Tag: Gentle

Sleeping With ASMR

This week some progress on the wearing of the hearing aid. I am resting my ear at intervals and so I wear the hearing aid perhaps three days per week. This lessens the pain in the ear canal but does not stop the itching from wearing it. That’s all distracting detail though. The main thing for our purposes is that despite the slightly metallic sound I get when wearing it the effects on my appreciation of ASMR seem to be non-existent. Perhaps the old brain is able to adapt to the sound changes but whatever it is, I now feel that I shall be able to go on reviewing ASMR material with no appreciable effects on my facility to like or dislike them.

Of late I have not been listening to ASMR material because I have had a segue onto material that I occasionally listen to instead. Historically I was listening to audiobook material on YouTube – I listened to Terry Pratchett, some science fiction and a great deal of Agatha Christie. However, quite by chance recently, I came across Paul Temple, a character who probably means very little to the majority of people under 70. The peak Paul Temple period seems to have been between 1954 and 1968 on the radio. Initially I came across some YouTube material, for example:

However, it turns out that YouTube is not the only source, for example:

https://www.radio-uk.co.uk/podcasts/the-adventures-of-paul-temple-old-time-radio

Definitely not ASMR but possibly a good night-time distraction nonetheless.

The Calm offering today is this one:

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

Daily Jay

Gossip

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

I rather like Jay; I listen to him fairly frequently. I haven’t been able to build the meditation into a daily discipline yet however, even though this is a pay for service. (I do try to get my money’s worth out of pay-for services).

Today’s professional ASMR offering features two participants. I don’t get to feature such videos that often (I think they are comparatively rare).

ASMR Home Doctor Physical Exam with My Sister Alisa, Bilingual Medical RP

The comments lead me to believe that the whole sister thing is a complete red herring and there is one person playing two separate roles. That must have taken some clever video editing. I am in admiration of the sheer time people are prepared to dedicate to their videos.

The channel is Lizi ASMR, I am pretty sure I have not been to that channel before. So, a surprise for us all then. The channel has 780k subscribers, nine hundred and sixty-three videos, eighteen playlists so it is extremely popular. That does not tell me much; I have written a number of disappointed reviews of artists who have innumerate fans of feverish dedication.

The channel has notes:

“Lizi ASMR

Description

Hi there, and welcome to my channel! 🌟

I’m Lizi, and I’m so happy you’re here! I create ASMR videos to help you relax, de-stress, and enjoy those wonderful tingles.

If you love soft whispers, fun soft-spoken role-plays, and binaural sounds that feel right in your ears, you’ll feel right at home here. 🎧 Don’t forget your headphones—they make all the difference!

I post new videos every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday, so there’s always something new to help you unwind. If you like what you see, hit Subscribe and tap the 🔔 so you never miss a video. I’d love for you to join our little ASMR community—a cozy and welcoming space!

Thanks so much for stopping by. Let’s relax and hang out together! 💖”

So, this seems to be an artist who focuses on the whispery approach (which is by far the most common approach for ASMR artists).

Today’s video also has notes:

“563,288 views  15 Oct 2021  #LiziASMR #ASMR #ASMRPhysicalExam

Shop Kenzzi here: https://kenzzi.com/products/kenzzi-ip…

Use code Lizi50 for 50$ off

Hello everyone!  I wanted to do another ASMR video with Alisa, it’s a Physical exam with Alisa being extremely naughty.  I know you guys like 360 sounds so I filmed this video in such a way that the second person off-screen will be moving around the room touching stuff, taking notes and etc. Alisa will give you an eye exam in the middle for a change. There are many unintentional sounds and some language triggers in addition to medical ones.  I hope you enjoy it💖

If you enjoy Bilingual RP videos, check my playlist

~   • ASMR Relaxing Medical Examination by Russi… 

TimeStamps

00:00 Kenzzi Promo

02:10 Physical Exam

14:17 Alisa Eye Exam

19:42 Physical Exam cont

My Upload Schedule: Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday

**USE HEADPHONES FOR THE BEST EXPERIENCE**

For more ASMR videos: https://www.youtube.com/c/LiziASMR?su…”

Which, not unexpectedly, are of a reasonable length.

The video is a little over twenty-nine minutes and so of a respectable length in terms of videos that have been reviewed recently.

It starts with my least favourite thing in a YouTube video which is a product endorsement. So, on that basis, I reject this one and let’s move on.

Let’s try this one instead:

ASMR A ~*Completely Normal*~ Medical Exam

 A rather unusual ASMR title, let’s hope that it bodes well.

it comes from the channel: Amy Kay ASMR this has 553k subscribers, five hundred and seventy three videos, thirteen playlists none of those are obviously medically themed.

The notes on the channel are:

“Amy Kay ASMR

Description

Brands & Sponsors: amykayasmr@runbyinfluencers.com

Other business matters (I don’t do customs): mkayamy@gmail.com

Instagram: AmyKayASMR (for random selfies and irl Amy Kay stuff)

Twitter: AmyKayASMR (for my unfiltered thoughts)

TikTok: @AmyKayASMR & @AmyKayASMRFast (this is just me goofing off)

Become a Patron to help fund all my props and costumes! 🙂

https://www.patreon.com/amykayasmr

Thank you to all my Patrons!

For those who want to support me but would rather not use Patreon, Throne is like an amazon wishlist but safer 🙂: https://throne.me/u/amykayasmr“

Which also incorporate a fair amount of promotion so crossed fingers it isn’t just a glorified advert.

The notes on the video are:

“153,923 views 5 Oct 2020

Wait a second, does she even know what she’s doing???

Thank you to CrinkleLuvin ASMR for agreeing to cameo in my video!! 🙂

Go say hi to her channel here:

   / channel 

Twitter: @AmyKayASMR

Instagram: AmyKayASMR

TikTok: AmyKayASMR

For Patreon:

linktr.ee/amykayasmr

Become a Patron to help fund all my props and costumes! :)”

Comments are permitted and there are a lot of them. Most of them seem a tad off-the-wall which usually isn’t a good sign.

The video is a little over twenty three and a half minutes which is a reasonable length. The video does not start off at the whispery end of presentation so that is something of a result. In fact, I like the tone. There is no background noise but there is a slight border around the individual presenting so I suspect that this was filmed with the modern equivalent of a green screen i.e. that the backdrop does not exist. (I’m guessing you will not be spending a great deal of time watching in any case if you are using this to get some snooze time.

The presentation feels a bit stumbling at intervals which I think is because the video is aimed at demonstrating that the individual is a tad inept. Now the comments begin to make sense.

There are paper noises, sometimes these are a tad loud. There are tapping noises, fingers brushing over a surface, gloves-related noises (not my favourite). There are rustling noises coming from activity off camera (again, a fairly typical technique).

The gloves-related noises make up rather too much of this video for it to be a good one for my purposes and I was rather glad when they stopped.

The humorous presentation was fun but I was not certain that it added much ASMR-wise which is really my purpose in reviewing these things in the first place.

There are keyboard noises (rather loud and sounding completely random as if no typing was actually taking place (which I suspect that it wasn’t)). There are clicking noises, clunking noises, pencil scribbling noises, nail tapping noises (against all kinds of surfaces including a metal can). There are adhesive noises (a bacon-coloured sticking plaster for some reason).

So it wasn’t my favourite, but it was fun in a humorous kind of fashion, so why not listen for yourself.

This week I am breaking one of my rules simply because I cannot find the original source (If anyone reading can find the video this is from an can fill me in I will review that original video.

So, I have a video that someone has doctored but which seems taken from a genuine medical video. It is this one:

ASMR Loop: Physical Examination – Unintentional ASMR – 1 Hour

It is on a channel dedicated to ASMR so someone has edited this video, and also has looped it to create a video one hour long. I really dislike loop videos so I went in search of the original but did not find it. Instead I found the shorter version of this video put up by another ASMR-dedicated channel, which is this one:

*Real Person* Medical Examination | Best Unintentional ASMR

it is from Touro University Nevada who have a channel dedicated to university promotion (as you would expect) https://www.youtube.com/@TouroNevada there are one hundred and sixty six videos on here but I cannot see the one this footage is extracted from (I get the feeling that universities take down their older videos and then they become preserved only in the hands of ASMR fans).

