Sleep Literature – The Procrastination Pen

Sleeping With ASMR

This week, the news that none of us (except for a lucky few) can now afford to retire. On the upside though, there is research that appears to establish that retirement is very bad for sleep. Perhaps we are going to live healthier lives, it’s just that we’re going to have to keep working.

No doubt there are other strange sleep dilemmas that will crop up in this blog but I found that one rather unexpected.

For the non-YouTube resource this week, I remember that during lockdown I used to listen to Tovi Scruggs-Hussain. I had a hunt around and it turns out that Tovi publishes meditations on Mindful. It seems I must have spent a while on this website. Here is an example article and meditation: https://www.mindful.org/a-12-minute-meditation-to-set-the-tone-for-your-leadership/

Twelve minutes for you to determine whether you like Tovi’s voice. There are other meditations and articles on that same site so if you do like Tovi then you should have plenty to listen to. I may be back for another listen in the future depending how many other artists I can find out there who do not charge for listening to their MP3 files.

This week for the professional ASMR artist, I go to one that I used to listen to a lot but have fallen out of touch with of late. The channel is Moonlight Cottage ASMR 1.59m subscribers, one hundred and forty-eight videos, sixteen playlists none of the playlists are obviously on a medical theme. The channel, of course has notes: “Moonlight Cottage ASMR

Description

Hello and welcome to Moonlight Cottage!

I’m Diane and here I share my passion for cinematic/historical ASMR & relaxation videos.

If you wish to support my channel (thank you!), you can join my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/moonlightcottageASMR

Thank you for visiting!

Links

Support me on Patreon ❤patreon.com/moonlightcottageASMR

Follow me on instagraminstagram.com/moonlightcottageasmr

Spotifyopen.spotify.com/artist/7HTOAi6IQXsE54wqgwYdFn”

This channel is a treat for people who actually want to watch rather than just listen to the videos in that the effort that goes into the historical re-enactment material is really second to none. However, most of us are here to get some sleep and so how does the voice stack up when it is not backed up by the visuals:

The video this week is this one:

Steampunk Cranial Nerve Exam | ASMR Roleplay (medical nose, eye, face & ear exam, soft spoken)

Of course it has notes: ” 28 Aug 2022

Welcome back to the Steampunk optometrist (now with many other skills, and still messy hair) for a cranial nerve exam. Music starts at 00:49, if it’s too loud you can skip to 01:40.

Many thanks to my friend Anastasia (‪@ATMOSPHEREa) for lending her voice in the intro & outro!

This video includes a lot of personal attention & unintelligible whispering.

00:00 Intro part I – phone conversation with Ada (feat. Atmosphere’s voice)

00:49 Intro part II (with music, a bit loud)

01:40 Welcome back

03:00 Testing your senses of smell & taste (unintelligible whispers)

06:50 Eye exam (close personal attention)

11:20 Stereoscopic / 3D vision (steampunk sounds, unintelligible whispers)

16:33 Chart reading, lens testing (unintelligible whispers)

20:38 Face exam / testing your sense of sensation (face touching)

23:00 Ear exam / hearing test (otoscope, close whispers, tuning fork)

27:20 Writing your certificate of aptitude (writing / paper sounds)

30:30 Outro – phone conversation with Ada (feat. Atmosphere’s voice)

31:55 A few submersible ambient sounds”

I’ve trimmed these, a lot, because otherwise you’d be spending a lot of time reading notes.

There are comments and a number seemed to be from seasoned ASMR afficionados who really rate this channel, which bodes well for this video.

The video is a little over thirty-three-and-a-quarter minutes long and so a reasonable length in comparison to recent professional videos we have listened to.

The video starts with the clicking from a rotating dial, there must be few readers who recall such a device. It does however start without music. Moonlight Cottage seems to have a French accent which is actually rather delightful. Sadly, the video then goes into quite active music which is not great when you’re looking for something for sleep purposes.

There are clicking noises, rustling noises, clonking noises and scraping noises. There are brushing noises, flicking noises, equipment sounds some of which sound like machinery. There are paper scraping noises.

