Tag: Anger

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I was thinking about voice resources that are not on YouTube and realised that I am receiving updates about writing which include an entry which is recorded rather than written. For example, this one:

I thought this was a great occasion for you to try something that was neither specifically meditation (which tends to be a subject I often write about), nor is it on YouTube (although this writer is on YouTube, for example):

I have not done a great deal more sleep course study of late. However I did have a summary from my last session which was:

  • It is not possible to replace sleep that you have missed.
  • The quality of sleep is more important than the quantity.
  • A well-rested person learns more easily.
  • Our brains are busy during sleep.
  • Tiredness in the daytime does not necessarily mean that you need more sleep.
  • Adults need 7 – 9 hours sleep.
  • Many people struggle with sleep.

Which more or less reinforces the purpose of this blog, in fact.

The Calm resource this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/fC0ND-4Ldm

Daily Calm

Volume

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

How to lower the volume on distracting thoughts. I am still nervous about including material from this site as Calm is not free. You can probably tell, as I tend to keep this section short.

The professional ASMR video this week is from a channel I cannot remember ever having reviewed before, so this one is as new to me as no doubt it is to you. The channel is ASMRmania. This has 276k subscribers, three hundred and fifty-six videos, but only six playlists. A number of these videos seem to be in Russian, for example:

I occasionally do cover ASMR in another language taking into account that I have no idea what is being said, and so there is a risk I am reviewing something that is rude or political.

The notes on the channel are the habitual level of comprehensive:

“ASMRmania

Description ASMR relaxation, ASMR role play, personal attention, ASMR triggers, ASMR sounds ear to ear, ASMR whisper, soft spoken and relaxing voice for sleep. My name is Olesya. A Russian girl from St. Petersburg. I love to create calming ASMR videos which can help people with insomnia or feeling stress, for relaxation and to trigger ASMR tingles. ASMRmania”

I almost hacked about those notes as they feel a bit long.

The video (which is in English) is this one:

ASMR. Doctor Roleplay. Medical exam. Test. Neurologist. Relaxing for Sleep. Whisper. Russian Accent.

I feel safer listening in English; given the state of YouTube, the person could be saying anything at all if I can’t understand the language.

The video also has notes, which are surprisingly brief for a professional ASMR artist:

” 508,422 views 20 Jun 2014

ASMR. Doctor Roleplay. ASMR Medical exam. ASMR Test. Neurologist. Relaxing for Sleep. ASMR Whisper. Russian Accent. Medicine video ASMR. Amazing Sound 3D. ASMR Role Play.

ASMR Video: A Russian girl in English. Russian accent. ASMR soft spoken. ASMR relaxing female voice for a relaxation and good sleep.

Sorry for my English :))

АСМР Видео на английском: Ролевая игра. Я буду в роли доктора невролога.

What is ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomo…

ASMRmania – ASMR, relax, role play, whisper…”

Nice to have video notes that I do not have to lay about with a scythe.

Comments are permitted and a large number of the commentators seem impressed; this bodes well for us.

The video is just less than thirty-eight minutes in length and so slightly longer (in terms of length) than other professional ASMR videos that we have seen of late.

There is music at the start which seems to go on a bit and I would prefer wasn’t there at all. There are some paper-related noises and then Olesya starts to talk and Heaven be praised she is not whispering. I like the Russian accent. Some of the enunciation is a little strange but I thought this to be part of its charm (and it is substantially more advanced than my Russian – which is non-existent). The pace is nicely slow. The voice is very good.

There are pencil noises and the rustling associated with clothing moving. However, there are no background noises at all, not even those we would normally associate with air conditioning use.

There is that mouth clucking/clicking sound so beloved of professional ASMR artists. Some parts of the presentation veer towards breathiness. I love the care in moving equipment; habitually a video is accompanied with clunking from offscreen equipment being moved around. There are very few noises of any sort here that do not seem deliberately placed to form part of the video experience.

The setting seems to be a desk in a corridor with the very wide wooden rubbing strips I associate with trolley use. It might be that some hospitals have this detail as part of the office décor possibly. There is then a brief outro which is a bit louder but fortunately does not last long.

It’s a warm day but I found myself nodding to this one. I take that as a very good sign. Why not review it for yourself.

The inadvertent ASMR material has been in blog posts from me since I started the blog up again in 2023. So, I consider it a mainstay.

This week’s selection is this one:

Focused Respiratory Physical Assessment Head-to-Toe

It is from the channel Nursing School Explained this has 48.5k subscribers, six hundred and sixty eight videos, forty five playlists so this is a very hard-working channel.

The channel has notes: ” Description

This channel helps nursing students, nurses, and other healthcare professionals to understand a variety of healthcare-related topics. These include disease processes, pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, risk factors, treatment options, related laboratory and diagnostic findings as well as nursing care. It aims to clarify these topics by breaking them down into simple terms and concepts so students can gain a better understanding of the topic.

Clinical skills are demonstrated in an easy-to-follow format and rationales for nursing actions are being provided.

It further delivers resources for clinical rotations, commonly used mediations, and test success.”

Which are encyclopaedic.

The video’s are even more so: ” 92,566 views 7 Mar 2022 #nursingschool #nursingskills #nursing

Physical assessment is the baseline of everything we do in nursing and is the first step in the nursing process. This video includes a focused respiratory assessment in a head-to-toe fashion. It details the examination and hones in on inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation of the patients’ chest. It further includes a demonstration of chest excursion. You may also find these other videos in my the PHYSICAL ASSESSMENT PLAYLIST of my channel Nursing School explained helpful: Head-to-toe vs. Focused Assessment:  • Head-To-Toe vs. Focused Physical Assessment Focused Cardiovascular Assessment:  • Focused Cardiovascular Physical Assessment… Focused Abdominal Assessment:  • Focused Abdominal Physical Assessment Head… Tactile Fremitus, Egophony, Bronchophony & Whispered Pectoriloquy:  • Tactile Fremitus, Bronchophony, Egophony, … Focused Neurologic Assessment:  • Focused Neurologic Physical Assessment Hea… Cranial Nerve Assessment:  • Cranial Nerve Assessment Demonstration #cr… Peripheral Neurologic Assessment:  • Peripheral Neurologic Assessment Focused Musculoskeletal Assessment:  • Focused Musculoskeletal Assessment Head-to… CLINICAL SKILLS playlist:  • CLINICAL SKILLS Donning Sterile Gloves:  • Donning Sterile Gloves Catheterization of a male patient:  • Catheterization of a Male Patient Catheterization of a female patient:  • Catheterization of a Female Patient Sterile Dressing Change:  • Sterile Dressing Change Removal of an Indwelling Urinary Catheter:  • Removal of Indwelling Catheter | Foley Cat… Nasogastric (NG) Tube Insertion:  • Nasogastric NG Tube Insertion Application of Steri Strips:  • How to Apply Steri-Strips | Post-Op Wound … How to correctly measure Blood Pressure:  • How to correctly measure Blood Pressure #nursing #nursingstudent #nursingschool #nursingexam #anatomyandphysiology #nursingskills“

There are relatively few comments all of which are complimentary. None from ASMR fans though, which may not be a good thing.

The video is a little longer than twelve and a half minutes so not an immense one by any means. It starts without music but it does have a pronounced background hiss. The presenter starts loud – one to thumb the volume down a bit. There is a bit of stutter early on, this appears to be an error as the presenter laughs about it. During the actual assessment the presenter still starts loud. It is possible to tell how loud by the fact that the patient is substantially quieter.

The medical professional introduces herself as Petra. The patient could be Steve Jones but it is so hard to hear that the captions do not capture it at all.

As the assessment progresses the presenter starts to quieten and I can hear the point of this one for our purposes. This is the usual problem, recording equipment is quite sensitive, it is not necessary to come at it like an opera singer. Talking normally, even quietly, is all captured without effort. I notice many people when they are in presenter mode seem to feel they need to talk loudly as if to an auditorium.

This one never seems to get very quiet, I seem to have come across a few of these of late. Must try harder.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I was fitted with a hearing aid. Apart from the constant pain in my ear canal from the tube in there, I notice everything is now at top volume and sounds like it was recorded inside a vibrating metal can. I am told that I need to persist for six to eight weeks, so it is another “man up” problem. However, one of my concerns is this that this will completely impact my ability to appreciate ASMR.

In life it is not infrequent that the solution to one of the problems simply brings along a suite of new ones to resolve and this would seem to be one of those.

This week I’m going to take some Nurofen and soldier on with the blog post but it might be that my allegiance to ASMR is irrevocably damaged and I will need to start again in someplace new. We will see.

I have in the back of my mind an ongoing duty to find new, non-YouTube-based audio for your enjoyment but I have to be frank, I just have not prepared any this week. However, I have listened to any number of great voices in my time so I will try to fall back on one of those.

This week, someone who came up on Tricycle.org and I notice the talk is still up there and (for me anyway) I could freely listen to it. That person is Dr Larry Ward who has sadly subsequently died. He was someone who I thought had quite a restful voice. See what you think.