I think the posting by ASMR fans is somewhat precarious. I have reviewed very good videos hosted on ASMR sites in the past all of which disappeared, sometimes taking the ASMR channel with them. I think some organisations are not keen on their videos being used in this way.

My advice: listen while you may.

There are comments. Some are trying to prove how much they know about ASMR, some trying to prove how clever they are altogether and some seem to be a tad strange. That sounds like YouTube video comments in microcosm.

The video is a little less than fourteen and a quarter minutes and it starts very loud indeed. The person’s voice can even be heard to echo in the room. There are loud rustling noises from the “drape” which I assume was made of some kind of paper. The medical professional’s voice calms down a lot when the examination starts and then just as it did, a loud and energetic advert kicked in.

There are clunking noises from the equipment used, some loud thunks, clicking noises, some rustling noises, noises from the medical professional being (almost constantly) in motion.

The presentation is calm and measured though and that is restful. Just like that though another loud and energetic advert, and the video is not even five minutes in yet.

There are deep breathing noises, clothing related noises and then yet another loud and energetic advert still not even eight minutes into the video. There are palpation noises, metallic noises from the table used to support the patient, noises from chair wheels rotating on a hard floor. Then another loud and energetic advert just over twelve minutes into the video. It ends without music (and thankfully without a further advert). However, this illustrates the issue I have written about for months now. Reasonable, but not excellent, video ruined by loud non-ASMR adverts (and so many of them). I have a suspicion that the vast increase in number of adverts is the result of channel owners trying to maximise their revenue. It spoils the listening experience.

So, I think the video makes for interesting listening (I can’t find the original to review so this is probably the best that you’re going to get.

Sadly, though I can’t recommend it for sleep as roughly every three minutes you will get an energetic advert.

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

Today I was dragging in a second-hand sliding patio door unit with a man some tiny fraction of my age. He seemed unfazed by the whole operation whereas I was reflecting, would I even be able to move it?

One of the consistent pieces of feedback I read about sleep is that the greater amount of exercise you can slot into your life, the much better will be the quality of that life and of the sleep that you manage to get.

I have the feeling that there are some bronzed performers who started life as the athletes picked in school and went on to win athletic medals at university and although they have (no doubt startling) careers, still find time to pound the track, lift incredible weights and consume vast quantities of protein shake.

I am not of that ilk. I never found it necessary until this moment, in fact, to do much that was more proactive than to dig the garden or walk in the countryside. However, I feel that a change is going to be needed and if I can find the wherewithal to make a go of it, I will document the relevant effects on sleep and if the claims made for exercise live up to the reality.

Meantime, I am going to resume examining ASMR. I am feeling a little more positive of late as I seem to have unearthed (and reviewed) some very good videos recently. However, some of that has been at the consequence of going a little off-piste in terms of subject matter. Let us see what this week brings.

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/f8udqt_eR8

Daily Trip

Oh, That’s What’s Happening!

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Regular readers will no doubt already be aware that you cannot get to Calm content without first subscribing. No doubt this is the reason that they can get voices at the quality that they do. It is regrettable, but if you do not have a subscription, you will not be able to listen to this. So, moving swiftly on.

This week’s professional ASMR offering I only looked at because of the claims made in the title:

[ASMR] Medically Accurate Cranial Nerve Exam 🩺🔎 (whispering, glove sounds, personal attention, …)

Given the wide variety of cranial nerve exams that I have watched (and listened to) that is a somewhat bold claim. It comes to us from the channel

Lotta’s ASMR 32.1k subscribers, three hundred and ninety three videos, fifteen playlists of which this one is on theme for this blog:

There are notes which are charmingly brief for a professional ASMR artist:

“Lotta’s ASMR

Description

Hi there and welcome! My name is Lotta and I create ASMR videos for your relaxation! I hope you have a great day (or night)! I post new videos every Sunday 🙂

Links  goodreadsgoodreads.com/user/show/163221862?ref=nav_profile_l

 instagraminstagram.com/lottasmind”

The video itself has notes: “2,054,033 views 25 Jun 2023 #cranialnerveexam #personalattention #asmr

Hi everyone!

Do you want to learn more about what a REAL cranial nerve exam looks like?

As you might know, I am actually a med student. Well, lately we spoke about the cranial nerves and how to test each one of them. Funnily enough, the real ways in which a neurologist would check your cranial nerves is very similar to how ASMRtists often do it.

I know many ASMRtists probably take inspiration from the “real way to do it” but I didn’t expect it to be so SPOT ON.

Anyway, if you’d like to have a medically accurate cranial nerve exam plus some information on what the nerves actually are and do, you’ve come to the right video. This video would also be perfect if you’re an ASMRtist looking to create a cranial nerve exam role-play.

Triggers included are: whispering, personal attention (face touching, …), tapping, glove sounds, some tracing, …

I hope you like it, have a good night!

Enjoy! ❤️

What even is ASMR?

ASMR describes a feeling of pleasant goosebumps (this is also called tingles). You may it know from when someone scratched your scalp or your back. ASMR videos trigger this feeling using various different sounds and visuals.

ASMR can help people fall asleep. It also calms anxiety and can be used for both relaxation and focusing on a task.

#asmr #roleplay #cranialnerveexam #whispering #personalattention #doctorroleplay”

Which, sadly, are anything but brief. In fact I have doctored them a little as the length was way too excessive even for blog articles like this one.

Comments are allowed and there are a phenomenal number. Some of them are calling out the claim in the title. Unsurprisingly, I am not the first to be intrigued by that.

The video is a little less than thirty minutes. Not a bad length in terms of those we have listened to of late. I am a little concerned it lists glove-related noises as triggers, as this is most definitely not my preferred thing. However, let us venture forth and see what we may find.

The video starts with that finger flicking motion that a number of ASMR professionals do and which I’m pretty sure medical professionals do not. It is not my thing but at least the video did not start with music. I am also interested that the presentation starts out whispery. Not that I have anything against a whisper, I am just pretty nigh convinced that a medical professional does not whisper at you during an examination.

The tone is good; the pace is good. It has the odd breathy moment and of course, that finger flicking. Lotta reveals that she is currently still a medical student rather than a fully-fledged doctor so perhaps for that we should grant some latitude around cranial nerve exam claims.

There are nail clicking noises, glove related noises (oh dear), that mouth clicking/clucking noise that ASMR professionals tend to excel at. There are paper stroking noises and noises from manipulation of cardboard. There is a background noise at one point of someone having a conversation outside the room. Fortunately that is quite brief.

As ASMR, I think it stacks up well. I’m not quite so convinced about accuracy. However, for our purposes I would say that this is well worth reviewing yourself.

Those loyal people who keep reading this blog will, at this point no doubt be feeling a tad cheated as I do try to find a resource that is not on YouTube and that does (at least to some extent) deny the constant thirst for advertising revenue that seems to be everywhere on the Internet. This week I came across this in one of my emails:

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

Happiness Break: A Practice in Moving Through Stress

It will nag you to sign up for a newsletter but not painfully. There is no obvious download link but I found I could listen freely without signing up. Jonathan Relucio is the artist and he has a calm voice and I think this is well worth a listen.

The inadvertent video this week is this one:

Calculus explained through a story

It comes from a time when I was trying to explore videos outside of the medical theme that I have been following for greater than three years now and hence this one is not on theme for this blog. Dependent upon your perspective this is either a welcome distraction or a bloomin’ nuisance. Normal service will be resumed soonish.

It comes from the channel Tibees with 1.34m subscribers, three hundred and eighty seven videos, eighteen playlists with literally none of those on theme for this blog. This is going to mean that unless today’s video is marvellous, I am unlikely to pay a return visit.

There is the usual large number of notes on the channel:

“Tibees

Description

Hi, I’m Toby, on my channel you can expect to see videos about physics, math, astronomy and the history of science.

If you like my channel then please help me out by sharing one of my videos with a friend. You can also support me through Patreon or Ko-fi (links below). I really appreciate it 🙂

Please visit my website for FAQs and contact information https://tobyhendy.com/

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a |mathematical| day :)” Which, again. I have edited down a tad.

