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 
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
which is an old favourite. One of the tracks has an uncomfortable 