The Power of Boundless Love

This week’s Calm offering is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/zzFunganq5

Daily Trip

The Most Important Practice

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Making the decision to look after your health. Given that sleep is one of the key aspects of health, I think that is right on message for this blog.

With the normal proviso that Calm is not free and so if you want to listen to that you are going to need a subscription.

Onto the professional ASMR artist this week, I am sticking with the idea that I am going to be reviewing some of the older ASMR material. Perhaps bringing a goody back from the past. The channel is one I do not think I have reviewed before and the video is this one:

ASMR Cranial Nerve Exam Doctor Role Play

The channel is Cosmic Tingles ASMR with 249k subscribers, one hundred and seventy-four videos, twenty-three playlists,

with the playlist “Doctor Role Plays” apparently on theme for this blog:

That seems to work out to 1400-ish subscribers per video which sounds a reasonable rate of return to me (but then I am not a professional ASMR artist and I am unlikely ever to be one).

The channel has notes associated with it: “Cosmic Tingles ASMR

Description

A cool hippie chick doing the internets. Check out my website to work with me for energy work services 🙂 https://www.cosmictingleshealingcenter.com/

Links

Patreonpatreon.com/user?u=449844

My website cosmictingleshealingcenter.com

Tiktoktiktok.com/@kayla.suzette

Cosmic Tingles Vlogsyoutube.com/channel/UC6KdVy64a73HyCz7VTx8AkA

Cosmic Tingles Twitchtwitch.tv/cosmictingles/profile

Instagraminstagram.com/cosmictingles

PayPal Donationpaypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=WFJZEM7UR5RRG

Twittertwitter.com/KaylaSuzette23

More info

            Sign in to see email address

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

            United States

            Joined 4 Jul 2009

            249k subscribers

            174 videos

            72,090,425 views”

The video (of course) has notes associated with it: “5,085,727 views 22 Jul 2016

Join me at Cosmic Tingles Healing Center: cosmictingleshealingcenter.com

This is a new high sound quality edition since my last CNE was made very early in my career with older equipment. 

Come hang out with me on twitch!   / cosmictingles    

SUBSCRIBE TO MY SECOND CHANNEL    / @kayla_vespertine 

Check out my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/user?u=449844

Instagram: CosmicTingles

Twitter: KaylaSuzette23″

I am guessing therefore that Cosmic Tingles is AKA Kayla.

The video is twenty-one minutes and so not huge in comparison to some we have heard and cranial nerve is a classic ASMR medical theme. I must have covered a fair number such videos already in this blog.

There are comments. They seem to be specialising in the strange or comedic and very little in the evangelising ASMR, so that is a tad odd.

The video has a pronounced hiss; I had to turn it down a bit but then had to turn it up again when I realised that the presentation was going to major on the whispery. Of course, this could be the hearing aid effect so you may find things a bit different to me.

There are various clunks from equipment being moved whilst off camera; there are paper noises, scratching noises, clicks and thunks. There are pencil noises, scraping noises, glove noises (fortunately not loud). There are those mouth clicking/clucking noises that professional ASMR artists love. Some quite loud crackling noises. It is that hiss that is really distracting though.

The voice is excellent. If only that hiss was not so loud.

Why not evaluate it for yourself and see what you think.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week follows on from an earlier blog article in which we were exploring my theory that adults who deal with children, in general, deal with them using low, gentle voices. In fact, more or less the ideal voices that I am searching for in my video searches.

I came across a playlist called Stanford Medicine 25: Newborn Exam,

It contains six videos and I more or less promised last time that I would continue to review them video by video. Last time we covered video one (as expected it was a calm and quiet video). So this time I’ll examine video two which is this one:

Stanford Doctor’s Physical Examination of a Premature Infant

The channel will be familiar to regular readers of the Procrastination Pen (welcome, I hope you continue to enjoy). It is of course Stanford Medicine 25. The index I hold seems to indicate I have written at least ten previous articles about this channel and so it must either be a fairly consistent resource or I ran out of imagination a long time back. Take your pick.

The video is a little less than nine minutes so is another of the group of brief inadvertent ASMR candidate videos that I have reviewed of late (the issue with short videos in a playlist is the increased incidence of inter-video advert breaks).

There are zero notes with this one – which is kind of odd for a professional video. But there are a ton of comments and most of those are not only sensible but positive as well. Heaven be praised. The video commences without music and the professional is identified as Philip Sunshine, MD, Professor Emeritus Neonatal & Developmental Medicine. Sadly Philip died in April 2025, which is a shame if only that we will not have any more videos that feature him.

Philip has a lovely calm and measured voice which is non-too loud either. The baby responds by being quite chilled. There is the odd beeping noise in the background but that is not loud. He handles the baby very gently but there is the occasional complaint nonetheless. I did not find that too terrible (because they are brief) but you may find it disturbing (just a warning). I will trial it in the Procrastination Pen playlist and will field it into the archive playlist if it proves objectionable in the long term.

Just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Stanford Medicine playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

This week, for the first time in a while, I went to a car show, these mainly consist of a bunch of old blokes (or more often women nowadays) standing in a windswept field chewing the cud over which barely polished patch of rust is preferable to another one. It takes me back to where the blog began where I used to review cars, but discovered, rather early on, that I know nothing about cars and suffered a crisis of conscience in that were there not more well qualified people to write about cars than I. To which the answer had to be yes.

Today I write about sleep, and are there not more people qualified to write about sleep than I am. Absolutely. However, now we are in a world where much of the Internet is written by AI, is consumed by AI and is regurgitated by AI as fact.

In such a world I think that we all, however we struggle to create, can make a difference simply by creating some content for the Internet that is not regurgitated output from an AI. At least that is what I tell myself.

I have been trying to pay attention to an online sleep course. (It’s another pay for thing so I will not bother telling you which one). I am in the early stages but I think I can pass along a few titbits.

For example, catching up on sleep is a fallacy. If you get a bad night’s sleep attempting to sleep in to cover off the loss is not only ineffective, it is damaging to the sleep cycle. (This relies on good sleep habits being repeated night after night).

In addition, if there is sleep loss across the week, sleeping in at the weekend just does not cut it. Additional napping also tends to impact your sleep cycle and so is best avoided.

Watching a distracting video is actually unhelpful (apparently) and may keep you awake for longer. If you already have a sleep problem then saving the bed only for sleep is best.

(I must admit that I find the opposite, which is why this blog exists. Indeed, in emergencies, I have been known to come downstairs and listen to the TV drone on in order to get to sleep.

The old advice regarding blue light keeps being intoned as a great source of wisdom. But I read some time ago that the study on which that information was based used levels of blue light substantially higher than the average person is likely to be subjected to, such that the blue light is unlikely to be the problem. More problematic, by far, is to interact with services (such as social media) that have been designed to keep you engaged. That five minutes to check up on a post can easily become a couple of hours.

The amount of sleep that you need is often higher than you think, with people stating that on average they survive on six hours sleep a night but needing somewhere between seven to nine hours. You will know when you have hit the magic number when you stop feeling tired all day (I certainly have not got there yet).

A number of courses still state that as you age you need less sleep. I have banged on about this for a while so regular readers will know, as you age your sleep is likely to be more disrupted but the average number of hours sleep that you need does not change. The average still remains between seven to nine hours even in old age.

Most people report problems with sleep. In recent surveys; they report tiredness in the daytime (a possible sign of lack of sleep).

Lack of sleep affects you physically, true, but also mentally including memory, judgement and problem-solving.

After all that sleep related info, let’s look at this week’s Calm recommendation:

The Calm item this week is:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/MyrEmf4gT2

Daily Trip

==========

The Battle to Win Ourselves

—————————

### NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

### AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Meditation can help us manage the warring parts of ourselves; it makes it easier to integrate them. The part that notices the battle is not in the battle; we get more freedom by noticing the battle and backing up to watch it.

Bear in mind that this material (on Calm) is not free and so you will need to subscribe if you want to listen to it.

Following on from my promise to locate some material which was not on YouTube and therefore not subject to advertising, I take you back to Greater Good (I have written about this site a few times on this blog previously).

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/podcasts/item/happiness_break_a_meditation_to_move_through_anger

Happiness Break: A Meditation to Move Through Anger

“July 09, 2026 | 7:25

Try a practice in accepting difficult feelings like anger or irritation to help keep your cool, feel better overall, and find calm with contemplative social scientist Eve Ekman. “

This material is free; it isn’t obviously downloadable but it does not seem to require an account to listen to it. Looking at the transcript I would say that it is right on message for this blog. Additionally, I rather like Eve’s voice in this.

Recently I have been trying to focus on older ASMR videos because I am perverse and YouTube seems to insist I watch something more up to date.

I came across this one:

ASMR Annual Physical Exam Part 1

It is from a channel I was not previously familiar with which is Fairy Char ASMR 457k subscribers, five hundred and twelve, videos, forty seven playlists

Of which this one would seem to be firmly on theme for this blog:

The notes on the channel are unusually brief for a professional ASMR artist: “Fairy Char ASMR

Description

Relaxation // Sleep // Tingles

Hi everyone, my name is Char! I make ASMR videos. I have an assortment of medical, spa, beauty and many more roleplays to help trigger your ASMR.