And a comparatively brief number of notes with the video itself:

“767,249 views 6 Oct 2018 #JoyOfMathematics

Here is a look at the essence of calculus through the story of Bob. We use differentiation to find the slope of a curved line and then use ‘integration’ to find the area of an irregular shape.

Special thanks to the owl and birds in my garden for making so much noise during filming. ” also reduced in size a little.

There are literally thousands of comments with the video and most of them are a tad surreal, or definitely odd. To be honest that does not bode well with ASMR fans generally offering up their firstborn to a preferred ASMR artist in my experience.

The video is a little less than fifteen minutes in length so this is not going to keep us that long.

It starts with music, regrettably and some outside noises as if this was filmed in a parkland or similar. When Toby starts speaking, thankfully, that music stops altogether (the wildlife noises persist however) and we find that Toby has a great voice. Toby appears to be female and that Toby is not whispering. By turns, gratifying, interesting, and gratifying again.

I would have preferred it without the wildlife but I would say that Toby has a good voice for our purposes and it is almost certain I will be back to the site again. Why not take a listen for yourself.

So just one video 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 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

Of late I am becoming as good at procrastination as the title of the blog would lead you to suspect. I am not writing and yet, perversely, when I am writing I don’t find the process that unpleasant. So it is rather odd that I am choosing to avoid writing in this fashion.

However, apart from getting you a blog article this has nothing to do with ASMR (well as far as I am aware anyway).

Of late I have been falling asleep to Paul Temple who is a character that I came across quite by accident. There is a whole set of Paul Temple playlists on YouTube like this one:

and this follows on rather nicely I think from the Agatha Christie material that I used to dose off to:

There are even more of those, for example:

and in fact, as part of my material that is not on YouTube, I can choose one of those that is in the Internet Archive such as:

https://archive.org/details/ATTWN_AC_DS

https://archive.org/download/ATTWN_AC_DS/01%20-%20And%20Then%20There%20Were%20None.mp3

https://archive.org/download/ATTWN_AC_DS/02%20-%20Ten%20Little%20Soldier%20Boys.mp3

A bit of a cheat in that it has nothing to do with ASMR but as a mechanism of falling off to sleep, I do find that the occasional audiobook is a great way to ring the changes from ASMR every once in a while.

This week’s Calm offering is this one:

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

Daily Calm

The Place

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

This explores the tendency of grasping.

Calm is not free. I feel a tad guilty about suggesting something that isn’t free in that I am certain it will therefore appeal to very few people, so moving right along.

Today I decided I’d ring the changes in an entirely selfish fashion given that I have been trying to learn Italian for years without success and in my YouTube recommendations I found an Italian teacher who does ASMR. This is not at all medical. It is therefore not on theme for what I have been doing and I apologise for that. Normal service will be resumed soonish.

ASMR Your Italian Teacher Explains Italy Geography Lesson

It is a little less than twenty two minutes so somewhat shorter than some we have been used to. There are comments – a fair few of those and mostly positive too which bodes well. The channel is AppleWhispers ASMR. I am pretty certain I have not been here before; it has 4.15k subscribers, four videos, no playlists and there is even a medical themed video:

So, I may be returning to review that if nothing else. With only four videos over the course of very few blog articles I could review all that there are. Assuming the present one is impressive, at any rate.

There are notes with the channel (of course):

“AppleWhispers ASMR

Description

🌙 Welcome to AppleWhispers ASMR! Hi, I’m Elena! 🤍 I’ve been creating ASMR videos for over 6 years, helping people relax, unwind and fall asleep. I also run one of Italy’s largest ASMR channels, AppleTingles ASMR, and I finally decided to create a space for my English-speaking audience. Here you’ll find: ✨ Soft spoken & whispered ASMR 🩺 Medical roleplays 💆 Personal attention 😴 Sleep & relaxation videos 🎧 Tingly sounds and cozy atmospheres Thank you for being here. I hope my videos can bring you a little peace, wherever you are in the world. Whether you’re here to relax after a long day, reduce anxiety or simply fall asleep, I hope you’ll feel safe and welcome. Sweet dreams, Elena 🍎 🇮🇹 My Italian ASMR channel: https://www.youtube.com/@AppleTinglesASMR“

So that is interesting. This is just a sideline channel o the main feast as it were. I may be reviewing that other channel in future then.

The video (of course) also has notes:

“72,761 views  10 Aug 2026  #asmr #sleep #relax

Today we’re taking a relaxing journey across Italy, exploring the geography, history and fascinating facts that make my country so unique.

Many people know Italy for pizza, pasta and beautiful cities, but there’s so much more to discover.

In this ASMR geography lesson we’ll explore:

🇮🇹 Why Italy is actually a surprisingly young country

🏔️ How the Dolomites were once ancient coral reefs

🌋 Italy’s active volcanoes

🏛️ Vatican City and San Marino

🌊 Italy’s incredible geography

🏞️ Mountains, lakes and coastlines

…and many more fascinating facts!

So, sit back, relax, and let me guide you through one of the world’s most beautiful countries.

If you enjoy this video, let me know in the comments! I’d love to continue this series and explore more of Italy together. ❤️

🍎 Welcome to AppleWhispers ASMR!

Hi, I’m Elena! 🤍

I’m so happy you’re here.

My goal is to help you relax, unwind and fall asleep through gentle whispers, personal attention and immersive ASMR roleplays.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

🎧 For relaxation purposes only.

Please do not listen while driving or operating machinery.”

I’ve truncated those a lot.

The warning is amusing, who knew that ASMR could be as powerful as a bottle of Night Nurse.

The video starts without music and surprisingly to me it is in English. OK, English teacher teaching Italian, makes sense.

Even for ASMR it seemed a bit slow to me. Despite that, the voice level is ideal, calm, quiet but not a whisper – quite a rare thing.

However, as far as the teaching Italian goes – no Italian. Some details about Italy but not the language as such. OK, serves me right, I should have stuck to the blog theme and stopped dithering about.

At least there aren’t any gloves-related noises in this one. There is the occasional stoke of the map (fingers on paper). But mainly this is all about the voice which is just the way I like it. After a while I found myself adapting to the slower pace and it became ever more restful as I kept listening.

I rather liked this one (as I am certain you understand from that review). Why not take a listen for yourself.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week comes from a time when I was doing the odd diversion from medical themed ASMR videos and so I had a listen to a woodblock carving video and I rather liked what I heard.

I sent myself a reminder to look it up again (Three years ago now) and so here I am with not one but two videos delivered to you in the form of a playlist:

The channel is David Bull with 192k subscribers, One hundred and forty seven videos, seven playlists of which (unsurprisingly) none at all are on a medical theme. I really am taking a foray to stage left this week.

The channel has notes “

“David Bull

Description

Tokyo-based woodblock printmaker David Bull has created a number of video presentations of his work, including a number of videos showing the complete process of making his prints. A highlight of the channel is the series of videos chronicling the production of prints in the Ukiyoe Heroes series – his collaboration with US-based illustrator Jed Henry.

A great deal of the work for producing these videos is recently being assisted by the Patreon community: https://www.patreon.com/mokuhankan/    Thank you very much for your support!

Dave streams three times a week from our Twitch account: https://www.twitch.tv/japaneseprintmaking

Links

Mokuhankan workshopmokuhankan.com

Our Patreon pagepatreon.com/mokuhankan

Woodblock.com websitewoodblock.com

Twitch livestreamingtwitch.tv/japaneseprintmaking”

The first video is this one:

Japanese Woodblock Printmaking Workshop – Hakobi

It too has notes:

“50,125 views 27 May 2021 TOKYO

This is the first in a series of videos demonstrating various traditional techniques and tools in the Japanese mokuhanga woodblock printmaking industry and how we use them today here at Mokuhankan.

Today’s video is about the pigment brushes our printers use, known as ‘hakobi’ (運び) or ‘tokibo’ (解き棒). First Suga-san tells us a little bit about what hakobi are for and why she makes her own instead of only using store-bought ones, and then she demonstrates the whole process from start to finish. Finally, we have a slideshow at the end going over the tying steps again for you to follow while making your own.

