four playlists. If we’re looking for similar material, I do not believe that the playlists are going to be of great assistance.

Here we are looking for eye exam material located on this channel and that features infants. This follows the theory I have that adults in videos dealing with children are much more softly spoken than adults in videos dealing with fellow adults.

Scrolling through the videos the next obvious candidate is this one:

Children’s Eye Exams Trailer

The notes are: “600 views 12 Dec 2020

Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre

1140 Portage Ave Winnipeg, MB R3G 0S7

204-786-8991

http://www.armstrongandsmall.com

Armstrong & Small Eyecare Centre

710 subscribers”

This one is a little over a minute and sadly starts with music, and it is rather loud music. Unfortunately, the music then continues for the entire video. Not exactly what we were looking for therefore.

The very last video which appears to have anything at all to do with this area is this one:

Children’s Eye Exam in Winnipeg, MB

just less than four minutes so barely there at all. The notes are “621 views 8 Jun 2015

Our Winnipeg optometrists at Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre specialize on paediatric eye care and eye exams. Schedule an eye exam for your child at 204-786-8991!

Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre

1140 Portage Ave Winnipeg, MB R3G 0S7

204-786-8991

http://www.armstrongandsmall.com”

It starts in the manner of a news programme i.e. one person interviewing another person. Here Dr Small’s voice remains the most relaxing but the format itself is not relaxing. The air conditioning noise is now very muted to such an extent that it is barely perceptible. Shame that couldn’t have been the case on the first video. Sadly, this isn’t the kind of video that we were hoping for either.

So just one video this 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.

Picture DeepAI.org