Links

Patreon ♥patreon.com/fairychar

Instagraminstagram.com/fairycharasmr

YTMember ♥youtube.com/channel/UCn622AJ6EcQLwpltrYJR8lw/join

👕 T-Shirts & Stickers 👚teespring.com/stores/fairy-char

Tiktoktiktok.com/@fairycharasmr

facebookfacebook.com/fairycharasmr”

The notes on the video equally so: “808,615 views 12 Jul 2016

Hi everyone, thank you for watching and supporting my videos. Please like, comment and subscribe!

Love,

Charlotte

✨My Instagram:   / fairycharasmr 

✨ PATREON (To support my channel): https://bit.ly/3eUuDmh

✨ YouTube Membership (Supports my channel): https://bit.ly/3f1bSxu

✨ My Props: https://amzn.to/2YbABJv

✨ CHARITIES: https://teespring.com/stores/fairy-char

✨MY HANDMADE TINGLE BRACELETS: hellofairychar@gmail.com

✉️ :

For BUSINESS INQUIRIES: hellofairychar@gmail.com

❤️❤️ Thank you for supporting my videos on Patreon ❤️❤️: Fuinlai, Samantha, Kapil, Kamar, Bill, Cody, Blake, Constance, Ray, David R, Lucinda, Stephanie, Patricia, Jordan G, Keith S, Les is more, Holly, Freedam, Tingles, Dr. Bill, Iris H, Jason V, Jake L, Brandon, Daniel B, Caleb, DarthMark, Emmanuel, GhostyGrimy, TnT, lalabeanx”.

Comments are permitted. There are a lot of those, a number of them are borderline surreal which seems more or less normal for YouTube.

The video is twenty-seven and a half minutes. It starts without music (indeed initially the artist is not on screen and the video is silent). When Char appears, we realise that she is very quiet. I pushed the volume up a bit, but straight away we find this is going to major on the whispery – so far so normal. Although I have pointed out my preference before for the non-whispery ones (not least because they are a lot rarer).

There are keyboard sounds, equipment sounds (items being moved off-camera). There are glove-related sounds (not my favourite). Plastic related noises (loud). Blood pressure cuff related noises (quite loud). There is the odd breathy moment (not too extensive). There are various off camera rather loud noises – clunks, squeaks, clicks, scratches, none of those are that appealing. There’s a tuning fork noise (these are habitually loud; in fact, the best video I heard was where they mentioned the tuning fork and then muted the actual sound altogether).

I do like the voice; I do like the pace. The keyboard sounds are none too intrusive. There is no background noise (that I could discern). It would be better without some of those extraneous noises but I still think it worthy of a review. Why not listen for yourself.

The inadvertent ASMR this week comes from a channel that has been covered so many times by this blog I probably should charge advertising fees (if Stanford are reading, that was humour).

Stanford Medicine 25 seems to have a consistent level of delivery much of it not only great (I assume) for medical training but also reasonably good for our purposes as well. 349k subscribers, one hundred and thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists.

Today’s is tiny being only a little over four and a half minutes in length. The notes are:”68,748 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 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.

Visit us:

Website: http://stanfordmedicine25.stanford.edu/

Blog: http://stanford25blog.stanford.edu/

Facebook:   / stanfordmedic.  .

Twitter:   / stanfordmed25 

Google+: http://goo.gl/UBM7SP

Watch all videos from our dermatology series:

Approach to the Dermatology Exam:    • Approach to the Dermatology Exam (Stanford… 

Approach to Multiple Rashes:    • Approach to Multiple Rashes (Stanford Medi… 

Approach to Nevi (Moles):    • Approach to Nevi (Moles) – Stanford Medici… 

Diagnosing Acne vs. Rosacea:    • Diagnosing Acne vs. Rosacea (Stanford Medi…  “

So moderately extensive notes. No doubt I will be covering some of those other videos in future blog articles.

Bernice Kwong is the medical professional.

Approach to Multiple Rashes (Stanford Medicine 25)

The video starts with music which, as regular readers will know, is not my favourite thing and unfortunately that music seems to go on a bit. When trying to sleep I find music distracting and prefer videos not to have it. I have looked into playlists containing videos that have the play time truncated to remove the start and end music. However, I have not yet been able to make that work. No doubt a technical switch that I failed to include.

When Bernice starts to talk, we find that she has a great voice, nicely quiet, nicely paced. But sadly, there is background music that persists throughout the video. That is just too bad as Bernice could have been a great candidate for an ASMR person but the music really is quite distracting. I wonder at the decision to include it as, surely, it isn’t much of an aid to focus for eager students either. To add insult to injury, there is even more music at the tail end of this video. Definitely one for people who like music with their videos.

I’ll trial this in the Procrastination Pen playlist but I have a feeling this is one that is likely to get the boot to the archive list sooner rather than later. Shame.

So just one this week. I wish you well in your drive to get more sleep.

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

See you again next week.

The Stanford medicine playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

This week nothing whatsoever is working. As such I have time to stop and have sympathy for people who struggle for sleep. I notice that the links between sleeplessness and dementia are being used as a fuel to stoke our fears.

I’m not sure that a terror about losing your mind is exactly the mindset you need for a long, restful snooze. Just in case you would prefer a restful track designed to be quiet and to distract those kind of thoughts, the Procrastination Pen exists as a site that reviews video tracks in the hope of finding the odd one that may do that. If it turns out that you get ASMR affects from the video, so much the better but you do not need to regard it as a pre-requisite for enjoying the videos.

There is a playlist of tracks that have been reviewed so far and it always occurs at the close of these articles. So if you want to give it a review, scroll right to the end and try it for yourself.

For a while now, I have been swaggering on about having a Calm subscription and how much quieter I am finding it all than the advert-infested YouTube experience. It is true that if you have a subscription to Calm, you probably already make more use of it than you do of YouTube for night-time relaxation. Not because YouTube videos are not restful. Many of the ones already covered by this blog are quite adequate in this respect (some of them are even great).

However, the insistence of ramming loud and distracting adverts into every interval does make the experience in the round a little more testing.

I am on the search for some other free resource with restful tracks of some kind that does not require commitment to receiving a ton of adverts. When I locate such a thing, I will flag it here.

Today’s Calm track is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/XYoEpl-gZW

It’s Like This

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

I like Tamara’s voice. Sometimes I think it might be my favourite voice on Calm, sometimes not. I enjoy the content that she delivers but I often listen to Jay Shetty or Jeff Warren, dependent on what the track seems to have in it.

Mel Mah is much more about activity and I have to say I have not yet bought into the activity aspect. It is probably one of those New Year’s resolution things. To Do but not yet To Done.

The track is a little over ten minutes so it probably will not quite be enough to doze off to unless you are properly tired already. (Perhaps if you’re more bought into activity than I am and, hence, have come in from a long run or similar).

This track is about acceptance which I suppose is not a bad skill to have if your life is heading towards Alzheimer’s.

Recently I have been considering a professional ASMR artist at this stage. So why buck the trend if it seems to have worked for us so far.

This week the video is this one:

【ASMR】Eye Exam for Bloodshot Eyes and Vision Loss🏥 | Ophthalmology Roleplay【Eyelid Injection💉】

It is from the channel Runa ASMR【るな氏】, this channel has 236K subscribers three hundred and nine videos eleven playlists. The longest playlist has nearly one hundred videos in it. This seems to be an ASMR artist that is doing something right.

There are notes of course “299,990 views Sep 10, 2025 #ロールプレイ #mouthsounds #asmr

#roleplayasmr #asmr

#お耳 #talkingasmr #asmrvideo  #makeyousleep     #mouthsounds 

#originalstory #ロールプレイ  #ロールプレイ #医療ASMR #doctor #clinic

💭視力良くなりたいヨォ、コンタクト毎日変えるの大変だヨオ

🎮セカンドチャンネル

   / @るなちの遊び場 

🌙メンバーシップの参加はこちらから

   / @runaasmr575 “

However, I cannot read them.

Google translate at least reassures me that there’s nothing untoward here: “299,990 views Sep 10, 2025 #roleplay #mouthsounds #asmr

#roleplayasmr #asmr

#ears #talkingasmr #asmrvideo #makeyousleep #mouthsounds

#originalstory #roleplay #medicalASMR #doctor #clinic

💭I want to improve my eyesight, but changing my contacts every day is such a pain.

🎮Second Channel

/ @Runa’s Playground

🌙Join Membership Here

/ @runaasmr575″

Comments are permitted but the feedback is predominantly using a character set I do not understand, so they could be instructions for building a space shuttle. More likely they are commenting about how marvellous the video is because that level of adulation commonly accompanies professional ASMR artists.

The video is a little under thirty-nine minutes and so is a little longer than anything we have listened to recently. It has no startup music for which I am very grateful. The voice, as you would expect, is excellent.