We have a list of ideas and have started the process of making more of these – but please feel free to leave a comment about what techniques and tools you are interested in learning about so we can consider your ideas for future videos.

Narration and demonstrations: Natsuki Suga

Cinematography: Yasuhiro Aoyama and Cameron Hilker

Editing and Subtitling: Cameron Hilker

Hasegawa Typeface: Markku Mujunen (https://mokuhankan.com/fonts/ and http://markkumujunen.com/)

On Dave’s personal website, there is more information on making these tools:

http://woodblock.com/encyclopedia/ent…

http://woodblock.com/manga/hakobi/ind…

The Mokuhankan Twitch channel (where you can watch Dave use the tools shown here):

  / japaneseprintmaking 

The Mokuhankan website:

https://mokuhankan.com

Our Patreon campaign:

  / mokuhankan  “

There are a large number of comments and a number are positive. Some lead me to suspect that ASMR fans are already well aware of this one.

It is a little over fifteen and a half minutes so not huge but bear in mind this week we have two of them to listen to.

It starts with the weather and the weather is rather blustery. There is the sound of crows, of the wind, and the rain. We find that this video is actually in Japanese and is being subtitled. The person presenting has a good voice and the pace is excellent. I love the intonation of the Japanese language and given the subject matter I have some assurance that no rude words have snuck in (despite the fact I have no comprehension of the language personally and I am relying on the subtitles).

There are some random noises, which we’d expect given the subject matter is about woodblock printing not ASMR. There are water noises, paper-related noises, scissors cutting noises, a background noise which sounds like sanding (by hand). The end is a series of instructions with no voice; there is just some background noise, which sounds like cleaning activity to me. If anything, this section of the video is more restful than the rest.

The credits indicate that the narrator/presenter was Natsuki Suga and it may well be worthwhile keeping an eye open for further videos from this source.

The second video is a little alike the first, it is this one:

Japanese Woodblock Printmaking Workshop – A Printer’s Tools and Workspace

it too has notes: “64,382 views 21 Jul 2021 MOKUHANKAN (JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS AND MORE)

This is the second in our ever-growing series of videos demonstrating various traditional techniques and tools in the Japanese mokuhanga woodblock printmaking style and how we use them today here at Mokuhankan.

Today, Natsuki Suga gives us a tour of her printing bench and surrounding workspace. Watch to learn a bit more about each tool she uses in her daily work as a printmaker. We hope you will enjoy this overview and learn something along the way, as well.

We have a list of ideas and have started the process of making more of these – but please feel free to leave a comment about what techniques and tools you are interested in learning about so we can consider your ideas for future videos.

Printmaker and Host: Natsuki Suga

Video and Photos: Cameron Hilker

Hasegawa Typeface: Markku Mujunen (https://mokuhankan.com/fonts/ and http://markkumujunen.com/)

To see Suga-san actually using this space, watch this video:

   • Woodblock Printing Process – A Japan Journey 

The Mokuhankan Twitch channel (where you can watch Dave use many of the tools shown here):

  / japaneseprintmaking 

The Mokuhankan website:

https://mokuhankan.com

Our Patreon campaign:

  / mokuhankan  “

It is little less than fourteen- and three-quarter minutes. The comments are still largely positive and again some of the comments lead me to suspect that ASMR fans have come visiting. It starts loud though, with the sound of a train and various city related noises. Again, we have Natsuki Suga as the presenter, same great voice, same peaceful style. If anything, less background noise. This time Natsuki is not on the floor. I did fear for the knees in that position but less fearful when sat at a desk. The subject in itself appears to me fascinating but of course we are here for the sound and I would say we are well served in that respect. I like the intonation; I like the pace. There is the overarching sense of peace about the entire presentation.

So, two whole videos this week and a playlist thrown in for fun.

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 David Bull playlist on The Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

I have not been having a lot of luck with the inadvertent ASMR material of late and I feel a bit of weeding of the playlist coming on in the near future. I am considering stopping the focus on medical themed videos. Although there appear to be thousands of videos to choose from out there, the number incorporating someone with a quiet calm voice and lacking much extraneous noise seem to be rather small. We’ll see how things go.

So, the good news is that, apparently, if you do not get the seven to nine hours sleep a night but you are still getting good quality sleep, then that might be good enough. A good sign being that the sleep is refreshing for you.

Sadly, though, the prevalence of insomnia increases as people get older. Particularly if, as you get older, you develop health conditions that impact sleep.

The things that I habitually do or have done to improve sleep, for instance, napping in the day, sleeping longer at weekends (about the only time I do feel refreshed) tend to make things worse. I have not tried drinking alcohol deliberately in order to get to sleep but that isn’t any help either (if you were about to try it). Alcohol makes it seem that it is easier to get to sleep but then goes on to ruin the quality of any sleep that you actually get.

The priority is to develop a sleep habit. Breaking the habit by additional naps or sleeping longer overall disimproves the situation.

There are more helpful techniques, for example, making use of a progressive muscle relaxation exercise to try to relax. It turns out that there are a large number of these on YouTube and just at random here is an example:

There’s even a non-YouTube option:

(it does require that you create an account to listen and it has no download option).

There is also a downloadable (MP3) which does not seem to require an account to access it:

Muscle Relaxation

Another suggested helpful approach which I struggle with is to make sleep a habit. Habits are the things that we thrive on. If you want to keep doing something, make it into a routine thing that you can repeat without thinking.

There are also habits that can detract from sleeping such as reading in bed, watching TV, keeping the phone near the bed (where it proves distracting).

Of course, if you cannot get comfortable then sleeping is made more difficult. The most comfortable sleep I had was once when abroad. I researched the mattress and found it was only available in the United States. Therefore, you have my sympathies if you also find it difficult finding something comfortable to sleep on.

However, reserving the bed for sleep only is important if you are already having trouble sleeping. It might be that if your partner regularly disturbs you during your sleep that you may have to sleep separately for example which some couples are currently exploring.

It’s also important that any preparation for sleep occurs elsewhere than the bedroom. This associates the bedroom solely with sleep.

You can also prepare in advance. For instance, going upstairs sometime before bedtime and drawing curtains and/or dimming the lights.

The entire sleep habit will probably start sometime before bed say two hours before – any reading will occur outside the bedroom; eating will have stopped and some light stretching (but no heavy exercise). Lowering the temperature down to close to eighteen degrees and ensuring your feet stay warm.

The association of the bed with sleep is an important feature of getting to sleep quickly. There are some habits that can break this association such as pursuing other activities in bed, such as reading

Using alcohol may help a person fall asleep but impacts the ability to get sufficient deep sleep. The clue is the feeling of tiredness when you wake up. In addition, commonly after alcohol, you will need to wake up perhaps more than once to go to the bathroom which further disrupts sleep.

The problem is that if you do not currently associate the bed with sleep you are likely to spend time in bed tossing and turning rather than actually sleeping and this further disrupts the association of the bed with sleep. Therefore, if you do not fall asleep within (say) fifteen minutes it is actually better to get up from bed and only return when you feel tired enough to actually drop off to sleep.

Going to bed early in this context may actually be counterproductive. If you are not tired enough to sleep you are more likely to lie awake rather than to sleep. It is not possible to force yourself to sleep in this way so the activity is more likely to disrupt the association of the bed with sleeping.

Exercise is great for sleep and a regular exercise programme pursued during the day will aid in the eventual sleep process. However, exercising too close to sleep time has the opposite effect as it will tend to energise – boosting both energy levels and body temperature, both things that you do not need when you want to get to sleep.

Eating in the evening will tend to deleteriously affect the ability to drop off. Drinking at night will have the tendency to mean that you’ll need to get up to go to the toilet. This will obviously impact the quality of your sleep.

Anyone who has a poor association of the bed with sleeping is going to make that worse by doing anything else in the bed but sleeping. Reading, texting, watching TV all of these can mean that it takes longer than fifteen minutes to fall asleep when in bed.

