Sleeping With ASMR

Some things are changing locally for me which might impact the ongoing nature of this blog, or perhaps the regularity of updates. If I can, I will flag if updates are likely to slow down.

Meantime, I will continue with today’s item.

I have been trying to get more disciplined with my approach to Calm. i.e. to do one of the Calm daily meditations once per day. In general, they are ten minutes in length and one would imagine that ten minutes is going to be available every day, right? Hmm, the resolution is only so-so effective, I have to say.

However, I can say that I found the following one of interest:

Exploring Anger

Tamara Levitt

https://www.calm.com/app/player/5PLKQJSzYP

Tamara has a great voice and I think this one is a great one to play before sleep. Should you already have a Calm subscription, that is. As I’m sure I’ve said before, I am not a salesperson and no one is likely to be paying me to flog their specific pro-meditation product. Also, I know that other products exist (I spent a while in the past using Headspace, for example).

At this point, I have recently been reviewing a professional ASMR artist and in some way determining how well it stands up to my inadvertent ASMR video reviews. This week I have come across a channel that is dedicated to Unintentional ASMR videos. In fact, it is called

Pure Unintentional ASMR and has 398K subscribers (wow). I have had reservations about hosting videos originally belonging to other people (given I am not a copyright solicitor and what I don’t know might cost me).

However, this channel has no such reservations one hundred and forty-seven videos made by a number of different people. There is no way I could deliver this breadth of material in terms of a blog or a playlist. It is possible that I may browse back here again, but probably not for this blog, as all the work has been done. What can a humble reviewer add?

If, like me, you like inadvertent ASMR material it looks like you could do worse than browse this channel of an evening quite possibly as an aid to sleep. However, just because this channel is doing something so well is not going to cause me to stop reviewing ASMR videos – some people may like to read the reviews after all.

It is necessary to choose one artist from amongst the many. Completely arbitrarily, I have chosen this one:

VERY Soft-Spoken Engineer talks about her career while you sleep

This video is just under one hour and twenty minutes in length (wow). It was posted very recently.

Comments are permitted and these are largely positive, some seem to refer to a previous incarnation of this channel. It would seem it has been taken down before (at least once).

There are (I’m afraid) a very large set of notes, with an element of self-promotion for the channel amongst them so this is the edited highlights:

“Cynthia Barnhart is an award-winning engineer who has studied and now works for MIT. She also has a ridiculously soft-spoken voice for you to fall asleep fast too. Perfect for unintentional ASMR!

So we’ve combed through this interview to cut out as many unwanted sounds as we could to try and create the best unintentional ASMR experience possible. Hope you enjoy and find this unintentional ASMR interview as relaxing and interesting as I do.

A huge thanks to the MIT Infinite History project for the video. You can learn more about that here: https://infinitehistory.mit.edu/

Their channel: / @infinitehistoryprojectmit8815

🔴 In case this channel is removed, please subscribe to our newsletter for updates on new videos locations: http://eepurl.com/ds-orr. We will never email you about anything other than a new channel.”

The original video is here:

and it is not one I’ve come across before, a great find by this channel. It is interesting that they are preparing already for the channel to be taken down. Something which I fear may happen, given the many sources of the videos. I suggest if you like this sort of thing fill your boots quickly.

Given the video has been edited to enhance the ASMR attributes, it is no surprise that the voice is excellent. There is no startup music – hurray. There is no terrible background noise – hip-hip, no hesitation, no staccato delivery, in fact it is pretty nigh perfect for this kind of video.

A further attribute that I like, in this context, is the lack of whispering. There is, I am sure, a place for whispering in ASMR videos, but there seems rather a lot of such videos. It is refreshing to find one that does not take refuge in whispering.

So onto my own inadvertent ASMR candidate and this one perhaps a bit of a cheat as he was a personal favourite from back when I first featured him (greater than two years ago now, which seems, to me, rather difficult to believe). It must have been fun. The time passing oh so quickly.

This time we are looking at this video:

Clinical Skills: Cervical Spine Assessment – Dr Gill’s Neck Examination

The site, subscribers, playlists and so on are, of course, familiar. However I’ll take a look again in case there are some new visitors to the Procrastination Pen.

There are notes:

“1,088,598 views Premiered on 12 May 2023 #asmr #neck #DRGill

Neck Examination – Cervical Spine Assessment – Clinical Skills – Dr Gill

Compose a new pain within athletes is cervical spine discomfort, thankfully in the vast majority of cases when the neck is examined the cause of the neck pain is found to be muscular.

However, pain can also refer from the neck to the arm, in which case it is important to be able to assess for cervical radiculopathy prior to gaining more information which may indicate an MRI is needed

We assess for radiculopathy by doing Spurling’s test, an often overlooked part of the neck examination, but it should be included for completeness and reassurance of the patient – not forgetting the athlete or not, neck pain can be a considerable source of distress, so it’s vital to be able to get information from the neck examination which allows you to safely reassure a patient when appropriate, or comment that neck exam found evidence that needs further investigation

#DRGill #neck #asmr”

There are comments but, of course, given it is Dr Gill we can take it as read that the majority of these are positive.

