This week, a sleep course. It’s a paid-for thing and so I am not even going to advertise it, but once I get properly underway, I might be able to share some of the learning points, if it turns out that there are any worth having. I’m assuming anyone who is reading this blog has already read most of the interesting sleep-related news and so there is precious little extra to add. By all means feed back if you feel that not to be the case.
I thought I would put a little more leg work into the non-YouTube track this week and I remembered that I came across some meditation by Rashid Hughes a considerable long time ago. I found that Rashid has a website: https://www.rashidhughes.com/ and there are audio files located on there and those files are not based on YouTube! I did notice that they are on SoundCloud, there appears to be no download option. For those who prefer a bit of non-SoundCloud orientated meditation, Rashid also appears on mindful magazine which will give you twelve minutes to decide if you like the voice. https://www.mindful.org/r-e-s-t-a-guided-practice-for-the-tired-and-weary/
As usual, I have listened to some Calm meditation recently. As usual, I rather liked what I heard and hence I am going to recommend one. However, do bear in mind none of the Calm content is actually free, so this is a definite stump up before you listen situation.
https://www.calm.com/app/player/2o__8udpzK
Daily Jay
Check Your Ego
NARRATOR
Jay Shetty
Humility and Gratitude – the tools to keep your ego in check.
Jay Shetty, not the most calming voice on Calm but someone who challenges me in all the correct places. I find myself returning to his material over and over again. But it isn’t free and so moving on.
For this week’s professional ASMR offering I am again returning to nostalgia. As a result, the video has nothing whatsoever to do with medical examinations, either real or imagined. It is simply a video that I used to listen to around the time it first came out. I thought that it was nicely paced and properly relaxing.
The channel is itsblitzzz with 834k subscribers, three hundred and eighty-four videos, and three playlists. None of those playlists are on a medical theme. A quick scan of the videos also reveals none of them to be medically based either. The video is this one:
ASMR | Night massage with Gua sha, herbs, natural oils (soft spoken)
The publication date should give a clue as to how long ago I used to listen to this. There are notes: “29 Jan 2019 #guasha #massage #ASMR
In tonight’s video, I have brought back one of my favourite humans to experiment with some new techniques and tools (our other video can be found here:
• ASMR | Head massage and energy healing on …).
This was a spur of the moment session, and I am happy that Elizabeth was free to come over. She is such an easy person to be around, and everything felt very natural and relaxed. I use some Gua sha tools in our session as well as some natural sprays and oils. Gua sha is a skin scraping technique used in traditional East Asian medicine that can also be performed with a spoon or other smooth object. Typically, it leaves marks (petechiae) but tonight I will just be using the tools to aid in massage. I am using light to medium pressure to avoid abrasions. I will demonstrate and discuss other Gua sha techniques in the very near future on my channel.”
These are fantastically brief in comparison to most professional ASMR artists today.
Comments are permitted, and there are literally thousands of these. A lot of them seem strange. Not as many as I would have expected jump out as the level of ASMR sycophancy that we have come to expect from professional ASMR artist video comments.
This is odd, because, if memory serves, this is quite a good video. If it is as good as I remember then we may well, in the future, cover the other video mentioned in those notes.
The video is a little over forty-two minutes long and so quite a lengthy one in comparison to some I have reviewed of late. It starts without music. The ASMR professional is off-camera and background noises can be heard: a rustling, some footfalls, the odd thud.
Elizabeth, it turns out, has a great voice and she is the first to speak. Initially there is a lot of moving about by the ASMR professional together with associated noises. Sadly, Elizabeth does not get much to say during this video.
It is quite breathy – in fact a lot of the sound is breathing, together with hands running through hair and the stroking of skin. There are noises related to movement including the rustling of clothing. When “itsblitzz” starts to speak, it is somewhat louder than the noises up to that point and we cotton onto the fact that the presentation is not going to major on whispery.
It is reasonably slow; in fact, it is like there is an elongated interval between each word. Whilst not actually whispering, the voice is kept low. Rather like one I reviewed a few weeks back I do wonder if the person presenting does not find it easy to talk that quietly. But it might just be my elderly ears that can hear a strain where perhaps there isn’t one.
There are brushing noises; the chinking of glass bottles; the sound of spraying; clicking noises; rubber pipette teat noises; the sound of the Gua sha tool against skin; the sound of oil on skin; a plastic lid being tightened onto a glass bottle; the sound of sage being ignited and subsequently being firmly extinguished; the sound of warm tea being poured into a metal container.
I felt it was almost hypnotic and I found myself drifting off to sleep several times during the video, which for this blog I would say was a great success. I would certainly give it a review yourself. It was certainly great to reacquaint myself with this one and I can remember now what I liked about it. Medical themed or no, I think I will be coming back to this channel in the future.
It will be hard to follow that with anything inadvertent I fear, but still, this is the way that I traditionally round off an ASMR themed blog post.
We are back again at a channel that I have reviewed a few times before MGA Nursing has fifty-five subscribers, forty-three videos and two playlists. Not unsurprisingly one of those playlists is on a medical theme but it contains just one video:
This week’s video is this one:
Head and Neck/ Mouth, Nose, Throat, and Sinuses Video by Megan Morrow
It is a little less than seven minutes long; no comments are permitted such that it is not feasible to determine if any ASMR fans have arrived here before us. There are no notes, simply a posting date of 28 Sept 2017.
It won’t keep us long and other than the name of the medical professional we really know very little about it.
It starts without music but with a fairly advanced background hiss. In fact, Megan sounds like she is recording at some distance from the microphone. The setting is domestic (probably someone’s kitchen). This is one of those videos where you are going to need to thumb the volume up a bit. The captions appear not to be working so I’ll make a guess it sounded like the patient was Adrienne Michelle Thompson with D.O.B: 9-6-1968 so probably 06 September 1968 given it is a US video. However, it was hard to hear and so the name and the D.O.B could be almost anything. The patient has an even quieter voice than Megan’s. That or the microphone is even further removed from the patient than it is from Megan.
There is the normal student fake hand hygiene, which seems to be a requirement in many such videos. Megan’s voice is not at the restful tone we have heard in some student videos but as I have pointed out it is not loud. The background hiss seems to be typical of an air conditioning sound.
The examination appears to be gentle and well-paced. Perhaps Megan raises the tone of her voice a little too often for it to be truly restful. At intervals the conversation is not quite as slow as is fully desirable. However, these are minor quibbles. The main issue is that having thumbed up the volume to listen properly, the subsequent advert is highly likely to bend your eardrums. I think this is worth trialling in the Procrastination Pen playlist and it can be banished subsequently to the archive list if it turns out to be one of the ones that is hard to live with.
On that basis, just one, video this time.
That’s it on this occasion, more next time.
See you again next week.
The MGA Nursing 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
The Procrastination Pen 