Frustration in the sleeping process is a good sign that you have a poor association between the bed and sleeping. You will then need to go through a process of reassociating the bed with sleep. You should start the sleep process about fifteen minutes after getting into bed. If you are just lying there and not sleeping it is better to get up and to only return to bed when you are feeling drowsy. Although initially it seems that you are missing out on sleep because you are spending time out of the bedroom, it will bear dividends in that ultimately when you go to bed you will fall asleep within fifteen minutes.

It is important that on moving room you do not engage in stimulating activities (watching TV, eating, using the phone, answering email and so on). The second space you have moved to also needs to be unstimulating. Reading is good for this, preferably under a light that uses a red spectrum bulb.

You can use white noise to mask background noise to help you to sleep.

It turns out that there is (surprise, surprise) white noise on YouTube as well:

(It seems rather loud to me).

There are some freely playable ones here:

https://white-noises.com/#sounds

and some downloadable versions here:

https://www.audiocheck.net/testtones_whitenoise.php

The Calm track this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/4McuYeyMYG

Daily Jay

Yes, and…

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

The rules we choose to live by, choosing acceptance and the flow of life. Always say yes. Accept what is offered and work with it. Do not resist. Yes and means you take what is offered and you take action; it is not merely acceptance. We get to decide our next step.

As I may have mentioned Calm is not free. So only check this out if you already have a subscription (or you really want one).

The professional ASMR video this week is from a channel I reviewed recently, BehindTheMoons (I noted) produces videos in both English and in French. Last time I reviewed this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEK1fSO-gUI i.e. the English language version.

However, a link in the notes from the same video tells me that there is a French version of the same thing. i.e. this video:

[subtitled] ASMR in French – Futuristic Hearing Test [The Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉]

I want a chance to run a fully independent review of the French version and see if I reach a different conclusion. Same person, same premiss, simply a different language. Does that affect my impression of it.

As I mentioned before BehindTheMoons has 262k subscribers, two hundred and eighty four videos, but only four playlists some of which (obviously) are in French.I covered the channel notes last time (there are a lot of them) so I will not go over them again.

Today’s video also has notes, which are lengthy. Most professional ASMR artists go in for extensive notes:

“1,012,209 views Premiered on 5 Mar 2023 #ASMRfr #ASMR #ASMRFrance

Please use your headphones to get the best experience from this video 🎧

Disclaimer: This is an ASMR video solely made to help you relax and unwind. I am not a medical professional, please get in touch with one if you need to have your hearing checked. Also, the Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉ doesn’t exist yet, unfortunately 😦 ____Hi everyone,

Today is the day. Let me onboard you and tell you everything about the Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉, as you are about to get yours installed and improve your experience of the world around you.

This device enhances your auditory field, as well as creates bridges between your senses. For example, a visual or olfactory stimulus will create an auditory response. Welcome into the Future.

The ASMR triggers you will get mostly ear to ear soft-spoken voice and close-up whispers, follow the light exercise, all senses exercises, instructions to follow, personal attention, hand movements, additional dreamy visuals and sounds.

In this video I mix your usual cranial nerve exam and well as hearing test with science fiction, I hope you will like it.

The English version is available here:    • ASMR – Futuristic Hearing Test [The Person… 

Thank you for watching the video and for reading the description. Take care,”

As before I have truncated these. None of us have the time for extensive reading of notes I am certain.

You will have noticed that for some reason the notes are not in French. I have no idea why that is.

The video is a little shorter. The English version was close to thirty minutes and this is a little over twenty-five and a half minutes. There are comments and some of these are not in French. They appear general praising which is all to the good.

There is brief music at the start as there was with the English language version, I therefore presume this is some kind of branding. I am not a fan of music in ASMR videos, it distracts from the ASMR-ish-ness of them. However, at least this music is brief and therefore not overly distracting.

If anything, I would say that the voice of the presenting person is even better in their native language (no surprises, I suppose). It isn’t whispered but it is low and calm and quiet.

I had not realised that French has some of the noises that ASMR artists recreate artificially (presumably because they are triggers for a group of ASMR fans). I can hear an occasional mouth clicking sound, for example.

I have the sense that I prefer this in French. I can sense that perhaps foreign language presentations may start to form a larger part of those videos I review from this point onwards. It has been comparatively rare so far. Although, to be honest, I rarely find them.

This time I tried listening with the headphones on (as recommended in the video notes). I would say that it does make a positive difference, not least when directional affects are implemented. It also helps to filter out some of the household noises. Having a new hearing aid has its downsides.

The muted part of the video and the hearing device calibration is clever but strange. It is not overly distracting. However, I am going to try listening to it when trying to get to sleep and see if that situation remains.

Even with the presentation enunciated in French, the on-screen prompts are still in English which feels a little odd as well. However, if you’re as tired as I am when listening to these videos, I doubt you’ll be doing much in the way of watching, mostly it is just a sleep aid.

As for the previous videos there are clicks, clonks, keyboard sounds, nail clicking sounds, the odd musical tone. Some of these seem to go on for a bit (or I’m more tired than when I reviewed the last one).

I still think that this has the slight edge on the English Language version. Why not take a listen and see what you think.

I realised recently that I have been reviewing ASMR tracks since 2023. You’d think I’d find something grown up to do with my life.

In all that time I focused on inadvertent ASMR videos. Sometimes there have been real gems and sometimes not so much. I have had a fallow period of late I recognise. Let’s see what todays brings.

Today’s video is this one:

Golfer’s & Tennis Elbow Assessment – OSCE Guide | Clip | UKMLA | CPSA | PLAB 2

Here I feel on more solid ground, but mostly it is because it is from a channel where we have reviewed it so often, I must be getting to the stage of nearly having reviewed every video it has.

This is Geeky Medics https://www.youtube.com/@geekymedics, with 1.46m subscribers, three hundred and fifty-four videos, twenty playlists. Well, I’m wrong in that case there is no way I have had the time to individually document three hundred and fifty-four videos. OK, well plenty of scope for the future we can say then.

The problem with all the geeky medics videos I have reviewed thus far is the inclusion of some pretty peppy music which, frankly, is the last thing that you need around snooze time.

This one is scarcely over one and a quarter minutes and you guessed it despite the short length still finds time to cram in some music at the start of it.

There are notes: “82,306 views 26 Sept 2022 Musculoskeletal Examination OSCE Guides | CPSA | UKMLA | PLAB | MRCS

This video demonstrates how to screen for Golfer’s elbow (medial epicondylitis) and Tennis elbow (lateral epicondylitis) in an OSCE station.

You can read our guide to elbow examination here: https://geekymedics.com/elbow-examina…”

Which I am deliberately keeping brief. There are comments, but precious few of these and none from ASMR fans that I can see. Oh dear.

The video though is excellent with the medical professional having an excellent voice and the patient equally so. It is a shame that it is not a longer video to be honest. Of course it has to conclude with yet more music…

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

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 Deep.ai

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

I recently fessed up to a fondness for affirmations and rather like the moment you buy a different car, suddenly every car on the road seems to be alike to the one that you have purchased, suddenly I started to see affirmations everywhere.

Recently I was sent from Project Happiness “Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.” With the subtext ” Never forget that no matter what’s going on around you, you do have choices. Your external world may be noisy. The idea is to create a quiet place inside of you to return to. When you move intentionally within an unpredictable world, then you can chart your own course.”.

To be honest, I could not have asked for an affirmation more on theme for this blog.

The Calm item this week is:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/nR1aFGbe8B

Daily Trip

Commitment

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Commitment to meditation, what does it feel like, the more we meditate the more commitment towards continuing to meditate.

With the usual caution (for this blog) in that I have a subscription to Calm and you will need a subscription if you want to listen to any of the content – sorry about that.

For the non-YouTube material this week, I return to Dr Rick Hanson who has a good voice admittedly but I have always drawn any material by him from YouTube. This week I found that he has a podcast. Not only does he have a podcast but it is available on Apple podcasts. I gave it a try and you can play any of these without an account (although it will nag you about it) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mindful-meditations-with-dr-rick-hanson/id1820216704.

Recently I have been trying to focus on older ASMR videos (in the way that YouTube does not). However, in my recommendations this week, I got one that is way more recent and I thought I would try it. (Damn you, YouTube). No stress, normal service will resume (soonish).

The video is this one:

ASMR Real Person Student Doctor Check | Assessing & Advising

It is just under nineteen minutes long so not huge and was posted only recently.