The video itself is a tad on the bijou side given it is only a little over six minutes long. Sadly it starts with music. The voice of Dr Gill needs no introduction (well at least if you are a regular reader in any case). It is restful, not given to whispering, and is at a lovely measured pace. Without the starting music this would be a perfect video. (Well if we could also add about thirty minutes to its length at any rate. Sadly, despite its short length, it still finds time to end with further music.

The playlists on the channel do not seem to be a great deal of assistance in narrowing the field for the location of any related videos.

At the present time there are nine hundred and sixteen videos and it would probably be foolhardy to cover even a reasonable fraction of those in this blog post.

Scanning through the videos for ones which appear to feature the same “patient” reveals quite a number. My thoughts are, therefore, we’ll cover a few here and go on to cover the remainder in a future blog post.

Taking these videos in the order that they appear (from the channel search) we first get to this one:

Ulnar Nerve Examination – Clinical Skills – Dr Gill

Again, it is very short at a little over four minutes. The patient announces her name – possibly Megan Struthers? Even the captioning struggles to capture it so possibly my ears are not solely to blame. The video has music again. I think we can take that as ongoing, as will the existence of notes and comments. Dr Gill’s voice continues as great to listen to. I could probably spend a great deal of my blog just reviewing Dr Gill videos – I won’t – it would make very dull reading. Of course, if you find it very dull reading anyway do feedback and I’ll try to come up with something more stimulating.

Lower Limb Neurological Examination – Clinical Skills – Dr Gill

This one is a little longer at just over nine and a half minutes. Comments are the usual level of variable but not (as far as I can tell) at the level of abusive that is often seen. Such is the power of Dr Gill.

In this one even I can tell the “patient” is Megan Struthers, awards to me for hearing that correctly the first time.

There is another “in” ASMR joke going on with this video in that anyone observing notices that, at intervals, Megan is wearing socks, then not wearing them, then wearing them again.

The “socks” comment seems to be another of those “in the know” comments such as “sandwich breath” which I have referred to before. I suspect it is fun if you enjoy that kind of thing.

Checking a Patients Vital Signs OSCE – Clinical Skills – Dr Gill

Just three and a quarter minutes and still a few seconds at either end given to music – boo.

It is very quiet this one, it would be ideal for sleep if only it was many times the length. As it is in a playlist it should not matter, apart from the opportunity for YouTube to insert as many adverts as it physically can, and at a volume so different to the video springing awake is a not improbable outcome.

General Examination – Clinical Skills OSCE – Dr Gill

A little over five and a quarter minutes in length, the consistency is the thing that stands out and highlights the quality of these videos. If you heard the first video you could more or less assume all the remainder are the same. Much as I hate videos that have been hijacked and concatenated, in the case of these short videos of Dr Gill’s, I can see the point. At least it would keep the intrusive adverts to a minimum.

I think we’ve hit the point where enough videos have been reviewed for one post. Although the total length of this week’s videos is not huge and it will not take you long to review them all for yourself. There are a few more videos featuring Megan and I propose that we come back to those at a future post. Certainly, Dr Gill is a gift that keeps giving, ASMR wise.

The James Gill 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.

Picture DeepAI.org

Character

Over time I have attended various courses on writing.

These have not had any lasting effect on my ability to actually write anything.

As an after-effect of these different efforts I have various short pieces of work with no home to go to.

I can’t see that any of these will be the foundation of some best seller.

I am gambling that displaying your old work has no deleterious effects on future writing.

On that assumption I will put them out there warts and all.

On the basis that it is possible someone might get some small pleasure from reading them.

From some old writing exercise I have this short piece of writing that did not make the grade.

The idea was to describe a character. But the feedback was that the character was one-dimensional.

In fact the reflection was that he was a little shit and that this made the end satisfying to read.

I was very sympathetic to Mike and I quite liked him. In some aspects I felt an affinity with him. So it is sad that he did not make the grade as a character.

Anger

Mike gripped the Momo steering wheel, his knuckles pale. Petite hands, not like a man’s at all, slender wrists and puny forearms, which are currently in tension. So that the slim muscles are clear.

His acne scarred face reddened with aggression.

Mike barks out “Move you bastard!”

He weaves his lowered Vauxhall Nova towards the right-hand side.

The darkened purple interior vibrates in time to a huge subwoofer behind his left ear – “50 Cent”. Mike adjusts the baseball cap forwards a little and leans forwards. His nose inches from the screen; he revs his engine with a whoosh of the dump valve.

The ash from his fag is forming a scree slope down the front of his T-shirt. His clothes are market-stall “designer”; all sportswear accented with gold jewellery from Argos. Today Mike wants to look cool.