Fortunately, when playing, the subtitles were in English so I’m at least clear it didn’t consist of swearing. Sadly, the keyboard features rather loudly, at least initially. But given how good the voice is, I think it is worth persisting with.

At intervals it does not appear to be about the voice. There are tapping noises, liquid sloshing noises, container unscrewing noises, pouring noises, clicking noises, gloves-related noises, equipment noises, liquid noises, plastic crinkling noises, sounds of a pestle and mortar being used to grind stuff.

All of these are a waste of time for me, I’m only here to listen to the voice. But I am betting each one is a trigger for someone. It does mean that we get a lot less of the voice than we would do otherwise, which is a shame.

I still think the voice makes it worthy of a review, why not listen for yourself.

I also think I will be revisiting this channel in the future.

I’ve been spending a lengthy amount of time of late evaluating the sleep offerings through Calm and falling asleep to them. Some excellent voices involved but given Calm is not free it would not be of much service if I start evaluating the content of Calm.

As a result, I have not written much in a while regarding YouTube content and I have been bolstered by the fact that I had written a great deal of content in the past and it was simply a case of editing it sufficiently to bring it up to date before pushing the correct button to put it out there. Calm is certainly interesting and some of the content is worth listening to but whether it is worth the money I can only leave it up to you to decide.

For me it is good to have something else available after YouTube decided to take my channel down one time, and with it all the playlists I had spent time curating. Where anybody has the power to do that to you it is well worthwhile having some other strategy available.

This is probably the message of everything available via the Internet. It is at best transient and so it is not too sensible to base anything permanent around it.

Today’s video draws from previous work indeed it is from an old favourite channel Moran Core from the Moran Eye Center. (UK readers note that is apparently the correct spelling of centre).

The video is this one:

Learning the Ophthalmoscope

It is just five- and three-quarter minutes so don’t sneeze or you’ll miss it. It’s another professional video and as we have established by now, these videos tend to come with notes (not uncommonly because they also serve to promote a service of some kind).

This video has the following notes:

“194,819 views 11 Aug 2018

Title: How to Use the Direct Ophthalmoscope

Author:  Tania Padilla Conde, 4th Year Medical Student, University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine; Christopher Bair, MD and Michele Burrow, MD

Date: 08/10/2018”

Tania seems to have a good voice for us, although the volume for me was a little loud, sufficient to sound echoey in the space where it was recorded. The video starts without extraneous startup music which is so rare that sacrifices need to be offered up to the video-recording-god in supplication for the beneficence shown.

If you are listening to this one as part of the larger Procrastination Pen playlist, you might be rolling over to the tablet and giving the volume down button a couple of disgruntled presses. Tis a shame that I do not have control of the videos in the playlist or I would normalise the volume of them a bit. I too am sometimes awakened when the playlist changes from a quiet video to a louder one.

In this case the video is interrupted by a comment by Tania which is even louder. It is all a shame because otherwise she does have a good voice.

Tania does not appear on another video on the Moran Core website so if we are going to stick with her, then a search of YouTube is in order.

Tania Conde returns quite a number of channels and a brief perusal reveals that the majority are just not going to be helpful to us.

Using “Tania Padilla Conde” instead reveals a lot of content in Spanish.

This one:

Nancy Reynoza Entrevista a la doctora Tania Padilla Conde

Which is at the pace of Speedy Gonzalez and so not at all restful.

And a couple of playlists

The first one is:

COVID-19

Consisting of twelve videos. Ranging in length from two and a half minutes to in excess of twenty minutes. Not one of them seems to be a medical examination as such.

I am also hampered in that I have zero comprehension of Spanish, so I am trusting that nothing untoward is being relayed as part of the video.

The first video of the playlist is:

Cómo usar máscara correctamente

This video starts way-way too loud and it continues at a fast pace, this is really not a suitable video for us.

Como tratar los sintomas de COVID-19 en casa.

Double the length of the previous one it starts just as loud with fast paced music. This is just not conducive to sleep.

¿Qué es la hidroxicloroquina? Ensayo clínico aprobado por Kristi Noem en South Dakota.

Continues as for the previous two videos and as such I am convinced there is no purpose in reviewing the rest of this playlist. There is nothing here that we can make use of ASMR-wise.

The second playlist is this one:

Health/Salud

Somewhat more hopeful (given the title) that there might be restful content. It contains fifteen videos ranging between two and three quarter minutes and in excess of twenty minutes.

The first video is this:

Como tratar los sintomas de COVID-19 en casa.

And oh no just as before loud start up music. It strikes me that this is eerily similar to those that we’ve just looked at. So, unfortunately, I think that this playlist isn’t going to offer anything useful either.

On that basis just one, short, video on this visit.

Onwards till next week.

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

The Moran Core 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’ve been struggling a little with time of late, and so my attention to reviewing has not been what it was. However, this week I have come across a reasonable Calm track. Although I have to caution people that it contains music, and as you know I do not find music as actually being that effective in pushing me off to sleep.

The track is this:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/7JQNaQVDM

Afternoon Nap

Refresh your mind & recharge your body with a special nap story. After a brief intro and soothing music, you’ll wake up to gentle birdsong.

NARRATOR

Erik Braa

AUTHOR

Calm

As I say, it is not for me. However, given it is dedicated to sleep I thought I should at least give you the chance to try it. However, be aware that most advice is that when you are sleep deprived, try to stick to your normal sleep routine rather than topping up with additional naps as this track would seem to suggest.

Personally, if I get an opportunity for sleep (and I can make use of it) I fill my boots. Who knows when the next such opportunity will present itself.

This week I came across a post which shows that I am certainly not alone in having problems getting off to sleep. I certainly hope that some of the people who are responding to the person posting got the opportunity to read the Procrastination Pen.

This week the professional ASMR artist is PollyTingle ASMR the channel has sixty two videos, seven playlists, 86.2K subscribers so not quite as popular as some we’ve heard of late. The video is this one:

ASMR Cranial Nerve Examination by a Neurologist 🌙 Quiet Voice / ASMR Cranial Nerve Examination

It is a little over twenty-four and a half minutes in length. Of course, it has notes (I’ve truncated them a bit) “1,773,407 views 7 Feb 2022 #asmr #asmrneurologist

This video features pleasant, relaxing music, a quiet voice, and a variety of neurological manipulations.

Unfortunately, I was ill while filming this video, so my voice is a bit sore and I have a slight fever (because of this, I cut out almost half the video 😰). But everything is fine now, and I plan to gradually return to the channel. The next video will be a continuation of the Hobbit book reading, and then I’d like to film some light but interesting trigger video (if you have any ideas, please write in the comments, I’d be very happy!)

Have a good rest, see you soon ❤”

The video is in Russian, and you need to turn off the English US option or you will have a lot of very loud interjections (presumably made by some automated process). The first “so” on the track made me jump off my chair, for example. These will really mess up any restful feelings that you might otherwise have had. Once I discovered that, I realised that the voice is actually very good.

I am not sure why the voice on the English US option is so loud but it really ruins the video in terms of ASMR. I notice that (rather uniquely for a professional ASMR artist), the comments are turned off. It is potentially possible there were any number of negative comments from English-speaking listeners that encountered this problem.

With the Russian speaking version, I have zero idea what is being said (I speak no Russian). However, it sounds very restful. There are, as expected, other noises; paper turning, brushing noises, clicking noises, rustling noises, liquid noises, writing noises. There is also a quiet musical back track (if this was an inadvertent ASMR video this would discount it from the Procrastination Pen playlist).

As you know I would prefer it was just the voice, which, assuming you only listen to the Russian version, is calming without straying into whispery. Quite a feat, given that most professional ASMR videos seem to very much focus on the whispery end of the spectrum.

The drive for the perfect playlist for ASMR sensations (or alternatively just to cause you to drift off to sleep) means that I am concerned that sometimes I have not been sufficiently critical of videos and that some “dead wood” still hangs around in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

I think that as the list continues to grow in size some of the older videos might get a severe pruning. I am thinking particularly of those with perky music at some point during the video, those with air conditioning noises or those which incorporate the odd clang or thud from the movement of medical equipment. Regular readers might be a bit surprised at the videos that get removed in this purge.

If you are not a regular reader, well hey, welcome. This is the Procrastination Pen which for over a year now has been reviewing medical videos (and occasionally videos on other subjects too) with a view to finding any that might produce ASMR effects. Sometimes we have a great day and sometimes it is more “challenging”.

Today I have a URL, and on that URL a whole gamut of videos on medical subjects. It’s odd for me to stray far from YouTube but given someone else has gone to all the effort of collating these videos into one place let’s give it a try at least.

The URL is this one:

Medical Training Videos

It has thirty-two videos (discounting the introductory one) so this might be a very long day in review terms. I suspect if the history of reviewing videos is accurate, we will be fortunate to find one in all of those thirty-two that is of much value but I’m game if anyone else is.