There are, of course, notes as we would expect with any professional ASMR artist: ” 103,719 views 5 Jul 2026 #bebravebeyouasmr #asmrrealperson #asmrdoctor

Welcome to tonight’s ASMR real person student doctor check. In this realistic medical examination, our student doctor carries out a full medical assessment on a real person whilst the assessor observes the examination, assesses the findings and provides guidance when needed. This ASMR video is perfect for relaxation and sleep.

For The Best Experience Please Use Headphones, Turn Off Stable Audio & Select the Highest Quality Available for Each ASMR Video.

This video is a fictional ASMR roleplay created for relaxation and entertainment only. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Upload Schedule:

Every Sunday, Monday & Wednesday at 9pm GMT/BST.

Shorts Of My Main Videos Throughout the Week No Set Day or Times

Business:

bebravebeyou@runbyinfluencers.com

bebravebeyouasmr@outlook.com

Social Media:

Non ASMR TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@40swithnic

ASMR TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@bebravebeyouasmr 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bebravebeyouasmr

Facebook: https://facebook.com/bebravebeyouasmr

All My Links: https://linktr.ee/bebravebeyounic

TIME STAMPS

00:00 Intro

00:07 Greeting & Plan

00:47 Student Doctor Exam With Jodie

18:28 Outro

18:38 Goodnight

#asmr #asmrrealperson #asmrstudentdoctor #bebravebeyouasmr #relaxingasmr #asmrmedical #asmrdoctor”

As per usual these are incredibly long and must test the patience of even the most hardened ASMR fan (I bet that no one reads them, in fact).

This is an odd one for me since it is a collaboration piece (I cannot remember reviewing anything like this previously). The two channels listed are:

Be Brave Be You ASMR 242k subscribers,1.4k videos and a dazzling quantity of playlists of which this is on theme for this blog:

and Jodie Marie ASMR 153k subscribers,1.6k videos thirty-seven playlists with this on theme for this blog:

Wow, more than one channel does add quite a lot of material, good luck getting through that lot.

There are a number of comments for the video. Mostly they seem to be positive which is quite usual for a professional ASMR video, so that bodes well then.

The only start-up sound is that of water – so far so good. Straight away we realise that the presentation is going to major on the whispery, so far, so standard professional ASMR artist.

There are gloves noises again sadly (I have commented on those in previous blog articles – I am not a fan). There are also some clicking noises, some writing noises, (I notice in the comments that some people really rate the gloves sounds so at last I have found a person who likes them to be included.) There is a sound from fingers being run through hair (not my kind of thing but someone must love that I would guess). There is that mouth clucking/clicking noise so beloved of professional ASMR artists which is not my thing either – it must please some fans I’m guessing.

There are beep sounds from the ear thermometer and clunking noises from equipment. There are Velcro noises, the sound of fabric for a blood pressure cuff being tightened and a (quite loud) blood pressure cuff noise. (Those who have used an Omron cuff at their GPs will know the sound I mean and it is not at all ASMR-y).

The pace is nice and slow and actually, despite the (mainly) whispery presentation, I liked the vocal parts (less so the blood pressure cuff noises).

The contrast of the two vocal sounds is actually quite interesting and I did not find it distracting. It might be worth following up with each of the ASMR artists independently in the future and see what their videos are like.

The video ends with that water sound (briefly). I would say it is worthy of a review so why not listen for yourself.

This week’s inadvertent ASMR offering comes from a channel which I have not reviewed before but the subject would seem to be highly relevant for this blog:

Why You’re Always Tired (and how to fix it)

It is fourteen and a quarter minutes, so a little longer than a number of videos that I have reviewed of late.

It comes from the channel AsapSCIENCE this has 10.8m subscribers, five hundred and fifty five videos, ten playlists, frankly even if it’s ASMRishness is limited it must be something as a channel to have achieved so very much attention from so few videos.

The notes on the AsapSCIENCE channel are adorably brief:

” Description

Making science make sense.

Created by:

Mitchell Moffit (@mitchellmoffit)

Gregory Brown (@whalewatchmeplz)

CONTACT

asapscience[at]gmail[dot]com

Send us stuff!

ASAPSCIENCE INC.

P.O. Box 93, Toronto P

Toronto, ON, M5S2S6″

The video notes equally so:

“5,097,219 views 15 Jun 2022 #GrowWithGoogle

The Ultimate Guide to Feeling Less Tired

A portion of this video was sponsored by Google Career Certificates

Enrol now at https://bit.ly/3aUSQes #GrowWithGoogle

Join our science mailing list: https://bit.ly/34fWU27

FOLLOW US!

Instagram: https://instagram.com/asapscience​​

Facebook: https://facebook.com/asapscience​​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/asapscience​​

TikTok: @AsapSCIENCE

Written by: Mitchell Moffit

Edited by: Luka Šarlija”

The comments for once, seem to contain many which are helpful. Where has this new spirit of co-operation come from, I wonder. There is the odd person looking for a medical diagnosis though I see. I suppose this is why diagnosis by AI has become just so popular of late.

For me, the video starts a little loud and a little fast. But then I am listening immediately after listening to the ASMR professional so it might be suffering by comparison. It is one of those where it would be more restful if played at half speed.

However, as a sleep guide it is truly excellent and perhaps it should be taken this way. The first thing it indicates is that eight hours a night is truly a minimum (if you’re reading these blog items most likely you are not getting all that).

It also states that working out whether you function best later or earlier and fitting your day to your preferred cycle is important. If you need to be awake late but have a job that means you get up early you are causing yourself problems. (Your preference may change as you age.)

The video features sponsorship info (Google). I am definitely not keen on such things and if it were not on theme for this blog, I would reject it out of hand. (Perhaps you can skip the sponsorship section.)

It advises that you change your alarm to a more melodic (music based) alarm sound – it is less jarring.

Snoozing the alarm is a very bad move.

Other advice includes: increasing activity when you first wake up; exposure to bright light in the morning (preferably sunlight) for at least thirty minutes; drink fluid, moderate caffeine intake and do not drink caffeine after midday; a balanced diet, do not eat close to bedtime; regular exercise (but not too close to bedtime), long term changes in exercise will improve your sleep even if the effects are not felt immediately, if you’re napping do not do this late in the day as it ruins your sleep; do not drink alcohol (it destroys deep sleep); take a warm shower close to bedtime (It mimics the body’s natural cooling as it approaches sleep); sleep in a cool room with no visible clocks, put away gadgets – they can be a distraction; do not just lie in bed – it makes things worse; if you wake up do not check the clock, do not switch on the light; have a sleep schedule – go to bed and wake up at the same time every day you need a constant routine.

The most important are having a sleep schedule; regular exercise and a balanced diet.

So that was very much sleep advice and definitely not ASMR. Valuable in itself but I still owe you an ASMR video review.

Let’s try this one:

Total Body Skin Exam by PA Melissa Alcox

This comes from the channel Pariser Dermatology Specialists 2.51k subscribers, eighty eight videos only two playlists.

A quick scan of the videos on the day I visited seems to indicate that they are mainly concerned with advertising so almost certainly unsuitable for us then.

There are notes with the video “781,706 views 4 Sept 2018

Pariser Dermatology’s Melissa Alcox, PA-C, performs a full-body skin exam and talks about the details involved in this potentially life-saving routine procedure.”

Which are incredibly brief.

There are a ton of comments and a lot of these are from ASMR fans so that bodes well then.

The video is a little less than five and a quarter minutes. It has some fairly strong background noise (air conditioning I would guess) but, fortunately, no start-up music. Melissa Alcox introduces herself and I would say it is quite loud – I thumbed the volume down a bit and started again. Julianna is introduced. A quick Google confirms that she is Julianna Squicciarini, Assistant Laboratory Manager.

I would say that Melissa does not have a natural ASMR voice. However, it does tone down a bit once the examination proper commences. The pace is a little fast for me, but given the comments, a number of people disagree. There are some (quite loud) equipment noises including from the motion of a wheeled chair.

It concludes with a brief piece of advertising, and then it is all over. I will trial it in the Procrastination Pen playlist but despite the positive comments I would say it is a tad marginal.

