Nails – The Procrastination Pen

Sleeping With ASMR

I notice that media outlets are now declaring that six hours of sleep is just not going to be enough. Which is all very well, but if you are above the age of fifty and have a reasonably busy life, I can more or less bet that many of your nights will have less sleep in them than that. The reflection that as you get older, waking up in the middle of sleeping gets a more pronounced experience does not help if it is three AM and the one thing you don’t want to do is to wake the person who you’re sharing a bed/bedroom with.

At such times, perhaps the Procrastination Pen playlist and a decent set of headphones might be the saviour of the night. (YouTube adverts excepting).

Of late, I have told you when I come across a meditation on Calm that I liked and regular readers will note that I have developed a taste for the daily meditations featuring Jeff Warren. This includes this one https://www.calm.com/app/player/5iglULfMFq “Patiently In A Rush”. I am finding the dailies on Calm to be much more useable than the tracks dedicated to sleep and so again here too. Sadly, Calm is not free and I am not trying to persuade you to pay for it.

A habit I have established is the review of a professional ASMR artist in each of these blog articles. If only in contrast to the inadvertent ASMR that I have been reviewing for greater than a year now.

Today’s video is this one:

ASMR Appointment with Your Doctor

It starts with the medical professional typing into a computer and ignoring anyone else. This has the benefit of being accurate to real-world experience but is not a noise I would want to start an ASMR video with. Perhaps we should be thankful there is no peppy music or thanks given to some sponsor or other.

This video is a little over twenty-one minutes and so is not a huge length for one of these videos. The notes are largely dedicated to advertising, so I won’t bother with them. A quick scan of the comments indicates that they are largely positive. The channel is VisualSounds1 ASMR with 326K subscribers and 1.1K videos. Wow that is a lot of videos. There are twenty-six playlists, none of which obviously focus on medical themes.

Unsurprisingly VisualSounds1 ASMR is also on the ASMR Index.

There is a quite loud background noise, either air conditioning or a sound mimicking air conditioning and I do wonder (again) why ASMR artists include this. I am constantly looking for inadvertent ASMR videos that do not have this type of background noise.

The style is of a person responding to an individual (unheard/unseen) which I believe is probably to make the whole video feel more personal. It can also be a tad on the confusing side until you latch on to what is going on.

The tone, is of course, excellent but tends to delve into the whispery. This seems to be the volume that most professional ASMR artists use. It has the benefit of being ASMR-y but the disadvantage of being much less believable as a rendition of a real medical exam. I cannot remember one occasion in which a GP has ever whispered at me. Perhaps I am missing out…

Hopefully, that was a bit of fun and now back to the day job. Today’s inadvertent ASMR video is this one:

Macleod’s examination of speech

It is, of course, from a channel that we must by now have done to death. Farsight Channel has 102K subscribers and fifty-nine videos which seems a very high subscriber to video ratio to me.

The notes will be familiar to regular Procrastination Pen readers: “84,162 views 6 Jul 2013

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”

We are now used to the slightly stilted and artificial sounding sound track from this channel and this particular video is no different. There is no startup music, no background noise and no strange narrator with a less desirable voice. In fact, in terms of the videos I commonly review this is pretty good. However, it is less than three minutes in length which gives YouTube plenty of opportunity to slide in loud and distracting adverts prior to the next video in the playlist.

The problem with reviewing this site a great deal before, of course is the likelihood that I repeat previously-covered videos. To obviate this possibility, I decided to narrow my search to speech and speech related videos on this channel. This only produced one further video which is this one:

Macleod’s examination of the facial (VII) nerve

The notes don’t really need to be repeated… There are only four comments, but even in that small number they are somewhat variable. It is less than a minute in length and this time there is a narrator. As usual, with the use of narrators, the voice of the narrator is louder and less inclined towards ASMRishness. In other respects, it is similar. The voices of the participants sound odd as if they do not belong to the people participating in the video, just as before.

The Farsight Playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

Today, I started the day with “Bask on the Beach” from Calm. The description is:

“Relax yourself from head to toe, as you visualize a beautiful, tropical cove. Created in partnership with Discover Puerto Rico, this body scan practice will help you embrace the essence of vacation.” The narrator is Diana Holguin.

https://www.calm.com/app/player/5z3j61an_I

I found this a lot more relaxing than some of the sleep dedicated tracks on the same site. I like Diana’s voice and there are no intrusive sounds. Of course, because the site is paid for, there is no offensive (read loud) advertising either. However, I hate to recommend something that you have to pay for, so let’s move on.

