reviews – The Procrastination Pen

Sleeping With ASMR

I recently read some recommendations around the use of magnesium to aid sleep. Personally, I was sceptical. I consider my diet has quite enough healthy attributes. So why would I need a supplement. I decided to go with cheap and minimal to give it a try. I located some 375mg magnesium and vitamin B6 from Tesco. I figured if the bargain basement variety was effective, then there was something in this magnesium supplement solution.

I also wanted the lowest mg I could find as I had been warned that strong supplements of magnesium can act as a laxative, and I was not too keen on that.

In any case, I now find it slightly easier initially to fall asleep. I have found that it has zero effect on the nights when I am already stressed – so far nothing available off prescription does. It also seems to have no, to negligible, effect on waking up during the night. Taking it, I find I still wake up around 4AM and it is still a struggle to get back off to sleep again.

Of course, this is anecdotal. A sample size of one could hardly be called a scientific sample size. There is also a strong possibility it is all placebo effect. However, if so, I’m all for the placebo effect. It might be worth giving magnesium a try if you haven’t already.

So, again, welcome to the Procrastination Pen, the home of restful material to aid in distraction of the sleepless and, on a good night, towards gentling them off to sleep.

Of late I have been trying to find material that is not on YouTube to give you the option of avoiding some pretty sleep-disturbing adverts. One of the people who is more famous than most is Jack Kornfield. Who, unsurprisingly, has a truly excellent voice and one, which, in the past, I listened to very frequently.

Surely meditation royalty like this would not have material out there in internet land that is free of charge?

Well in fact there is a whole site of it here, including, completely at random, this one: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/85881/20240902-Jack_Kornfield-SR-a_labor_of_love-85881.mp3

We also find the odd content in the Internet Archive including this one:

I’m beginning to understand that, with all this information available, one really does not have to put up with YouTube at all.

Following the structure that was established a few months ago, at this point I tend to recommend something from Calm. I have a Calm subscription and so I am in the fortunate position that I can listen to the content there. I recognise that only a subset of the people reading this will be in that position, so I will keep this section brief:

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

Daily Jay

Soul Grow

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

This is about becoming a more extraordinary version of yourself. In it Jay explores this letter. I often find that Jay has some of the more interesting content on Calm, although not usually the most restful. I assume most people want to become the best possible version of themselves and so this may appeal.

Following on from the Calm recommendation, regular readers will know that at this point I now turn to YouTube and look for a professional ASMR artist. I am now not clear whether this is to recommend them. Many of my articles have found problems with content from professional ASMR artists. However, at the same time I have found the same artists with positive legion fans leaving sycophantic comments. I have to conclude therefore, that there are many different ears in the world and they all like to hear something different. For this reason, I persist, in the hope that at least one person who happens across this blog will like the content.

This one is unusual in that it has no notes and very few comments. That does not usually bode well, so my expectations are not high from commencement.

ASMR | Nurses Station 1: Nurse on Cranial Nerve Exam 🩺

It is from ALBERTSVOICE ASMR, which is a channel that has 16.8K subscribers, 3.4K videos, eleven playlists with some playlists quite obviously on theme for our medical – related ASMR reviews, such as:

and

This is such a huge number of videos I can only assume that the person is doing this as a full-time job. In which case all power to him.

Today’s video is a little over twenty-three minutes. It starts very loud for an ASMR video including a ringing tone, loud speech, and loud keyboard sounds. The phone gets a good clattering and the video continues in the same loud manner. This is certainly not your classical ASMR video. Although we have heard videos with excessively loud keyboards before, this is quite possibly the loudest yet.

There seem to be very loud equipment-related sounds every time a piece of equipment is selected. On the upside, there is no sign of whispering or breathy presentations. There are no mouth clucking sounds or any of those other sounds we have associated with a number of professional ASMR artists. In fact, it is so loud, I do wonder if it is in fact a parody of ASMR videos rather than an ASMR video as such. Although we have encountered videos with loud noises in them, I have rather assumed that this was a mistake rather than by conscious choice. Here it would appear that it is by design. I suspect that unless you give the volume control a healthy downwards turn you are not going to get much rest whilst listening to this one.

It is odd, when I started to review professional ASMR artists I was convinced that the content would be so good that very soon all the inadvertent material I had initially focused on would be shown to be excessively lacking. Actually, the more reviews I do, the more I find that much of this inadvertent material stands up rather well.

Perhaps I made the correct choice, quite by accident, when I started writing this review series of blog articles all those months ago.

As to that, this week’s inadvertent ASMR video is this one:

Neurological assessment video

It has no notes and comments are denied – so reassuringly quite unlike a professional ASMR artist then. It comes from the channel Lila Kalman, which has 1.08K subscribers. This is quite an achievement given there are only sixteen videos and no playlists.

The posts to this channel start three years ago, conclude two years ago and have all the appearance of student assessment videos. Today’s video is not going to break the bank timewise given it is less than eight minutes long. Other parts of the channel look worthy of investigation however, so I will most likely be returning for a further look in the future.