So just one this week.

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 are in this archive list:

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Photo by Deep.ai

Sleeping With ASMR

I’m making the move to Lumo for the generation of the regular cat image this week. No specific reason. I was getting along well with deep.ai and I will probably return there. However, Lumo does seem to have rendered something suitable.

Recently I came across another article on a site that I have featured several times previously. Greater Good seems to have a number of articles in broadly the areas I am interested in. This one was specifically about managing your energy.

That seemed so much on theme for a blog dedicated to sleep and the pursuit of sleep that I thought it deserved recommending. It reminded me of some of the Calm material from Jay Shetty – some of which I have recommended before.

The Calm item this week follows on from my discussion recently where I reviewed a WhispersRed video on YouTube which featured the odd affirmation and I quipped how much I like a good affirmation. I have been known to print, laminate, and put up on the wall where I come across it regularly, some of the affirmations that speak most truly to me.

https://www.calm.com/app/player/jGs9dhvgC3

Daily Jay

Self-Affirmations

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Do affirmations actually work.

I will caution though that Calm is not free. I have not yet found any free content that I can readily share and so this is only applicable to you if you have a Calm subscription already.

I am trying to keep the supply of non-YouTube audio coming although I do keep finding myself coming back to YouTube because I can’t find much decent material elsewhere.

Recently, however, I found that Tara Brach not only produces a weekly meditation on YouTube she duplicates this with an audio file on her website. For example this one:

Which is located here:

Meditation: Know That You’re Here (19:37 min)

These appear to be freely available and are also downloadable such that you can build a playlist of your own off YouTube and indeed off Internet should you so desire.

The professional ASMR artist this week is one that I do not think I have reviewed before. However, it is in keeping with my recent initiative to feature some older ASMR material (largely because YouTube likes to focus on everything being shiny and new and so somebody needs to focus on the opposite).

The video is this one:

Check Up Exam [Role Play] Soft Spoken Medical ASMR

It is just under twenty-nine minutes long so a reasonable one to drop off to. It was posted five years ago so nah nah nah nah YouTube.

There are notes of course (this is a professional ASMR artist after all): “20,877 views 25 May 2021 #MedicalASMR #ASMR #Roleplay

Time for your check up!  Intro- 0:07 Gloves- 1:30 Temp 2:19 Pulse 3:04 Head/Face Check 3:56 Making Faces 6:38 Mouth check- 7:16   Eye Test- 8:01 Nose Check 12:28   Ear Check 12:55 Heart & Lungs 19:40 Arm & leg check 22:37 Reflexes 24:05 Stomach Exam 26:36 Conclusion 27:29

P.S. I am not a real doctor; this video was made for ASMR entertainment purposes.

❤ ❤ ❤

This Video was made for ASMR. ASMR can be used for Relaxation, Sleep and Head Tingles. With how stressful life can be I hope to bring some sort of Escape from that anxiety, stress or Insomnia.

♡Help support my channel! Receive Rewards & Extras! My Patreon Account  –   / calmingescape 

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#ASMR #MedicalASMR #Roleplay”

As we’ve come to expect these are humongous in their comprehensiveness.

The channel is a new one for me: CalmingEscape ASMR 56.2k subscribers,1.6k videos, twenty playlists

Of which this is on a theme in keeping with this blog theme thus far:

and it has one hundred and thirty four videos in it, no less.

The video starts with music, which is not my preferred way for a video to start but at least the music chosen is unobtrusive. The voice is low but not an actual whisper – so that gets a tick immediately.

There are various clicks and sounds from the person being in motion (clothing related noises). There is the odd clunk – equipment related noises. There are glove related noises which are really not my favourite thing but come up so often in professional ASMR videos that I am guessing that someone loves that sort of noise. The pace is excellent – it is nicely slow. The tone is also extremely good. Absent those glove noises, I’d say this was well above average.

There are pencil-related noises (pencil against paper, off camera by the sounds). There are sounds like something scraping across the microphone which are actually a tad peculiar (but not that unpleasant).

There is whispering content; when there is whispering in each ear. (It’s more of a stage whisper to be honest as it is not that quiet) but at least this is in keeping with the role play and so it could be argued has a purpose.

There are breathing noises (warming of a stethoscope), periods of silence when aspects of the examination are apparently taking place (I found that seemed to work rather well). Tapping noises (apparently connected with a reflex hammer). It ends with a whispered Patreon acknowledgement. This is also not my favourite thing, but at least there isn’t any further music.

I would say that this one is well worthy of a review. Why not have a listen.

And so onto the inadvertent ASMR. Occasionally I find that I have spent a while retrieving what appear to be genuine medical videos but which are contained on sites dedicated to ASMR. As I have mentioned before there is a sense of nervousness about these because what has been done to them to enhance their ASMR effects? Can we really have assurance that the videos are genuine medical videos and were not simply generated by ASMR professionals masquerading as doctors and nurses?

Well today we can take refuge in that the video comes from a genuine University and one that I think is reasonably well known (well, I had heard of it).

Respiratory Examination – KCL KUMEC

At just over five minutes it isn’t going to be around for long. There are no notes, but comments are permitted. From the comments we can conclude that ASMR fans have already been here long before I have.

There is start up music (but it is reasonably muted). The medical professional announces himself as Tristan Fraser. Some of the commentators appear to be having problems with terms used day-to-day in England which for someone familiar with them comes as a surprise. For instance, “Pop” is not a reference to someone’s father but rather to putting something somewhere such as “pop your shirt on”, “pop that over there” or “pop it in the oven”.

The “patient” is Donald, he does say what his surname is but I cannot catch it. We find that he is twenty-nine (Tristan announces this in the video).

The delivery is quiet, calm and measured and in fact pretty well ideal for a video featured in this blog.

The channel is KCL Kumec and it turns out that this is from Kings College London.

Even to my lowly brain I am aware that this is a prestigious educational establishment. The channel has twenty-nine videos and yet has 10.2K subscribers which is quite phenomenal.

Although there are twenty-nine videos (which is a few too many to cover in one blog post), it turns out that Tristan is only in a subset of these and so we can cover those videos in this post (and I suspect return to KCL KUMEC in the future for further blog posts).

Cardiology Examination – KCL KUMEC

At four and a quarter minutes it is even more brief than the last one. Again, no notes again comments again the comments are littered with contributions from ASMR fans. Again, the startup music and again we have Donald as the patient. We find that Donald is born 18/09/1989 (this is the UK format so September).

This is marvellously calm and quiet. In fact, it is very similar to the video that came before. It is a little louder in places but I do not think that to be off-putting (at least in terms of getting off to sleep).

Respiratory Examination – KCL KUMEC

This has the same title as the first video but a different reference. However, it is the same length, features the same two people I suspect it is in fact the self-same video. Comments as before – I think ASMR fans are now following Tristan because, like me, they like his voice.

However, as far as I can tell Tristan does not have a channel of his own so the few videos available on this channel are it in terms of output (which, like Hollie Berry before, is sad for us).

Cardiovascular Exam – KCL KUMEC

at four and a quarter minutes this is very similar if not identical to the Cardiology Examination we saw earlier. Yet again a comment from an ASMR fan referring to Dr James Gill’s famous catchphrase putapitopaper (although I’m pretty certain that is actually putabitopaper).

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

See you again next week.

The KCL Kumec 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 Lumo AI

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I have been trialling L-Tryptophan. After recent blog articles in which I warned about the dangers of supplements and the taking of too much magnesium, I am taking a supplement. This supplement contains magnesium. I’m currently not sure if it is working. It is probably too early days (I read somewhere that any change takes about six weeks to really start making a difference). However, what I can say is that I am getting much more vivid dreams and nightmares since I started taking it. Initially it was all bad dreams, so disturbing that I had just about resolved to stop the supplement altogether. But recently the dreaming has turned onto a more pleasant footing. I do seem to be having more dreams though and remembering more of them. I am not certain if that is a good thing or not a good thing. To be honest, as long as the vicious ones stay in abeyance I do not mind either way.