Finally, he has passed his test at the ripe old age of 18, old for a license. He would have to tell them he passed months ago. They couldn’t know he was a new car virgin.

He’d had to be nice to his god-awful parents for a whole week now. He’d finally persuaded his dad to give him the money for this real bitching car. He could tell them it was all his own work – they’d think he was cool then.

His face ape-like in concentration screwed up. With ears stuck out at right angles beneath his close-shaven hair.

He looks for even a minute gap in the traffic “Fuckin’ Wankin’ Granddad, why not fuck off and die”

He edges his lurid green front spoiler close to the boot in front and flashes the four-way headlights. His laceless trainers describe a dance on the “custom” pedals until the unbalanced car slews sideways.

He leers, “Hope that scared the old bastard!”

He wanted to arrive like a star in “2 Fast 2 Furious” in a rush, lights blazing. He wanted to impress (particularly Roz – she looked great in that pink mini skirt last week). But this idiot was holding him up. He felt his heart beat faster – he wanted to kill him in a serious way. He could imagine ripping out his still beating heart. Kicking the gagging corpse around until this feeling ran cold.

He hit the horn hard and then zigzagged out until he was parallel, nothing would stop him now.

What was this? The old guy was accelerating, fucker, he would have him. Mike plants the accelerator hard into the purple carpet. He feels the blood pumping past his calf muscle as he exerts great pressure to keep it there.

Sweat springs from his forehead as he looks ahead at the oncoming bend.

He won’t give way; this git will never take him. Every muscle in his 5’ 7” frame taut he grits his teeth. He will win this or die, the evil fucker.

The Speedo needle crawls upwards, the corner, not past yet, he won’t brake, never. He turns to give the guy the finger as the Volvo truck rounds the bend.

Things You Really Will be Doing Now You’re 50 – Part Three

Following on from part two of the things you are going to find when you’re 50.

https://magic-phil.co.uk/2016/12/11/things-you-really-will-be-doing-now-youre-50-part-two

Ten more items from the same list:

For a long time you have prided yourself on how laid-back you are. Not for you excitement over the miners’ strike, Milli Vanilli, or the Falkland’s war. Recently you are getting red-faced; yelling at the television like some Alf Garnett caricature. You start to avoid certain national newspapers and Question Time on the BBC.
You’ve crammed as much into your life as you thought possible; considered that every moment was a busy moment. Now juggling has become more frenetic. You consider ways to do more: reading whilst going to the loo; learning whilst sleeping; writing your memoirs whilst stood on one foot pulling on a sock. You wonder whether sleep should be optional.
Posters, brochures, TV adverts you notice are predominantly in favour of young people. You’ve never noticed this before. “Young people are our future”; “young people deserve a chance”; “think of the children”. You’ve been excluded from important people in society and no one gave you any warning.
Skimpy underwear for young people is exciting, no underwear is considered provocative. For some reason now big underwear is appealing; if it doesn’t reach your belly-button you no longer consider buying it.
Gatherings of people seem to generate enough noise to rival a Motörhead concert. You find yourself avoiding socialising; instead sitting in to watch repeats of familiar programmes.
People now find it a great idea to deny how old you are. “You’re 50; you don’t look it”; “I never would have thought that you were 50”; “50? You look much younger”. Even though you know that it’s fabricated, you still like it and work to pretend it is genuine.
There are gaps in your hearing – tones that you can no longer hear. You attend hearing tests and no one can detect these gaps. Oh there’s hearing loss but that’s “normal” for your age. People you like start to use those tones to communicate. “What?” is now a conversational feature.
Despite appearances, as far as you’re concerned you are still 18. You feel 18. You’re sure you think like 18. If only your knee would stop hurting you’d give that snowboarding a try. Other people see you as some hoary old hermit. This is confusing. For some reason you’re no longer allowed to go rock climbing, roller blading or clubbing and you’re unable to understand why.
Things that happened yesterday as far as you’re concerned: the music of your youth; the attitudes of your teen years; the clothes people chose. These are now referred to as “classic” or “old school”. Those times are regarded as morally the Wild West. Those who lived through them are regarded with suspicion; as borderline depraved.
You’ve ceased to be described by absolutes. When you were younger you might have been “good at maths”; “good at running” or, if you were very lucky “good” with the opposite sex. Now “for your age” becomes a universal qualifier “your vision isn’t bad for your age”; “your blood pressure is good for your age” or if you’re very lucky “you look good for your age”. You’ve lost the ability to be just “good” at anything and have joined a group of people older than 50 who must therefore be less “good” than everybody else.

If you missed part one you will find it here:
https://magic-phil.co.uk/2016/12/11/things-you-really-will-be-doing-now-youre-50
If you missed part two you will find it here:
https://magic-phil.co.uk/2016/12/11/things-you-really-will-be-doing-now-youre-50-part-two

Watch out for part four here:
https://magic-phil.co.uk/2016/12/11/things-you-really-will-be-doing-now-youre-50-part-four