The voice continues calm and well-paced; it is not whispery (that’s rather a nice find as many of these presentations are). There are breathing noises, clothing related noises, sounds of glass clicking against wood, there are some background whispers (which actually are rather nice). There is the sound of cork against glass, that mouth clucking noise that ASMR artists love so much, nail tapping noises against glass, objects scraping across a wooden surface, the guttering noise from an oil lamp, polishing noises, and metal scraping noises.

It is actually delightfully slow; some we have reviewed seem to be in too much of a hurry or seem to strain to slow the pace so that it all seems artificial. This seems to plod along at a lovely meandering pace.

There are metal latch sounds, wooden box noises. Some are quite loud, I would guess it depends how far you are into dropping off whether that is going to make a lot of difference to you. The slide viewing device makes quite loud scraping noises as the glass slide goes in and comes out. It also makes a relatively loud noise as it is raised and moved around. There are clicking noises, the chinking of glass as lenses are tried, an odd squeaking as they are returned to the box. There are the small thumps of fingers being tapped. There are tuning fork noises, which are surprisingly muted. There are paper noises and those associated with the scraping of a nib across that paper. Post examination there are more equipment noises, and the rotating dial again. The click of a pocket watch and the turning down of a gas lamp. Then the loud noise as if in an air ship or similar, which plays out the final minute or so (this latter is quite loud).

Overall, I rather liked this. Why not give it a review for yourself and see what you think.

Each week I feature a Calm recommendation. For as long as I have a subscription to Calm, I may as well make use of it. The service, however, is not free so I will not linger long over it.

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

Daily Calm

Creativity

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

This indicates that creativity comes not from intellectual effort but from stillness and silence. Tamara has an excellent voice. If you have a subscription (or are considering taking one out) why not give this one a listen.

The inadvertent ASMR this week comes from a channel which regular readers will know well as there have been visits to this channel on more than one occasion previously. It is University of Leicester, this has 90.2k subscribers,1.6k videos, thirty four playlists not surprisingly very few have any material that are likely to be of use to us.

Today’s video is this one:

Abdominal Examination – Explanation

It has notes: “14 Dec 2011

A second video can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…

This is a detailed explanation of the abdominal examination illustrating technique and patient interaction.

The film was produced by practising clinicians to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts at the point when the clinician has finished taking the medical history and begins the clinical examination.

Presented by Mr Adam Scott MS FRCS (Edin) FRCS (Eng) Consultant General and Colorectal Surgeon. Produced and Directed by Dr Irene Peat FRCR FRCP, Dr Nicholas Port MBChB BSc and Jon Shears.

More Clinical Examination materials can be found at; http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/msce…”

There are comments, there are a fair few of these and most of them seem to be from ASMR fans. So far, so good. It is a little less than eight and a half minutes so it is not going to waylay us for very long at all.

It starts without music and without excessive background noise. We find that Mr Adam Scott has an excellent voice, it is not overly loud and it isn’t too fast either.

There are nice intervals that tell what part of the video comes next, but for our purposes it makes the pacing of the video nicely slow. The patient does not get to say much but she also seems to have a good voice in what little we can hear from her. During the examination, if anything, the pace becomes even more restful and quiet, which makes it quite delightful, a small amount of air conditioning noise notwithstanding.

There are some tapping noises. These are not disturbingly loud (for me at any rate). There are the gurgling gut noises, which didn’t seem particularly disturbing.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The University of Leicester 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

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

Sleeping With ASMR

This week I have a bit of a cautionary tale which indicates that not all supplements are harmless and perhaps careful perusal of the label is required.

I’ve been reading about magnesium and discovered an article indicating that some people are low in magnesium and taking an extra supplement might work well for them in terms of resolving any sleep difficulties.

I decided to start doubling the dose. I was taking one pill per day so I resolved to take two. This worked fantastically well for about five days. I got to sleep quickly; I remained asleep all night, in fact I had trouble getting up on time in the morning. I believed I had cracked the problem, magnesium was the wonder drug and I was going to write an update for this blog about it.

On the fifth day I dragged myself out of bed and my head was swimming like a post-alcohol daze. I have had vertigo before (due to an inner ear infection). It felt exactly like that. About mid-way through the morning, I began to feel thoroughly sick. I had to go and stand in the cold air to stop myself from throwing up.

