Reflexes – The Procrastination Pen

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I went for a while with next to no sleep. I just could not get my actual sleep mode to fit with when I needed to be asleep. I was tired when I needed to work. I was awake when I needed to sleep. (I watched quite a lot of television). My partner pointed to the fact that I am making one of the cardinal sins which is that I sit and read in bed before sleeping and a number of articles point out that the bed has to be for sleep only.

The one thing that did come out of it was that when I finally did manage to get a few hours how delicious it all was. So wonderful I could have been tempted to give thanks for every precious second of unconsciousness. My eighteen-year-old self would have looked upon that sentence with incredulity.

I think, of late, that the professional ASMR has been improving and the inadvertent ASMR not quite so much. This is a disappointment. But I always imagined that finding good material might eventually prove difficult. Even that which at first sight appears suitable, often, ultimately, is not quite so much – as we have found. However, the endeavour persists – we’ll see what we can find.

I must admit that I am now tiring of some of the approach (I’ve been doing this three years) and I am thinking that another shake up will be required soon. Possibly to start with moving away from a medical theme for a while might make a nice change. I’m off on holliers soon so I’ll see what happens when I come back with a fresh perspective.

This week’s Calm item is this:

Inspiration

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

Daily Jay

Soul Grow

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Which is about becoming a more extraordinary version of yourself.

Whilst exploring this letter https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kurt-vonnegut-xavier-letter_n_4964532

Bearing in mind that if you want to listen you also have to buy a subscription (which I imagine will put a few people off).

This week let’s look at a very different kind of professional ASMR video which is this one:

ASMR The Reincarnation Station 🔃 Choosing Your Next Life

It is from the channel Cosmo Whispers ASMR which, again, I cannot remember having been to before. It has 172k subscribers, six hundred and fifty one videos, eighteen playlists and it looks bizarre like it is an ASMR version of Sesame Street.

There are notes on the channel:

“Cosmo Whispers ASMR

Description

Hi! I’m Cosmo! Your friendly neighborhood pink fuzzy monster and this is my ASMR channel!

I make ASMR videos with a little purple goober named Jeremy, a video editor named Lennard, and my close friends to help you relax, have a good laugh, and fall asleep!

I hope you can find comfort and maybe even have a few laughs from my silly little channel.

Much love to you all! 🫶💖”

And of course, the video also has notes:

“21 Sept 2026 11 products

Remember to leave a LIKE!

Thanks for watching! 💖

And make sure to subscribe and hit the bell button so you are notified when I release a new video! ☺️

New to the world of ASMR? That’s okay, I was once too! Welcome! ☺️

What is ASMR?

“ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) or TINGLES are a relaxing, often sedative sensation that begins on the scalp and moves down the body that are triggered by placid sights and sounds such as whispers, accents, and crackles.”

I remember my first time experiencing Tingles!

Watching a friend of mine read a book while listening to him flip the pages and lick his finger before doing so.

It made my head feel soooo fuzzy that I fell asleep right in the armchair I was sitting in.

My goal is to help recreate that feeling for some of you!

I also LOVE hearing other people’s first experiences with ASMR so drop me a comment or message!

Much love my friend! 🫶”

Which I have heavily edited because they were comprehensive to say the least.

The video is thirty minutes long. It starts with music and some sci-fi sounding noises. It is reasonably quiet and I had to run the sound up a bit for the review. I am not a fan of music in ASMR videos and I am certainly not keen on videos where the music forms an actual part of the video. Some people seem to find music and ASMR fit well together (a number of the sleep-orientated Calm tracks do this for example). I think it is a very unsound marriage and I think ASMR should be voice only. I very rarely get my wish. When the vocal track starts, a background hiss starts at the same time. That is not too distracting. However, it is comfortably masked by the music in any case.

The voice sounds like it is artificially slowed as if the person would prefer to be talking more quickly. However, after a very short while I soon got used to that. There is a strange background crackling noise as if the track was being played on a badly stored vinyl record. I’m not sure why this was done.

I thought the concept of the video a good one. The idea that you are met by an individual once you have died and are offered a series of choices. That sounds a lot more appealing than disappearing into a box with all consciousness snuffed out. I would say it is more a calming experience than actual ASMR as such and I am not convinced, personally, I would find it that conducive to sleep. I bet there are a large number of people think differently.

After a while I decided I liked the voice, either that or the voice settled down and got comfortable in its role. I hankered after a music free version of the same video – I do not see this option sadly.

Despite my reservations I did find myself nodding to this which must be a good sign. Why not review it for yourself.