The first video is this one:

Advanced Life Support / Code Blue – How to lead a cardiac arrest (ALS/ACLS simulation)

On the face of it, not the most inspiring ASMR title. Comments are permitted but there are not obviously any ASMR-related ones.

It is a professionally produced video and therefore as we have come to expect there are notes, which are these:

“368,741 views 3 Feb 2017 Most Popular

How to lead a cardiac arrest /code blue using the advanced cardiac life support (ALS/ACLS) algorithms. This 360-degree medical simulation video shows a well-led ALS scenario, unscripted and in real time.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

The video is just shy of eight minutes and it begins in a bit of a hurry, and it is quite loud. Thankfully no startup music but sadly for us that is really all there is going for it ASMR-wise. It has shouting, loud equipment noises and the kind of frenetic activity almost designed to maximise sleeplessness.

Further videos are as follows:

Cardiac Arrest and ALS (Code Blue) Simulation – Training Video with Questions

It is slightly less than seven minutes the notes are:

“168,813 views 8 Mar 2017

This interactive 360-degree training video demonstrates a cardiac arrest (code blue) as if the doctor is leading an arrest for the first time. The doctor will ask questions in the arrest. PAUSE THE VIDEO WHEN YOU SEE THE INFORMATION BAR APPEARING and try to answer them – there are a number of options each time.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

It starts without startup music again, which is great for us. However, it is frenetic and loud (just like the last one). This is not going to be suitable for us.

Cardiac Arrest Experience – Patient point of view in advanced life support / code blue

The notes are:

“182,696 views 8 Mar 2017

This 360-degree video is filmed from a patient’s point of view and demonstrates what happens if you have a cardiac arrest in hospital. You (the patient) would be unconscious throughout.

If you have been a patient or relative involved in cardiac arrest please comment below – we’d love to hear from you.

This is a well-led cardiac arrest and results in a successful outcome (return of spontaneous circulation). In practice most arrests are unfortunately not successful.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

Just less than seven and a quarter minutes, no startup music, however it is far too loud for us.

Cardiac Arrest (Code Blue) Advanced Life Support – Mental Health Training

The notes are: “51,203 views 8 Mar 2017

This 360-degree training video demonstrates how to manage a cardiac arrest (code blue) using an automated defibrillator. It was filmed as part of a series to train mental health staff how to manage medical emergencies in mental health facilities.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

Just over seven and a quarter minutes, there is no startup music but as before it is loud and frenetic and so not much use to us either.

Cardiac Arrest and Advanced Life Support (ALS) in 360 Degrees – TRAILER

For which the notes are: “35,322 views 12 Dec 2016 Most Popular

Trailer for our Cardiac Arrest and Advanced Life Support (ALS)/ Code Blue simulation videos. These are clips of three 360-degree medical simulation videos we’re producing at Oxford Medical Education to train doctors in running cardiac arrest situations.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

Only a little over one and a half minutes but it is excessively loud in any case.

Choking and Cardiac Arrest (Code Blue) Advanced Life Support

A little less than two- and three-quarter minutes the notes are: “38,966 views 12 Feb 2017

This 360-degree training video demonstrates how to manage a cardiac arrest (code blue) due to choking. It was filmed as part of a series to train mental health staff how to manage medical emergencies in mental health facilities.

Produced with Rewind VR studio and filmed in the Education Centre at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. 

For further information visit ww.oxfordmedicaleducation.com or comment below.”

Again, it starts loud, it continues loud and so it is not useful for us.

Respiratory Examination – Clinical Skills

A little less than eleven minutes. The notes are: “376,646 views 27 Feb 2015 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School – demonstrates how to perform an examination of the respiratory system. It also indicates common pathologies encountered. It is part of a series of videos covering basic clinical examinations and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com).”

The start is with an introduction, the person has a good voice for us and it is not excessively loud. The actual examination though is a little on the echoey side as if filmed in a large corridor. The examination is also dogged by background noise (likely air conditioning). However, the medical professional has a good voice for our purposes.

This is a good video for the procrastination pen playlist.

I think that I will conclude the blog post at this one and continue in a second 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 University College London Hospitals playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

I am reflecting on the double-edged nature of companionship. On the one hand, many resources now indicate that loneliness is a killer. That having people regularly in one’s life is a source of happiness. On the other hand, it is rare that you will find yourself having arguments with yourself… It isn’t often that you find you’ve made a profound social gaffe whilst completely in your own company. It is hard to get stressed and anxious over a quiet evening in, accompanied only by a book.

If you find that social events have got on top of you and you’re lying awake when you should be asleep, mulling over the various errors you made and perhaps the need to go back and apologise afterwards. Be assured a good night’s sleep may ameliorate some of those feelings, and a good night’s sleep is what this blog is here to promote.

Of late, I have been starting the blog articles with something provided by Calm. I am lucky enough to have a Calm subscription and I do so love the absence of advertising. In many ways Calm is not ideal, the need to pay for it being a big one. The absence of the ability to create playlists is a second. Third the fact that every day the content changes and that item you so loved yesterday will now be absent, unless you remember what it was called and go search for it.

However, I think the content provided is great. I like the voices of the professionals involved. Much of the material is not only restful but educational as well. So far, I have not encountered one loud and distracting advert deliberately interposed with the restful content in order to grab your attention.

Today’s suggestion is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/b-gRGIQlxn

Daily Trip

Vertical Thinking

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Jeff has an excellent voice, second only to Tamara on this site for me. I also really enjoy a lot of the content that Jeff chooses. We seem to have similar interests and concerns in some areas. I hope you also enjoy his stuff. (If you have a subscription, that is).

This is just a little over eight minutes so it won’t take you long. This concerns rumination and the periods of quiet in between.

If you’ve been following the blog for a while you will realise that, of late, I like to review a professional ASMR artist. Mostly this is in contrast to the inadvertent ASMR which is the bread and butter of this blog. Also, I thought anybody meandering across this blog might enjoy the variety.

This week we are looking at a video which is brief in comparison to many professional ASMR videos we have examined.

ASMR Inspecting Your Entire Body, Soft Spoken, Personal Attention

it’s a little over seventeen and a half minutes in length so it is not going to keep us very long.

As a professional ASMR artist’s video, we would expect there would be notes and we would expect that a fair proportion of the notes would be about self-promotion. The notes associated with this video are: “47,900 views 5 Oct 2025 #asmr #asmrsounds #asmrvideo

Hey my friends, I hope you’ve been well! Tonight, I am going to be random inspections on your body to help you unwind and relax! Let me know what your favourite part was! Thank you so much for watching! xx

Instagram ➤   / brittneymay__ 

Business Inquiries ➤ brittneymay.asmr1999@gmail.com

Throne Gifting ➤ https://thronegifts.com/u/brittneymay

(Please don’t feel obligated to gift me anything! I just set this up for if you are feeling generous and would like to support myself and my channel!)

My Upload Schedule:

Wednesday’s ➤ 4 PM PST/ 7 PM EST

Saturday’s ➤ 4 PM PST/ 7 PM EST

Thank you for watching and supporting my channel, I am so grateful! ✿

✿

#asmr #asmrvideo #asmrsounds #asmrinspection

Brittney May ASMR

138K subscribers”

It is enormously gratifying to find such restrained notes associated with such a video. In addition, the video does not start with whoever is sponsoring the video today. You don’t get to see videos of that nature on this blog. Sponsor’s information in a video is, I find, hugely distracting. I can see that someone has to buy the groceries but I would have thought the place for details of the sponsor would be in the associated notes, not taking up ten percent of the actual video.

Comments are permitted and, whacky feedback allowing, mostly reinforce the idea that ASMR artists are held in high-esteem by YouTube visitors (well the ones who can be bothered to leave comments, in any case).

The voice is, as expected, excellent. It is very towards the whispery end of presentation which seems to be where a number of ASMR artists find themselves. Perhaps this is what the listening public is demanding. It isn’t a terrible idea; I just cannot envisage a medical professional actually holding a session in that way. It has a tendency to be a bit on the breathy side, again a number of ASMR professionals also do this. Perhaps a quantity of ASMR afficionados find that characteristic appealing. Personally, I am all about the quality of the voice.

There are various other noises, gloves, rustling, cloth-related noises, thumping noises, wood against wood noises, scribbling noises, finger drumming noises, brushing noises, spraying noises, scraping noises.

At least there is no startup or tail-end video music which seems to mar many inadvertent ASMR videos I have reviewed.

I would say the setting appears to be more domestic than hospital-related but as you’ll be listening rather than watching I doubt it will phase you. The channel is Brittney May ASMR it has 138K subscribers from five hundred and three videos there is one playlist containing thirty-four videos. Interestingly from our point of view these are on a medical theme (which this blog has been for several months now).

You may want to check that playlist out for yourself:

I rather liked this video. I certainly can see some value in you giving it a review.

If you wandered into this blog article without previous awareness of the blog, you might like to know what it is all about and why you should be interested.

The Procrastination Pen, for over a year now has been searching for medical videos (and sometimes other videos) predominantly on YouTube (but not uniquely so) for content which might cause ASMR symptoms (in people lucky enough to feel ASMR symptoms).