Finding audio material of a restful nature on the Internet which a) does not require payment and b) is not on YouTube, is proving one of those challenges a Greek hero might have risen to. Leafing through some old meditation tracks I found a couple by Stephen Doetsu Snyder. Not someone I have listened to a lot, but obviously someone I did listen to.

The two I seem to have spent time with were:

and

which fail to qualify, as both (as you will have noticed) are on YouTube.

However, a shufty around the Internet turned up this: a site actually full of dharma talks by Stephen:

https://dharmaseed.org/teacher/261

Plenty there to work out if you like his voice or not, I would have thought.

The Calm resource this week is this one:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/Lh8XCYkB5O

Daily Jay

Sensations vs. Emotions

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

What your body is trying to tell you and how you can use this information to make better decisions. I am still nervous about including material from here as Calm is not free. You can probably tell as I consistently keep this section brief.

The professional ASMR video this week is from a channel I cannot remember ever having reviewed before, so this one is as much an adventure for me as it is for you. The channel is BehindTheMoons. This has 262k subscribers, two hundred and eighty four videos, but only four playlists, I’m interested to see that one of these makes delivery in French:

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 lewd or divisive.

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

“BehindTheMoons

Description

Hello everyone!

I’m a French ASMRtist who has been making ASMR videos on the Internet since 2013.

You can call me Moons 🔆 and use they/them pronouns to refer to me (ael or elle in French)

You will find on this channel ASMR videos both in French and in English to help you relax, unwind, calm down or even fall asleep. I’m working hard to offer you a safe space where you can go back to when you need it.

I created specific playlists of my videos depending on the language spoken, so you can avoid the videos in French or in English depending on what you want to hear.

I currently use a Nikon Z6II to film my video, a Zoom H5 and two Lewitt LCT 440 Pure microphones to record the audio.

Zoruasmr introduced me to ASMR, without him, I wouldn’t be doing ASMR videos.

Margot Lambin designed the subscription badges and emoji, here is their Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/margotlambin/

Thank you for reading!

Take care 🌻”

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

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

ASMR – Futuristic Hearing Test [The Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉] English Version

At least if it is in a language I understand, I have some assurance no one is swearing out of the screen at me without my knowing.

The video also has notes, which are equally as lengthy as we have come to expect:

“Premiered on 2 Apr 2023 #HearingTest #CranialNerveExam #ASMR

Please use your headphones to get the best experience from this video 🎧

Disclaimer: This is an ASMR video solely made to help you relax and unwind. I am not a medical professional, please get in touch with one if you need to have your hearing checked. Also, the Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉ doesn’t exist yet, unfortunately 😦

Hi everyone,

Today is the day. Let me onboard you and tell you everything about the Personal Enhancing Hearing Device ◉, as you are about to get yours installed and improve your experience of the world around you.

This device enhances your auditory field, as well as creates bridges between your senses. For example, a visual or olfactory stimulus will create an auditory response. Welcome into the Future.

The ASMR triggers you will get mostly ear to ear soft-spoken voice and close-up whispers, follow the light exercise, all senses exercises, instructions to follow, personal attention, hand movements, additional dreamy visuals and sounds.

In this video I mix your usual cranial nerve exam and well as hearing test with science fiction, I hope you will like it.

Here is the link to the French version of this video:      • ASMR – Test auditif futuriste [Le Disposit…  “

I’ve edited these down a fair bit; notes can get a bit yada-yada after a while.

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

There is brief music at the start which isn’t terribly distracting. I loved the accent of the presenting person. Immediately the pace is nicely slow and we do not appear to be getting a whispered rendition. That is a pretty rare discovery.

I like the voice; there is no attempt to maximise triggers such as mouth clucking, nail scratching or stroking of cloth (all of which you will have heard if you have stuck with this blog for any period of time.)

In all I would say this is the style of video that I search for – something realistic but still relaxing; calm but without trying to exploit every trigger. I do not often find sound like this in my YouTube exploration.

I notice that the comments seem to share my perspective with the levels of ASMR fan adoration being elevated up to that reserved for rock stars.

It’s unusual (and kind of affirming) to find people sharing my perspective on anything at all (let alone my perspective on videos). I am certain it can’t last.

I think I only rarely find non-English ASMR video presenters. Off the cuff I can remember Japanese, Chinese and one other French person. However, perhaps I need to search more carefully if the videos are of this quality.

There is a period of muted presentation which is part of the theme of the video (it is about hearing). There is a strange click, come buzzing noise, which is the hearing device “calibrating”. I found this a clever idea and not off-putting.

This calibration stage takes a little while and there is occasional music involved. I did not find that distracting (much as I am not a fan of music in ASMR videos).

The video does suggest use of headphones and certainly if you are listening to it from out of a set of old PC speakers, as I am, the directional quality of some parts of the presentation are less pronounced. (Elderly hearing also doesn’t help).

I always imagine that people reading this blog are in any case half way between snooze and alert and so the visuals are unlikely to be of a pronounced benefit. This one is clever, a lot of professional ASMR videos are I find. I do try to focus on the sound though.

As the video progresses, the presentation seems to get quieter and quieter until we are back on the whispered footing with which we are more familiar. I rather like whispering but I hear so much of it in ASMR I do like it when I find material that isn’t whispered.

Shame this video did not stay at the volume we had at the start but I can’t have everything…

There is the odd extraneous noise. I notice clicks, clonks, (mainly items being picked up and placed down again). There is a kind of squirting noise – I think that is supposed to be distribution of a perfume into the air. There are the sounds of the bristles of a brush being riffled through; there are very brief moments of breathiness.

I was quite impressed by this. I would think it worthwhile your giving it a review as well.

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

This week’s selection is this one:

Head-to-Toe Assessment

This is a bit more substantial than some we have reviewed of late (given it is a little over twenty-two and a half minutes in length).

It comes from the channel Kaylee Peters, which is not doing so badly given it has 1.31k subscribers from only six videos, unsurprisingly there are no playlists (I suppose you don’t need a playlist on your channel if you have only six videos). All the videos were posted twelve years ago and then the channel goes into abeyance. This has all the symptoms of a student assessment video.Any regular readers will know that we have seen many such videos.

The channel is very sparse note wise: “Kaylee Peters

More info

            http://www.youtube.com/@kayleepeters5092

            Joined 11 Sept 2013

            1.31k subscribers

            6 videos

            955,885 views”

The video has no notes at all. Most of the comments are not positive but there is the odd ASMR fan in there, which can be reassuring. We do not all like the same things though I notice so it isn’t a given this will deliver.

The video starts without music; there is no obvious background noise. The presentation is relatively loud (at least for me). The presentation is way too fast, I think. I tend to find this with students who need to cram everything into one of these videos. This tends to be reaffirmed by the fact that the student refers to a checklist which is visible to the camera at frequent intervals. I did not find the voice of the student relaxing but the patient was a little more measured (not that she got a great deal of opportunity to talk).

There is a prominent shoulder patch on the student’s uniform but I think you would need to be in the know to determine where it was from as it is too faint for me to make out. So, limited chance of determining where this was recorded. However undeterred I sent it to a google image search which, even in its smudged state, Google tells me it is Claflin University (I’m not sure I set much store by that answer).

The student says “um” roughly once per minute, after a little while it becomes quite noticeable. Many commentators point this out. There are no extraneous noises. However to get a great ASMR experience I think a good first step would be to get into the video play controls and slow this down to half speed. The pace does slow down gradually as the video progresses, as if the student presenter settles into her stride (potentially calms down a bit in a stressful situation). There are sirens at one stage, an obvious hazard recording in a medical facility I would have thought.

It is quite a thought-provoking experience seeing the kind of motion (and balance) that is accessible to a person at this age (and which I do not have now). No doubt many people my age reflect the same thing.

There are genuine quiet and calm moments where I get the opportunity to hear what might have been (there are ever so many videos that I have reviewed previously that are like that, some of them are in the Procrastination Pen archive list right now). I usually give most of them a trial in the main list (as I will this one) but I give up on them when I either lie awake listening to them, or worse was quietly drifting off and one of the videos wakes me up.

I find when a presentation is at speed, not only is volume and calmness sacrificed but expressions of empathy as well. I wonder if the people who set these kinds of exercises in play take such considerations into account.

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