I was thinking about blog feedback. I realised that the last (non-spam) feedback comment I had was from Aidan Blunt. A the time I remember thinking it is little moments like this that make the blogging process worthwhile. When someone reaches out from their lives to interact with mine over a small piece of work I completed some months ago.

Given that Hollie Berry was and remains once of my favourite voices since I started reviewing unintentional ASMR videos, it was a high point for me to rival being given permission to use one of Lindisfarne’s album covers back when I restarted blogging.

This appears a long time after I got the comment but I thought I would provide encouragement, to anyone that happens across this little blog, to feed back about what they have read.

The blog has been about ASMR since December 2022 (a bit of a mélange prior to that) and I have (nearly) consistently been focused on unintentional ASMR videos on YouTube. Firstly, because that is still where most of the videos seem to reside. Secondly WordPress offers me the rather nice option of embedding them in the blog post to illustrate a little of what the article is about.

The demand for unintentional ASMR videos seems to continue unabated and I have been keen to try to find as many as I can, assemble them into a great long playlist and then share the playlist so that others with similar tastes can listen to it of a night time. Particularly if they find themselves towards the insomniac side of restfulness.

Today I am back on message with a medical orientated video and one involving an examination so far so back where this all started

It is this one:

02 – Assessment of muscle tone after stroke

At just shy of twelve minutes it is a good length. It starts without startup music (God be praised) and is a lovely muted introduction – shades of delight creeping in already.

The notes state: “841,613 views 6 Sept 2017 STARs – Management of Tone & Spasticity After Stroke: A Role for Everyone

This resource is from the Stroke Training and Awareness Resources (STARs) website – http://www.stroketraining.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…”

Comments are permitted but thankfully so far the trolls appear to be on holiday. However, there are no ASMR orientated comments which is a surprise I would think that the ASMR fans would be all over this.

Not only is the medical professional excellent in terms of his voice for our purposes even the patient appears to have a great voice as well.

The medical professional is incredibly gentle – just the sort of approach that we look for in one of these videos and a number of commentators applaud him for this. The patient we find is Alan (possibly misspelled)

Given the title of this video starts 02 we can assume I think there is a 01 and quite possibly a 03 so it is worth determining if they are also worth reviewing.

The channel is Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland and it turns out that our video is one of six contained in this playlist:

STARs – Management of Tone & Spasticity After Stroke: A Role For Everyone

With notes: “these resources are from the stroke training and awareness resources (stars) website – http://www.stroketraining.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike 4.0 International License.

Https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/”

It appears that we might have a gem into terms of video series so let’s take a look at the other 5.

01 – Reflexes After Stroke

This is short it’s only just over one and a half minutes. It is consistent with the first one reviewed in this article – which is a benefit of professionally produced videos.

It is there for moments and then is gone, but it is so relaxing I think it belongs in the Procrastination Pen playlist. In fact, I’d be prepared to guess that all six videos in the Management of Tone & Spasticity After Stroke playlist belong there.

03 – Muscle position and stretch

Just over three minutes so we are definitely at the short end of videos that we’ve included in the Procrastination Pen Playlist.

However, this remains an excellent quality video lacking extraneous noise or distractions which have haunted some of the material that we have reviewed (and consigned some of them to the Procrastination Pen Archive list).

04 – On and off bed

A bit over two and a half minutes so not huge in terms of length either. It remains consistent with the previous videos in this playlist.

05 – On and off chair

This is a little less than there and a quarter minutes and it is beautifully calm and quiet, if I have to be treated for a difficult condition this would be the way I would like it to happen.

06 – Walking and tone

Supportive, calm, relaxed, quiet, not only a medical professional but a tutor and caring person. This set of videos has been a thoroughly good set for us and all of them are going into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

The channel Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland has three hundred and fifty-seven videos and 41.8K subscribers which I’m sure you will agree is a few. There is every incentive therefore to come straying back here in the future in search of more excellent videos at this quality.

It is unusual to find a set of videos in a playlist where every video is suitable both for ASMR and for restfulness as a precursor to sleep but I think this set may well be they. I think we will be back here in due course to determine if Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland have any more material for us.

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

See you again next week.

The Chest Heart and Stroke 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

As promised in a previous blog post we are back again at the Merck Manuals channel. Last time we were covering the Ortho Exam playlist.

Relevant videos from this playlist/channel have already been added to the Merck Manuals playlist on The Procrastination Pen YouTube channel.

And into the overall The Procrastination Pen playlist:

There are twenty-two playlists in this channel some of which are extremely large. (The “Merck Manual Consumer Version” contains ninety videos for example. If I attempted to cover all of those it would not be not so much a blog post as a book on ASMR).