It starts with the typical student video pantomime knock. Usually this precedes attempts at privacy using thin air, which fortunately does not happen here. The medical professional introduces herself as Lila, so I am guessing the owner of this channel. The “patient” seems to be Lauren Hager (assuming I heard that correctly). There is no excessive background noise (somewhat of a miracle for videos of this nature). Lila seems to have an excellent voice. Lauren’s is almost as good. If I happen across Lauren’s channel in my travels I may give it a review. (Assuming that she was a nurse in the same year as Lila, which is by no means a given).

The video continues quiet, and the approach is methodical. Would that we had seen many more such videos. There are occasional equipment noises, none of which seem to me to be excessive. If anything, the recording seems a little on the muted side. One of the rare occasions in which you will be rolling over and turning the volume control up. (Whereas more usually you’ll be turning it down, often quite a long way down). There is occasional noise, which sounds like it might be traffic noise, outside of the building. In which case the building could probably do with some more insulation as it sounds unusually noisy.

There’s the odd pregnant pause, I assume while Lila attempts to recall what it is should come next in the process. So far, so typical student assessment video. There is occasional speech from an adjacent room, which is also the kind of thing that we have heard before.

All told I think a rather good video for us and it is going into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

On that basis, just one video on this occasion.

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 DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

I have been considering a move towards reviewing some meditation material on YouTube as I know that I have been reviewing inadvertent ASMR material for a very long time now and possibly a change may not go awry.

However, that will be for a future date. Today we are back to an old favourite voice which we have covered in a previous post:

Abraham Verghese: “Cutting for Stone”

A bit of a diversion but only because we encountered Abraham Verghese in our review of the Stanford material.

There are notes of course: ”22,835 views 13 Jul 2011

“Patients require that one-on-one encounter, the Samaritan function of being a physician,” says writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese. “I’m convinced that when the physician examines the patient, this is an incredibly important ritual.” Watch more of Fred de Sam Lazaro’s conversation with writer and Stanford Medical School professor Abraham Verghese, author of “Cutting for Stone.”

Watch our full profile of Abraham Verghese:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandet…”

the URL for the profile by the way leads here: Abraham Verghese.

The video is a bit over twenty-seven minutes (so longer than we have been covering of late).

It starts without music and this makes such a positive difference in contrast with some we have reviewed where the music is the major distraction that eventually consigns the video to the archive list.

Abraham Verghese (when not undercut with peppy music anyway) has an awesome voice, mellow, measured, dignified in fact. I intended to listen whilst typing but instead found myself focused on the video, this points up the quality of the sound we are dealing with here and contrasts strongly with some of the more borderline items we have listened to of late.

The channel does not strike me as very much medical and not very much ASMR either, it is Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. This channel has six hundred and ninety-one videos at the time I am looking at it. That is quite a few to search through in the hope of finding medical/ASMR videos. There are fourteen playlists and as luck would have it one of them is entitled “Health and Medicine” which seems squarely in the sights of material that we have recently been covering:

Health and Medicine consists of the following videos:

Affordable Heart Surgery in India

This has age verification against it and so it is just not going into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

It is just less than nine minutes, and as a professional video has notes associated with it:

“1,297,372 views 10 Sept 2015

Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, a heart surgeon in India, runs a network of for-profit hospitals that perform world-class operations at a small fraction of what they would cost in the U.S. He is driven by his belief that even the most sophisticated surgery should be available to the world’s poorest people, and he says that “if a solution is not affordable, it is not a solution. It’s pointless if we talk about huge developments in cardiac surgery or a brain operation or complex cancer surgery if [the] common man cannot afford it.”

Watch this story on our website:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandet…

—

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly

http://www.pbs.org/religion”

Comments are permitted and for a change these seem to be universally supportive. No obvious comments from ASMR fans though and that is a bad sign, given an ASMR afficionado makes a ferret look uninquisitive.

The video starts without music but has the style of an interview for a news programme. Not a style that lends itself to a blog on ASMR. It is not immediately obvious why age verification was necessary – perhaps operations are viewed as off-putting content. Sadly, it discounts it from inclusion in the playlist so I include it simply out of interest.

Kidney Donors and Faith Communities

This one did not challenge me to login to verify my age so that’s a more reassuring start. There are notes but they are pretty samey with the previous notes we have seen, so I won’t delay you with more of them.

It is a little less than eight and a half minutes and so again not a huge length for a video. There is a fairly substantial level of background noise but again the presentation as a news story is not great in terms of ASMR. It’s a shame, because some of the participants have a great voice. But these are interspersed by voices that are less suitable.

The Dalai Lama’s Doctor

Less than seven minutes and so far, I am quite impressed with the somewhat diverse nature of the videos in this one playlist. I am less impressed that they all seem to be in the format of news. This one is in the same format. It’s sad because the presenter’s voice is great. However, it is interspersed with traffic noise, wind noise and of course other voices. As such it does not have a place in the Procrastination Pen playlist, however if you are seeking videos with calm voices I recommend that you review this one.

Death with Dignity

A fascinating subject certainly, and this time a video which is a little less than eight and a half minutes.

Again, this is in the format of a news programme. This time the included voices are excellent and, had it been a medical video, this would have seen it included in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Like the previous video, I would recommend a review of this as the voices included are calm ones and it won’t feature anywhere on theprocrastinationpen YouTube channel.

Here, there will be no new playlist and I do not think that the Abraham Verghese video belongs in the Stanford Medicine playlist. Therefore, I think it will simply feature in the overall playlist.