Sleeping With ASMR

As at today’s date the Procrastination Pen playlist has one hundred and sixty two videos and, of late, I have not felt the need to migrate any of them to the archive list due to strange noises, background buzzes or sudden alarming thuds of equipment.

I probably need to be a great deal more critical of this list. However, I always welcome feedback so if you find the playlist to contain items that it should not contain, by all means, tell me. I might even agree and make the changes.

Welcome to the Procrastination Pen. For several months now the site where reviews of “inadvertent ASMR” videos happens. I have been focused mainly on YouTube (because that’s where the playlist is). The idea is to create a playlist of videos that you can listen to when you desperately need to sleep and when no sleep is coming.

If you’re a person who gets ASMR feelings from videos, then welcome. If you don’t get such feelings, welcome too. The idea is that the videos should be relaxing enough that anyone can use them to relax to.

The mission so far has been to find videos that were not designed for the relaxing content but cause relaxation despite their original intent. This has meant that the majority of videos covered so far have been to do with medical examinations. People undergoing medical training seem to be as gentle, careful and thoughtful as they are reputed to be. This greatly helps when you’re looking for an ASMR video.

However, there are other avenues out there and I will always take suggestions, anything that appears sensible I may even try and see how it fits.

I’ve been reviewing ASMR YouTube videos for a while now and given I have predominantly been on one subject (inadvertent ASMR deriving from videos designed for medical tuition) one hazard is that I start to re-review videos that I have reviewed previously.

This has happened once or twice. In one case, I prepared two articles on the same video and they got all the way through editing before I realised my mistake.

Today’s video has the worrying feel of familiarity about it. If anyone spots that I’ve prepared something on this one before please let me know.

Macleod’s examination of the cervical spine

This is very brief at just over 2 minutes.

The introduction screen states “Video taken from Macleod’s Clinical Examination 13th Edition By Graham Douglas, Fiona Nicol & Colin Robertson.”

Given this is a professional video it also has some notes associated with it:

“New! Macleod’s Clinical examination 13th edition

This video demonstrates clinical examination techniques as described in Macleod’s Clinical Examination. The textbook with access to the full set of videos is available at www.elsevierhealth.co.uk/macleod

Comments are permitted but there are few of them.

The two participants communicate in a very stilted manner and I think this might be a video in which the audio is machine generated, possibly the video as well. Alternatively, the audio of the participants was dubbed on afterwards without much reference to the video itself. The commentary is the main feature of the video and this starts a little loud.

The Channel is Farsight Channel and we have encountered this one before.

There are fifty-nine videos and five playlists. The playlist: “New! Macleod’s Clinical examination 13th edition” contains twenty-four videos. The safest way to narrow these down to the number we can cover in one blog article is to select them based upon the participants in the video. In this case, the “patient” occurs in a number of the videos and so does the medical professional.

Therefore, I will select videos where both the medical professional and “patient” appear.

The patient is “Omar” but in a number of videos he is examined by another medical professional (perhaps we’ll come back to those in a future blog post). The medical professional in the above video is “Ben”. There are relatively few videos in which both Ben and Omar appear.

Macleod’s examination of the shoulder

Another brief video, just less than five minutes. The audio of the participants is again a bit strange. The narration is quieter and more suitable to the purpose we are looking for, i.e., getting some rest.

Macleod’s examination of the hip

The theme with this set is that they are all brief. They all have a stilted strange feel to the interaction style between the participants.

This one is a little over six minutes.

The narrator sounds a lot more like a normal human being. It’s hard to describe the problem. The intonation and the timing seems all wrong as if created artificially rather than recorded from an actual interaction.

Definition:

Lumbar lordosis inward curve of the lower back.

Macleod’s examination of the thoracic and lumbar spine

This one is a little under five and a half minutes.

Definition:

Lipoma a fatty lump growing under the skin.

Dimples of Venus, a picture seems best for this:

Dimples of Venus while seated (with arrows)

Macleod’s examination of the motor system of the upper limbs

The one advantage of videos prepared professionally is that they are quite consistent. In this case there is no background noise, no people wandering across the camera and no noises coming from the camera operator.

This video is again brief at just a little over six minutes. This seems to be a feature with this particular set. The advantage is that when watching on YouTube and using the shuffle option you will not get a continuous repetition of videos with similar content (which otherwise might get a little trying). The disadvantage comes if you do not choose this option in which case these occur one after the other in the Procrastination Pen Playlist. It may quietly drive you mad.

I recommend you choose the shuffle option.

Macleod’s examination of the motor system of the lower limbs

Definition:

Clonus – condition causing involuntary muscle contractions.

Here we end the videos featuring “Ben” and “Omar”

The channel seems fairly uniform in terms of quality so I’ll be back in the future with another set of videos from this channel.

The Farsight playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The Procrastination Pen playlist (which is no-doubt what you have all been reading this in order to locate) is found here:

I have been listening to that playlist most nights and some of the videos that were members have now been removed. If any of your favourites are missing from that main playlist you can find them here in the archive list:

Quite often the videos getting removed have no faults other than occasional intrusive noises.

The playlist of items that are great for ASMR (but contain an age verification function), usually a great way to interrupt your listening in the middle of the night, is here:

I hope that you find the playlists restful and that you get a good night’s sleep.

Hope to see you again back here for the next blog article.

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Until next time.

Photo by Shona Macrae