It took a while to work out what had changed. However, when I asked my favourite AI what an overdose of magnesium would do, dizziness and nausea were two of the key ones. In addition, it was a miracle that I was not suffering with diarrhoea at the same time. I checked the pills and they definitely said one only per day. For five days I had been taking double the recommended dose.

Since then, I have been off the magnesium and it shows; my sleep is broken, short and problematic just as it was before. On the upside I am not waking up feeling nauseous. Magnesium may help but an excess of it does not help more, or at least in my experience not for very long.

Hopefully this will stop someone else needing to learn the lesson the hard way as I did.

Each week I have been listening to Calm because I have a subscription to Calm and it would be rude not to. I post recommendations here on the understanding that one person in a great many may find them of use.

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

Daily Jay

Critical Thinking

NARRATOR

Jay Shetty

Do you need to rethink something, do you have to go more deeply and reframe? Do you have to think about your attitude about something and consider alternative points of view?

I often come back to Jay Shetty; he has a lot of fascinating material. But if you are in search of the best voice on Calm, I would think that maybe Tamara Levitt (assuming you have a subscription, of course)

Today’s professional ASMR is something of a bright contrast compared to the material that I am used to dealing with. The gender, the age range, the voice of this ASMR professional is somewhat different to the kind of material I have happened across of late. Let’s hope it is a positive change.

The Channel is Feel Better Now. It has 26.5k subscribers eighty-seven videos, six playlists of which this one would be on theme for the blog to date:

The video is this one:

Grandpa Gives You a Mental Health Assessment #asmr #mentalhealth #roleplayasmr

Of course it has notes; it’s from a professional ASMR artist: “236,258 views 27 Mar 2026 ✪ Members first on 27 March 2026 ASMR #asmr #relaxingasmr #lofiasmr

Grandpa Bob uses his clinical skill to relax you and reduce your anxiety, all while taking your blood pressure and checking for signs of head trauma. Paper scratching, Velcro, whispered and softly spoken words. Flashing lights, pouring water.

Please subscribe, stay up to date

/ @feelbetternow

Coffee anyone? ☕Chip in for a cup of coffee and get a personal video from me saying thanks

https://buymeacoffee.com/bobnixon48d

Be an early member of our special group, Feel Better Now! 😃😃 Sneak peeks at new videos and more

Member link: / @feelbetternow-o4t “

However, these notes are refreshingly brief compared to some we have seen.

There are a lot of comments; some are strange, some are positive, some wander off into subjects of interest only to the poster. So, normal YouTube comments then.

The video is a little under twenty-seven-and-a-quarter minutes and starts without music.

The voice of course is an elderly one but I would still say it is whispery (and not just as a result of a few decades alive). Whispery is fine, but I do prefer non-whispery videos if I can find them (they are comparatively rare). This video has a fair amount of silence in it which makes the pace actually quite lovely.

There are some non-vocal sounds, the odd click, some mouth clucking noises (ASMR artists love these). There’s the odd clunk, scribbling on paper noises, some whirring noises (from a blood pressure machine), Velcro noises from the cuff of that machine (those are a tad loud). Hissing from a fizzy water being opened and subsequently poured, fingers tapping, hands clapping together, nails clicking, paper flicking,

At intervals I did feel that I could be doing something else, which is not a great sign. That said, if you’re lying there awaiting sleep, this might be just the sort of thing. I would certainly say it was worthy of review.

Grandpa does not seem to appear in the Internet Archive (well, that I could find) and so it is on to try and find a more general ASMR video which is available outside of YouTube.

This week I happened across this one:

Bluewhisper 2020 06 08 ASMR ♥ Wellness Checkup Doctor Roleplay Gum Chewing Mxhb YtesWQ 396 MB [55ED29D7]

https://archive.org/details/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

https://dn721803.ca.archive.org/0/items/bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq/Bluewhisper-2020-06-08-ASMR%20%E2%99%A5%20Wellness%20Checkup%20Doctor%20Roleplay%20_%20Gum%20Chewing-mxhb_YtesWQ-396MB-%5B55ED29D7%5D.mp4

There are notes of course: “by Bluewhisper

Publication date 2020-06-08

Topics ASMR, female, roleplay

Language English

Item Size 647.1M

channel_url – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7wT_mqUvCHEIWm1cuw_T1Q

video_url – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxhb_YtesWQ

A gum chewing physical exam for you 🙂 Thanks for watching.