In this case, it is for people who get “tingles” or similar ASMR symptoms from people speaking quietly and calmly (even so far as whispering). However, this does not cater for people who like scratching, squelching, paper turning or other stimuli.

For those who sadly do not feel ASMR symptoms, the aim is that the video will be quiet enough to relax you. The hope is that you will relax sufficiently that sleep will come more easily. If you leave the Procrastination Pen playlist playing, it is also hoped that it is calm and quiet enough that if you do awaken during the night, you will find it more straightforward to fall back to sleep.

Sometimes life is too busy to read a review of individual videos and for people who find themselves in that situation, the playlist is always found at the end of each blog article – simply scroll straight to the end and pick up the link from there.

This week we come in with a video which by title is part way through a sequence of videos – such is the way that recommendations on YouTube seem to work. Logic does not necessarily appear to be relevant.

The video is this one:

Examination of the Hand – Part 3

It is a little less than ten minutes and features Roger Pillemer as the medical professional and he has an absolutely excellent voice for our purposes. Quiet, gentle and moderately slow paced, what is not to like.

The channel is called Roger Pillemer and has twenty-five videos as at the date I am looking at it. The oldest seems to be seven years old and the latest just a month ago. There are two playlists one of which has seventeen videos and the other five. Our video of course occurs in the longer playlist and I do think the longer playlist is a little – long.

Any review of seventeen videos will probably have you reaching for the TV remote control, or similar, part way through.

However, there are three videos called “Examination of the Hand” so let’s review the other two.

Examination of the Hand – Part 1

As before, Roger’s voice is what carries the day. The presentation isn’t necessarily fascinating but above all, it is relaxing. There are no disturbing noises, no background air conditioning racket and no equipment noises. Sadly, there is start-up music but thankfully it is muted. There is also a continuing background music which plays continuously throughout. Sadly, I think this discounts this video from being included in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

It is nearly thirteen- and three-quarter minutes which is a presentation regarding the hand. Usually, I reject videos involving presentation as being excessively loud, as if trying to project from a stage to a large audience. Roger does not make that mistake. He remains as quiet as he was in the first video of this blog article.

Examination of the Hand – Part 2

This is just less than twelve minutes and the same problem as the last video i.e. a music track that plays continuously. A great shame as Roger has a really great voice.

So sadly, just one video on this occasion.

However, the playlist is now really quite large so plenty there for you to enjoy.

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

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’m spending some time recently exploring psychology books and trying to work out if I am actually learning anything about myself, or if I have an ego sufficiently huge that nothing is ever going to penetrate it. I have found that no matter how many books I read, it does not seem to translate into more of a restful life. Which probably says a great deal about my inability to learn effectively.

So, given life is carrying on at the hubbub it had last year (or more likely an ever-increasing pace with each passing year), I have found it helpful to have something restful to listen to. It was for this reason that I started to explore ASMR. I’m not sure if I am a typical ASMR listener, (I have a sinking sensation that many such people are a great deal younger for instance).I did pretty swiftly find that the quality of “ASMR” was highly variable. I wondered how I would settle down with an ASMR track in the hope of getting to sleep, knowing that the ASMR video was actually going to be restful (and not crammed with all kinds of weird effects designed to hammer on every “trigger”, as if it needed a 4lb hammer).

After a while I realised that I couldn’t depend on the commentary associated with the videos. It ranges from sycophantic through aggressive, onto asinine. The review sites I found seemed to belong to people whose ears were obviously assembled in a different factory to mine. Therefore, I was going to have to review the material in advance before I wanted to use it and make use of some method of storing the ones that were worth listening to.

YouTube played material without paying up front. At the time, the adverts really did not seem too overpowering, but the clincher was that you could assemble the items that you liked into a playlist for subsequent playing. There was no need to own the videos to do so.

I also discovered that you could make the playlist public, so that other people could benefit from the work that you had done.

I reasoned that I would have to be pretty formal in my approach and hence, this process of reviewing videos started. I hope that you have ears not too dissimilar to mine and that therefore you will like the videos that I like.

If so, the Procrastination Pen playlist always appears at the end of every one of these articles and you can hop over to YouTube and see if you like what you hear.

A little while ago I started listening to Calm, mostly because it does not have the advertising load of a YouTube track. The downside is that you are going to need a subscription.

For many people this will be a show-stopper and if so, the YouTube reviews are coming very soon in this article (scroll down a bit). I used to be the same. I find too often now I’ve drifted off to a charming little ASMR video only to have some loud and distracting advert kick off and rouse me back to wakefulness again. In fact, of late this has become so frequent that I think it is by design. Advertising pays the bills, after all.

Today’s Calm track is taken from the Calm Dailies. I find these rather more approachable than Calm “sleep” tracks. The artists involved, frankly, have better voices. The Calm Dailies do not have music (I find music is just not as restful as people would have you believe). Some of the Calm “sleep” tracks involve an actual story and so rather than drifting off to la la land, you find yourself engaging with the story.

The Calm track this week is this one:

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

Daily Calm

Thinking

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

Tamara has a great voice. She maybe my favourite but I rather like Jeff Warren, so I dither in the mornings when I am looking at the next track. That said, Jay Shetty has much of the more interesting material, especially if I need a mental kick up the backside – which is most of the time, frankly.

This is quite a long one for a Calm Daily, in that it is nigh on 11 minutes in length. It is about obsessive thinking. If you find yourself struggling with intrusive thoughts at bedtime, this may well be the track for you.

I’ve settled into a semi-rigid structure for several weeks now: Calm review, professional ASMR review, inadvertent ASMR review. The blog originally only considered inadvertent ASMR videos. It has evolved this way. So, in deference to custom, this is this week’s video from a professional ASMR artist:

ASMR – Extremely Satisfying Allergy Test!

It’s a professional ASMR video so of course it has notes and of course the notes are going to promote the ASMR artist: “410,294 views 24 Sept 2025

Hi guys, welcome back! In today’s video I’m doing your allergy test. Hope you enjoy!

My Spotify Nanou ASMR: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2trBl…

My TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial

My Dutch vlog channel (with subtitles):    / @nanouphilipsvlogs  

My new English vlog channel:    / @nanouphilips  

🖥 My other channel:    / @nanouphilips 

🖥 My channel with shorts:    / @nanouasmrshorts 

📱My Instagram:   / nanouphilips 

🎥 Production: Arc Agency – contact: info@arcagency.be

TikTok: nanou.philips

TikTok ASMR: nanouasmrofficial

Twitch:   / nanouasmr  

🅿️Paypal: https://paypal.me/NanouASMR

📧 E-mail: nanou.asmr@outlook.be”

The notes were so extensive I’ve given you the edited highlights, which, to my mind, are still way too long.

There are comments, of course, and, of course, because it is a professional ASMR artist they vie towards the sycophantic side. So far, so usual.

The video comes from the channel Nanou ASMR, this has 1.75M subscribers, seven hundred and fifty-two videos nineteen playlists, more than one of those playlists has in excess of one hundred videos. So, a hard-working ASMR artist – full kudos given. I am a little concerned because the last video I listened to that had in excess of 1.5 million people raving about it, I really couldn’t get on with at all. Let’s see how this one fares.

It is surprising how often a video starts from a professional ASMR artist that raves about their latest sponsor and so it is a rare experience to be free of that. I disregard completely the many I find that do that. Making money is reasonable but I do find this disrupts the ASMR experience, whether you introduce sponsor du jour in a whispering voice or you do not.

In this case we are music free, sponsor free, and the video starts instead with what I assume to be recognised “trigger” sounds.

Clucking noises, keyboard noises, paper-related noises, donning-gloves noises, crinkling noises, tapping noises, liquid noises, a potpourri of sound, presumably designed as a catch-all of “triggers” for any attending ASMR devotee.

I am not really interested in that. I’m here for the voice and so how is it? The voice as you would expect, with such a popular artist, is excellent. Presentation is on the whispery side of whispery and so is about as believable as Boffo for Prime Minister, but this does not detract from its effectiveness as an ASMR voice or as the audio for a restful video. It does that job very well, in fact.

Sadly, the keyboard is selected for its ability to be heard which is sad, because I would prefer that it wasn’t heard at all. I think the keyboard is distracting and excessively loud. No doubt there are some ASMR fans who just love that kind of thing (I guess a number of subscribers to this YouTube channel, in fact).

There are quite a few rustling noises, gloves, clothing, the ASMR artist moving around. This is not obtrusive and so if it isn’t your thing either, it should not cause any concerns.

I’m not sure why ASMR artists do that clicking/clucking noise at intervals with their tongue, it seems out of place to me, but I just bet there is a die-hard devotee that turns up for new videos just to hear that sort of thing.

The plastic arm that intrudes into view and is then drawn on with a felt tipped pen is a tad on the surreal side, as if Metal Mickey had turned up for an examination. Given that you’ll be listening rather than watching, I’d say this should not have any impact. I’d say the video goes on about two to three minutes longer than I would have liked but a heck of a lot of subscribers disagree with me. On that basis you may want to give it a review.