I have been looking at contributions from professional ASMR artists and actually finding it surprisingly challenging. A number of such videos dedicate a great deal of time to the sponsor du-jour. Often, they include a surprisingly large number of distracting noises. Sometimes, I just do not like the presentation. However, today, I have this one:

ASMR Emergency Room | You’re in Critical Condition | Full Body Exam

Firstly, it might be as well to understand that this is a huge-long video only slightly under two hours in length. It comes from the channel The Cozy Hospital ASMR.

This has 226K subscribers and four hundred and twenty three videos. So, yet another very hard-working ASMR artist. Not unexpectedly, given the title of the channel there is a great resource of medical-a-like videos on this channel and so if you have been following this blog you may well be interested in this artist.

Not unexpectedly the Cozy Hospital appears on the ASMR Index.

The video starts with no startup music but is obviously firmly aiming for “genuine” presentation of a medical exam. As such it includes a number of noises that I would not have included. There’s the squeaking trolley wheel and a background air conditioning noise, which quite quickly settles down. The voice is then, as expected, delightful. There are occasional background noises (Tannoy noises at intervals for example). I would not have bothered with the glove noises or the handling of equipment noises either. There are noises from application of micropore surgical tape and a background monitoring beep. There’s the clicking of a tube cap and the rustle of packaging/clothing but I am certain that some of these are included because someone out there finds them a useful trigger.

I would say that this voice is excellent. At intervals it is too whispery to be believable and a bit breathy as well, but I am picking holes because the presentation is very good.

However, I could spend all day reviewing YouTube channels that were created to make money out of ASMR. The target up to this stage has been to find an ordinary YouTube video but which, nonetheless, some people might find relaxing. So far, by far, the majority of those reviewed have been on a medical theme.

Today’s video suffers from the fact that it does not run for very long at all, a little less than four minutes in fact:

Peripheral vascular

It is drawn from that rich vein of videos that have been mined so often on this blog, the student assessment video. Indeed, we have visited this channel before. It is on the channel Leah Barlow which has ninety subscribers and fifteen videos none of which seems to be going for record breaking in terms of length. It looks like the last time I decided to review only those videos where Leah appeared with the same patient and, if I pursue the same methodology, it looks like today’s “patient” appears in three of these videos.

The video starts with a bit of a loud clonk and the voices are a little loud, probably because they need to talk over voices that can be heard from an adjacent room. This is a shame because the approach seems to be quite methodical and the voices reasonably restful. There is, of course, a constant accompaniment of air conditioning which we are well used to by now.

There are occasional loud equipment noises as parts of the examination table are slid in and out.

The next video apparently featuring the same two participants is this one:

Abdominal

This is just over three minutes long. Again, there is a loudish knock at the beginning. The patient here announces her name but at a pace that makes it tough to work out. I would say Ella Kelly, possibly, but that is in all probability, incorrect. There is a very slight echo which I assume is down to the design of the room. Again, there are loud equipment noises and mutterings from next door. The presentation is very level, almost quiet, and if it were not for extraneous noises would be excellent. For a start, there is no music on this video which a number of professional videos could learn a lot from…

Part way through there is a loud knock and the session is interrupted. However, the video is brought to a close swiftly after that.

The last one from the same medical professional-“patient” combo is this one:

Skin, hair, and nails

This pretty much follows the theme of the previous two. Knock at commencement, background air conditioning, overheard conversations from adjacent rooms. The presentation continues level and methodical. During the actual exam the noise level goes down. There is an absence of equipment noises this time, which makes this one the most restful of the set.

The video is a little over three and a half minutes so they are all much of a muchness in terms of length (no huge long monologues here).

The Leah Barlow Playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

I have been promising for a little while now that I would make some recommendations regarding tracks on Calm that I have used when sleep seems to be avoiding me. In fact, Calm has a whole range of material dedicated to sleep. This seems to be getting updated so regularly that it is hard to point to any one specific track. That said, I did rather enjoy “A Calmling in New York”. Perhaps a little too music-based for my usual relaxation but you may well have a different point of view. You can find it here: https://www.calm.com/app/player/qJEZPZzlDS but a warning, Calm is not free (and I am not trying to encourage you to pay for it).