Since my last blog post they have changed elements of the Merck Manuals channel to state that it is not available outside the United States.

I hope it wasn’t something that I said.

If like me you’re not in the United States I am afraid that you are left with whatever remaining crumbs there are in terms of videos that are still available.

Parts of some playlists remain accessible.

The playlist:

The Neuro Exam – Merck Manual Professional Version

Contains seven videos which are still visible outside of the US. (Who knows how long you’ll be able to see even these. I suggest you go listen to them before it is too late).

How to do the Mental Status Exam | Merck Manual Professional Version

This is another video with funky start up music. I mean, really, don’t they know I’m trying to sleep?

The narrator here is way too loud sadly. Fortunately, that doesn’t last very long. The “patient” states that she is in Philadelphia in the Einstein Medical Centre. It’s not your standard ASMR stuff in that it is a little bit loud even in the medical exam portion.

I also notice that the medical professional asks how many nickels there are in a dollar and I realised that I did not know (in case you’re also not located in the US the answer is twenty apparently).

Some of these tests are a bit tough. It made me wonder about my own memory as I’m not sure I’d be able to pass such tests.

The video is just a bit loud I think and not great ASMR material so not one for the Procrastination Pen playlist.

How to do the Cranial Nerve Examination | Merck Manual Professional Version

It looks like startup funky music for videos in this playlist is going to be a theme.

Here the narrator is more muted and much more in keeping with what we’re looking for, I think. The video is designed to be for teaching/instruction so although there is an examination of a patient the actually dialogue between medical professional and “patient” does not feature in the video.

However, I think this one will make it to the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Cerebellar Examination: How to Assess Gait, Stance, and Coordination | Merck Manual

There is music at the start as before. Maybe eventually I will find a way to edit videos for their ASMR effects but that currently is not the purpose of this blog/playlist.

The narrator has learned his lesson after the somewhat loud presentation of the first video in this list. He is quite calm and reasonably quiet.

The exam proper appears without audio – the narrator is filling in what the stages in the exam mean. It is an instruction video that is also quite good for ASMR. This video will also be in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

How to do the Motor Examination | Merck Manual Professional Version

I notice that comments for these videos are turned off. Turning off comments stops some of the crazier contributions that we’ve seen of late but it also stops us working out if others are using these videos for their ASMR effects.

To me they seem a good find, this one included.

How to do the Sensory Exam | Merck Manual Professional Version

This is the longest video of the set, but it follows the format of the other videos seen so far. We’re entirely reliant upon the quality of the narrator here (especially to distract us from the music interludes). Fortunately, he has a good voice.

There are intrusions of parts of the genuine exam here. The only distraction with these interludes is the background noise. This is almost certainly the air-conditioning noise which we have become used to from other videos.

In this playlist whilst the medical professionals have changed between videos the “patient” remains the same.

Another good video for the Procrastination Pen playlist, I think.

How to Test Reflexes | Merck Manual Professional Version

Apart from the first video these have been consistent. Quite a good find this series and this particular video is worth making part of the Procrastination Pen playlist.

How to do a 4-Minute Neurologic Exam | Merck Manual Professional Version

This is exactly the same format as the other videos covered in this article. They were all posted six years ago. I notice that the notes tell me something about the Merck Manual:

“First published in 1899 as a small reference book for physicians and pharmacists, The Merck Manual grew in size and scope to become one of the world’s most widely used comprehensive medical resources for professionals and consumers. As The Manual evolved, it continually expanded the reach and depth of its offerings to reflect the mission of providing the best medical information to a wide cross-section of users, including medical professionals and students, veterinarians and veterinary students, and consumers. • Merck Manual Professional Version: http://www.MerckManuals.com/Professional”

I’m guessing that there is some financial consideration involved in its use. If it produces videos of this quality, I’m in favour (well until they totally remove my ability to see the videos in any case).

However, if the video recording guys are reading, please quieten down the funky music at the beginning (or better still go for a silent intro).

This is another one for the Procrastination Pen playlist, I think.

The Merck Manuals playlist has been updated with these videos.

The overall playlist containing all the videos featured so far is here.

The above playlist has now grown quite large so I have started to weed out some of the less effective ones. However I realise that some people may consider them favourites so I have added the removed videos to an archive playlist.

However, if people who post videos keep taking those videos down again, or making them unavailable to a person writing a blog in the UK, then I may find the weeding is being done for me behind the scenes.

There is also the playlist for the small number of videos I have covered that require age verification. There has been limited demand for these so I doubt I will cover many more (unless I do so by accident).

I hope that you find them restful (and that you get some great sleep).

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Photo by Shona Macrae