The routine in these articles for the last few months has been that now I deal with the material on which I originally based the blog i.e. inadvertent ASMR videos. Of late, this has been videos on a medical theme, just because I have found a lot of success finding calm and restful videos where those videos were designed to illustrate some medical concept or other.

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

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

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

I think this will be the concluding such article, as I believe I have calculated that we have covered very nearly every video available. I make it that there are six left to cover and so we’ll mop those up in this article. I suspect we are getting a bit towards the tail-end in terms of quality as well but I live to be surprised.

Straight Leg Raise & Femoral Nerve Stretch Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

In case there are people who have not read any of those previous articles, I will include the notes associated with this video so you see how they work. The notes are lengthy and I’ll only include them once (or this will grow to become a very long article composed principally of notes).

The notes are: “48,856 views 14 Sept 2022  Musculoskeletal Examination OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to perform a straight leg raise (a.k.a. sciatic stretch test) and a femoral nerve stretch test in an OSCE station.

You can read our step-by-step guide to the examination of the spine here: https://geekymedics.com/spine-examina…

Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources, including:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapters:

00:00 Straight leg raise

00:36 Femoral nerve stretch test

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

Join the Geeky Medics community: 👩👩👧👧

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

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…”

As we have heard in the previous articles, these videos commence with an unwelcome piece of startup music. So far, I have found no mechanism for removing startup music on someone else’s video. If I had, you would see more of the videos that have been rejected on the road to getting the odd “acceptable” one out to you.

I have tolerated the startup music in previous Geeky Medics videos and I will do so this time. It does not preclude bumping them to the archive list at some point in the future.

This video is a little over one and a half minutes so it is rapidly over with. It is the voice here that is excellent. There is background noise but it is not excessive. There are periods of silence which might be distracting whilst listening. Personally, I found this quite restful.

There is tail end music which is even louder than the startup music and it would be great if it just wasn’t there at all. Of course, given the video is a short one, there is much more opportunity for distracting adverts which was certainly maximised at the time I was reviewing this one.

Lachman’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

One and a quarter minutes long and so none of the ones we’re looking at this week seem to be very long at all. It finds time for the distracting start up music though. It is nicely calm in the few moments it is actually playing. However, it also finds time for the even louder tail end music – I’d have to ask why this is necessary.

Anterior & Posterior Drawer Test & Collateral Ligaments Assessment – OSCE Guide | Clip

Just over one and a half minutes and now we’re in the swing of these, we know how it will go, distracting start up music, nice calm presentation, even worse tail end music, YouTube advert…

Patella Tap & Sweep Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

All of these seem of a similar length; this is the same length as the last one. The format is the same as the previous ones including unwelcome musical parts. This video seems to have been substantially slowed down and is mostly silent. This makes for very calming watching but does not contribute much when you’re listening and not watching.

Thomas Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

This one is shorter at just over one and a quarter minutes. Same format as the previous ones. In common with previous OSCE videos there are on screen medical notes for medical students. Of course, these are of no interest to us. The presentation is beautifully calming, but oh so brief and it’s back to funky music again.

Trendelenburg’s Test – OSCE Guide | Clip

The last ever such video and the last item in blog posts featuring Geeky Medics. It has been a while now. This is the shortest so far at only slightly over a minute. Same music top and tail. Same on-screen notes, useful to medical students but not to us. Same calming voice but this time we barely have time to hear it before it is back to the music again.

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

The Geeky Medics playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I was thinking how easy it is to feel that people are not being supportive. The mind can fancy a journey of its own. Simply not hearing from someone can do it. Finding that some significant life event occurred and they did not tell you, perhaps. It is not surprising therefore, that the mind can go on a restive journey just as you’re trying to get some sleep.

Those with mental discipline instruct the mind to obedience, no doubt. The less self-controlled do well to distract it with something restful. For such a purpose did the Procrastination Pen first start reviewing restful videos, many moons ago now.

This week, for the first time, a Calm track that is dedicated to getting you off to sleep which has some possibility of doing that:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/pBsp3Sb6MT

Yours, Finn

Andrew Scott reads a series of letters from a writer to his long-distance lover — pondering place and time, longing and belonging, and the meaning of home.

NARRATOR

Andrew Scott

AUTHOR

Florence Skelton

It is calm, the voice has a great tone, there is an absence of music (God be praised). I’d say this one is well worth a review on the assumption that you can. Calm is a paid-for offering and I’m not about to recommend that you shell out for it, if you haven’t already.

Each week, I check out an offering from a professional ASMR artist to see if it is a big improvement on the inadvertent ASMR videos that I set up the blog to review; goodness knows how long ago now.

This week I thought I’d review the following:

POV assessing your spinal function, flexibility assessment & neurological exam | cranial nerve test

It is from the channel asmr august. That channel has 252K subscribers, two hundred and eighty-seven videos, eighteen playlists. Quite a few subscribers, so I, for one, have very high expectations.

The video is a little over thirty-two and a half minutes long. Given it is a professional ASMR video you will be unsurprised to realise that it has notes:

“506,222 views 7 Apr 2025 #asmr #sleep

soft spoken assessing as you sit still

• palpation of the cervical, thoracic, lumbar spine

• testing your nerves

• checking for slipped discs

• ligament and muscle touching

• movement camera tilting

• reflexes testing

• cranial nerve exam

• neurological exam

• video to sleep

*My content is for entertainment purposes and should not be taken as actual medical/beauty advice. I am acting and not a professional.

#asmr #sleep”

Fortunately, not the great long tortuous notes which we sometimes come across.

Comments are permitted and given this is a professional ASMR artist, it is unsurprising that they are predominantly positive. That just seems to be how it goes with professional ASMR artists.

There is no startup music, thankfully. There are however equipment noises, paper noises, clothing rustling noises, scribbling noises, noises from the donning of gloves, noises from spraying, quite loud blood pressure cuff sounds.

It is not the most whispery presentation I have heard and as we would expect, the voice is excellent. It occasionally descends into breathy. None of this is obtrusive or excessive. In fact, I think asmr august is worthy of a future visit.

Recently, I have been finding that the playlist just is not working for me at all. In fact, several nights I find that I sit in front of the television until finally sleep comes and then it does not seem to last long.

For this reason, I am thinking of waging war on the playlist to ensure that only the highest quality items remain in there.

Today’s blog item comes from an area that is well-established in this blog now, that of eye-related examinations.

Qpercom presents Observe in Action: Eye Exam OSCE Station

It is five and a quarter minutes long and bravely supports comments, a number of which (as we have come to expect) are critical. The Internet, and more particularly YouTube, generating a number of experts who know much more than the ones who actually create content.

It’s a professional video and so, as we would expect, it has notes: “24,624 views  23 May 2013

Homepage

This video demonstrates how examiners use Qpercom Observe to assess medical students during an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE). For further information or to schedule a demonstration at your institution please visit http://www.qpercom.com

Contact:

Tel: +353 91395416

info@qpercom.com

What is an OSCE exam?: https://www.qpercom.com/what-is-an-os…”

In case you are interested that final URL is: https://www.qpercom.com/what-is-an-osce-exam/ which should help clarify an OSCE for those (like me) who have not been exposed to one.

It starts without music, which is fantastic., However there is a sound like a football whistle at the start which is most disconcerting. The medical professional announces herself as “Elaine” (possibly misspelled). The patient is “Francis”. Both participants appear to have Irish accents. In fact, the voices here are the true highlight. Both are very relaxing to listen to.

People wander across the camera. Hopefully no one will actually be watching though but lying there listening and trying to get some rest. There is the constant background hum (almost certainly air conditioning) – we’re getting used to this. There is then a further whistle sound after the initial examination concludes (about 3:35 on the playing time).

I often complain that a bit of editing would make some videos perfect and so again here. Eliminating that damn whistle would be a true asset.

The second part of the video is intended to be a contrast with Dr Macdonald the medical professional (again, this may well be misspelled).

Despite the fact that this is supposed to be a bad exam, it is equally good sound wise. Immediately afterwards, there is yet another whistle sound.

I have a feeling despite the great presentation this extra whistle noises are going to consign this to the archive list at some point in the future.

The participants are documented. The “Patient” who announces himself as Francis is in fact Michael Browne. Elain Loughlin is the first medical professional and Niamh Mc Donnell the second.

The channel is Qpercom and it has thirty eight videos, and most of these do not appear to be that useful from our perspective.

There is one playlist QPC https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy-XOfRwSfY6II-w_4sDlCl4kPmWEgFMu

Which seems to focus on videos that are not useful for ASMR (eight of them). It appears to be a collection of videos to sell the Qpercom product. Good for them, not so useful for us (particularly as it seems to feature a great deal of enlivening music, the last thing that you want when trying to get to sleep).

Therefore, in this case I think it best to restrict myself to videos in which there is actually some kind of medical examination taking place. This restricts those that are available (and those available are short, in terms of duration).