Of course, if you are really stressed of a night time, it might just be that you want to be as relaxed as possible whilst acknowledging that sleep just isn’t going to happen for you that evening. In which case, some background noise might be just what you need.

I often give up in these situations and switch on the TV, listening with headphones on. It is not infrequently that I wake up a few hours later, a change of location and some background noise being all that it took to knock wakefulness on the head.

However, if it is looking like a few hours of being awake, you might do worse than to launch the Procrastination Pen playlist, set YouTube to shuffle and lie there listening to the various restful tracks that are available.

I have been in the habit recently of reviewing one professional ASMR artist’s video. Just because I’ve been reviewing inadvertent ASMR for over a year now and it is probably time for a change. (Small though it is).

Today’s video comes from LeannaASMR who is featured on the ASMR index here.

ASMR| Comprehensive Abdominal Exam, Full Medical Roleplay (Soft Spoken)

At a little less than twenty minutes it is rather short for a full-length professional ASMR video of this type. I do notice that there is a rising tendency for ASMR artists to publish their videos as “shorts” i.e. something only a few minutes long. Perhaps this video is trying to draw a middle way between the hour-long material we’ve seen and the one-minute shorts that are at the other end of the spectrum.

The video has quite a lot of extraneous noise; clicking noises, crumpling noises, equipment noises, the odd thump, in fact, the noises I have been hoping that inadvertent ASMR material would not contain. I assume that this was included here for effect but it marred it for me. The voice, meanwhile is as perfect as you can imagine for a professional ASMR artist and does not stray into the whispering level, which tends to make such videos completely unbelievable (what medical professional conducts an examination using a whispering tone)?

So, enough of all these distractions back to the overriding purpose of the blog which is to turn up inadvertent ASMR material or, at the very least, videos which are calm and restful (and hopefully without too much in the way of extraneous noises).

Today’s video comes from a channel that I have covered before N Sight has 3.08K subscribers and twenty videos. The proportion of subscribers to quantity of videos is something of an achievement, I think.

The video is this one:

Nails: Demo Exam

It is four- and three-quarter minutes so not long enough to keep you. There are notes “264,441 views 17 Feb 2016

In today’s medical practice, knowing how to spot physical signs of nutritional imbalances during a routine physical examination is an essential diagnostic tool. This nutrition-focused nails exam is conducted by Kara Fitzgerald, ND.

N Sight is presented by the Institute for Functional Medicine.”

But perhaps wisely comments are not permitted.

Sadly, it has startup music and that startup music is a bit peppy to be properly restful. There is background noise but it is not excessive. Kara has a good voice, the “patient” does not get to say a great deal. Some of the included pictures are majorly off-putting and so, if this blog was not focusing on listening, I would be lairy about making it a member of the playlist. My recommendation is to listen and not to watch.

Fortunately N Sight has an entire playlist dedicated to the Nail Exam category and this playlist contains four videos.

The playlist first featured is, in fact, number two in this playlist. The first video is this one:

Nail Exam: Introduction, Equipment, & Patient Positioning

Again, there are notes: “7,955 views 17 Feb 2016

The same two participants are featured and again we have funky startup music (sigh). The video is a bit longer than three-and-a-quarter minutes and does not initially start with a medical examination. Kara Fitzgerald starts presenting and as such the vocal is a little louder than in the first video. The patient does not appear until the two- and three-quarter minute mark, it is interposed with yet more funky music and I find that quite distracting.

The second video is the one we came in with, and the third video in the playlist is this one:

Nails: Teaching Exam

This is much more substantial at a little less than seventeen and a half minutes. There are notes again “43,265 views 17 Feb 2016

N Sight is presented by the Institute for Functional Medicine.”

And the same two participants. The far too energetic music tops and tails the video, as before.

This time we are into the meat and potatoes of an examination. Here, Kara’s voice is much more measured and I would say is pretty good from our perspective. It is not too loud or energetic.

I would say (music excepting) this is a pretty good candidate for the Procrastination Pen playlist.

The final video is merely a wrap up. It is this one:

Nails: Conclusion

it is only slightly more than a minute. Same startup (and concluding) music. No medical exam this time and just like that it is all over.

The N Sight Playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

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

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

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

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

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

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

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

Until next time.

Picture DeepAI.org