Of these, we have:

Qpercom Basic Life support

One- and three-quarter minutes and sadly it starts up with that whistle noise again. Otherwise, there is an ongoing background noise (a low hum which could well be air conditioning). However, if it were not for that whistle noise it would be great for our purposes. Then they commit the offence of repeating the whistle noise – twice at the end. I will trial it in the Procrastination Pen playlist but I’m pretty clear that if it becomes irritating, it is going in the archive.

Qpercom Basic Life Support- Short

Only forty-five seconds surely this time they cannot be including a blasted whistle noise. Oh but they do. It is basically a cut down of the one featured just previously and all of the comments above for that one apply here as well. Although at least there is only one whistle noise in this one.

Qpercom presents Observe in Action: Breaking Bad News OSCE Station

A little over nine minutes, but that gives time for the initial whistle noise again. There is a small background noise (a hiss). It is quite muted, the voices of both participants are excellent. Without the whistle this would probably be premier class.

There are further whistles as there is a transition between participants. And just to round it off a further whistle noise.

Qpercom presents Observe in Action: Handwashing OSCE Station

Just less than two and a half minutes. The whistle noise as expected, and a lot of noise which I think is the sound of running water hitting the bottom of a stainless-steel sink. There are equipment noises and a whistle noise as there is a transition between presenters. To conclude another whistle noise.

I notice the credits refer to NUI Galway, as expected this has a YouTube channel it has 1.2K videos and 5.51K subscribers, but history tells us that the videos will be about promoting the University (quite rightly) so I will not be investigating that any further.

Qpercom presents Observe in Action: BMI OSCE Station

A bit less than seven and a half minutes. Comments are of course critical. There is that whistle noise again but otherwise it is calm. Again, the voices of the participants are excellent, if only the whistle wasn’t included. There is another whistle as we transition between presenters (roughly half way through the video). A further whistle noise at the end.

Really the whistle noises ruin what is otherwise a good experience.

Qpercom presents Observe in Action: An electronic OSCE Solution

A little less than five and three quarter minutes and the last possible candidate on the site I can currently find. None of these have been ideal, with the whistle noises, and this one has additional noises from a slamming door and a very echoey track. Presumably the action was filmed in a large space with minimal sound deadening in place.

I’m going to run them in the Procrastination Pen playlist but only because the voices of the participants are great. The additional noises distract from the experience and, to be fair, it will probably result in all of them hitting the archive list before too long. However, you will get the time to review them before it does so…

The Qpercom 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

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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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

A narrowing amount of time to deal with blog posts as I am about to be out of the country for a while. I was reflecting this week on the stresses of being able to travel. All the documentation, insurance, tickets, booking forms and online details. Then there are the things to remember, the money, the property information, the boarding passes, the passports, the details of the rental car. There’s the need to be up-and-Adam at stupid-o-clock. A lengthy journey to an immense building designed to beat the resistance out of the most chipper individual. The interminable queues. The seating crammed with strangers’ backsides. The security akin to an abattoir holding pen.

After all that the wedging into a tiny space for hours entertained by a constant background droning, coughing, sneezing, snoring and children crying. Pitching out somewhere strange. The need to find the car rental, the place you are staying, the negotiations over check in. Then and only then the rest that this entire process was supposed to promote.

And I reflect that every one of these is a first-world problem that many in the world would fight to have the possibility of.

I begin to see that it is all kind of mad and perhaps we are all a little mad for continuing to indulge in it.

Perhaps when such events are normal it is unsurprising that life is not that beneficial for sleep and many of us have to adjust in any way we find feasible to get what shut-eye we can. If we just can’t get enough sleep to afterwards compensate with any legal chemical (such as caffeine) to keep going when getting enough sleep is looking unlikely.

In such circumstances if you have managed to find even a few minutes to look at the Procrastination Pen I reflect upon the miracle that must have relied upon. I welcome you, however briefly.

If you have not been here before, this little blog really tries to find anything that is restful. To review it for its restfulness and to present it as a possibility to listen to when your mind is racing and will not be assuaged by visions of jumping sheep.

As is usual this week I have a track from Calm. Calm is a paid-for service and I appreciate that you probably pay for way too much already. The advantage, for me, is that it does not have advertising. You will not be interrupted whilst you are trying to get some sleep. The disadvantage is that it does not provide a mechanism for assembling playlists that I have been able to ascertain (In the web-based version at any rate) and of course the need to pay before listening.

This week’s Calm track is this one:

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

Daily Jay

Self-Stories

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

It is about the stories that we tell ourselves. How these stories influence our self-image and self-worth. It isn’t obviously sleep material. To date though I have found the Calm dailies to be better in terms of restfulness than the Calm material that is supposed to be about sleep. Jay isn’t the most restful voice on Calm; I think that is Tamara Levitt. However, Jay does great inspirational material. I find myself listening to him more often than not.

Recently I have been reviewing YouTube videos for professional ASMR artists and being hyper critical. Often finding much to be critical about. As I review professional ASMR artists I find that the inadvertent ASMR videos, I have been looking at, have actually been maintaining a higher standard than I had previously given credence to. With this history in mind, I approach this week’s video. I had noticed that since I reviewed an ASMR video with a steampunk theme the purely medical nature of the YouTube videos that appear in my recommendations has filtered down somewhat. Perhaps the variety will appeal to my audience. Then again perhaps it will not. Feel free to let me know if you are not really appreciating the direction of travel.

This week’s is

[ASMR] Vintage Reverie | Traditional Scalp Healing Ritual

straight away I realise that the video is not going to be merely based upon speaking. There are occasional taps, hisses and noises of items being moved.

It is twenty two minutes long and so positively whistling past in comparison with some we’ve heard. There are notes and refreshingly these are kept very short: “21,293 views 10 Sept 2025

Back to 1920s again~

==============================

Hello Guys!!! I’m Miranda, if u like my videos, u could click “LIKE”. More videos of mine, “SUBSCRIBE” and watch more~!!! LOVING U~

我是MT，喜欢我的影片的话，希望大家按下【喜欢】，想收看更多我的影片请【订阅】哦~~感谢大家的支持~

微       博：MTkoala

bilibili：https://space.bilibili.com/6881318

网易云音乐：http://music.163.com/#/djradio?id=662…

荔枝fm：http://www.lizhi.fm/1256826/”

The clue is right there; the video is not in English. However, I do rather like the voice and, although the presenter could be swearing for all I know, I’ll blithely assume it is all relevant material. Just not in a language I can understand.

The site is Mandarin Whispers 官方频道 with 69.6K subscribers there are three hundred and forty eight videos and three playlists so this site also seems to be punching above its weight in terms of subscribers. There are comments but a number of these have responded in Chinese characters so I have no idea if they are positive. Given the halo around ASMR professionals I will make a guess that they are.

The voice tends towards the whispery but is a good voice nonetheless. There are ceramic noises, hair brushing noises and a noise of a stone being applied to skin. There are liquid noises and cloth rustling noises. These additional noises seem to me distracting. Others may find them the bread and butter of what they are looking for in an ASMR video. Personally, the video wasn’t the greatest. I would have preferred the same thing but just with the voice. At least some of the more irritating aspects of other videos are missing (such as startup music or air conditioning noises). It’s a bit of faint praise though I fear.

Based on that, let’s move onto the normal Procrastination Pen material, which is all about inadvertent ASMR videos. (Videos designed with a different purpose in mind but which nonetheless turn out to be restful). Habitually, I select these based upon the voice of the participant.

Another week, another video, another chance for rest and relaxation. Perhaps a good alternative to the Friday evening glass of wine for relaxation. Given the usual posting date more likely a Monday evening, but I’ll gloss over that; who knows when you might be reading this.

This time a video that comes from a technique to which I have not given much time on this blog (that might be about to change).

The Alexander Technique

This one is incredibly brief at slightly over three minutes. One would hope it does not have time to do anything too loud or off-putting. It is a professional video and hence it has notes: “54,429 views 30 May 2014

http://www.concordmedia.org.uk/produc…

A demonstration of the Alexander Technique.

A clear demonstration of the Alexander Technique. Dr Barlow uses a young woman previously unfamiliar with this therapy to show how posture has to be learned, and the great benefits it can bring.

Distributed by Concord Media

Website: http://concordmedia.org.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/ConcordMedia

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ConcordMedia59”

The comments reveal that this is a snippet of a much longer video available for purchase from here http://www.concordmedia.org.uk/products/the-alexander-technique-by-dr-wilfred-barlow-210/

But I would not be able to share the purchased version with you, so for our purposes, there is not much point in going down that route.

It is (as commentators have noted) a shame that more is not available on YouTube as Dr Barlow has a great voice. It was apparently filmed in 1990 so it has been around for quite a while.

There are no extraneous noises – material like this is the reason that I keep looking each week on YouTube. Sadly, it is all over so quickly.

The channel is Concord Media. It has 1.4K videos and 13.8K subscribers – wow.

There are a number of playlists but none at all seem to be concerned with The Alexander Technique. Therefore, sadly this one is it. More next time.

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