✨✨✨

Instagram ~ https://www.instagram.com/bluewispy/

Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/bluewispy

Goodreads ~ https://www.goodreads.com/bluewispy

Patreon ~ https://www.patreon.com/bluewhisper

Song

Night Walk – Gavin Luke

#asmr

Equipment Information 🎇

Audio recorded with Tascam DR-40X (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/377cQ7S

Video recorded with Canon 6D Mark II with 24-105mm IS STM Lens (affiliate link) – https://amzn.to/3h5mQmI

Addeddate 2020-06-09 17:18:05

Collection_added social-media-video additional_collections_video

Identifier bluewhisper-2020-06-08-asmr-wellness-checkup-doctor-roleplay-gum-chewing-mxhb-yteswq

Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4 “

This is just shy of forty-two minutes and starts with music which fortunately isn’t too energetic. The video is very quiet indeed, one of those you will probably have to elevate the volume to hear well. The quality is a bit on the hazy side (I assume it was recorded from a source online perhaps YouTube).

The voice is excellent with a spot on intonation. It does spend quite a while on the whispery side of whispery, however. There is the occasional mouth clucking sound which, as we know, are a favourite go to of the professional ASMR artist. Perhaps due to limitations of the recording there is a persistent background hiss but this is not excessively loud. However, I did not really get the point of the gum chewing – possibly it is of great appeal to someone, just not to me. The pace is lovely and slow; it is possible to feel internal systems slowing to keep pace with it.

There are clothing rustling noises, the scratching of pen on paper, the moving of equipment, the occasional tap, some glove noises (I’m not a great fan of these), there are Velcro noises, clicking noises, a blood pressure bulb sound (that is not too restful), an escaping air sound (which reminded me of a slow puncture), plastic crinkling noises, and, of course the occasional chewing noise.

Fortunately, it does not end with music. In all I would say rather a good video, and well worth a review and without the need for loud or energetic adverts.

Onto the bread and butter of this series of blog articles, the inadvertent ASMR video from YouTube. This has been the sort of video that I have consistently reviewed since this series of articles began, rather a long time ago now.

We return to a channel that has had quite a lot of attention from this blog, mainly because of the quality of the video content. However, there has been, and no doubt will be, quite a lot of music associated with such videos which is the main downside of them.

The channel is Stanford Medicine 25. This has 345k subscribers, one-hundred-and-thirty-two videos, seventeen playlists which, unsurprisingly, are all on theme for this blog (they’re all medical, it’s a medical channel).

Today’s video is:

Stanford Medicine 25 Lymph Node Exam (Part 1)

It is just under eleven minutes long, and so not very long at all, in fact. It has notes (professional YouTube videos often have notes). “281,041 views 6 Jan 2016

A video recorded many years ago showing Stanford pioneer and hematologist, Saul Rosenberg demonstrating the lymph node exam. “

So, very succinct notes indeed.

UK English persons may note the spelling of haematologist. Apologies, that is definitely what it says and I assume is the accurate United States spelling.

Comments are permitted. There is not a huge number and those that have commented are not universally complementary, which might be a bad sign for us.

As a pleasant surprise there is no introductory music with this at all. The presenter, though, is a little loud and this is one where the volume is going to need to be turned down, I think. The presenter is not introduced either by himself or as a line of text in the video. Fortunately, there are the notes with the video and a comment which states: ” Saul Rosenberg, MD, Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor Emeritus, who pioneered highly successful treatments for Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph nodes, died Sept. 5 2022 at 95.”.

Despite the volume I think the voice is a good one. There is definitely no whispery presentation here.

The camera sweeps about in a most disconcerting manner. The best advice is not to watch but just to listen to it. The pacing is reasonable, not too rapid which is a mistake made by many video presenters. There is a monologue presentation to start with and for the first four-and-a-half minutes which seems to drag a little (some commentators have noted the “real” start which seems to indicate they are prompting people to jump forwards past this section).

The presentation quietens a tad during the examination proper. This is in keeping with the majority of such videos that I have reviewed thus far. It is still not what you would call truly quiet. The voice, though, remains calm and well-paced.

The camera still seems, at intervals, to have a life of its own, sweeping about when there appears little need for it to do so.

So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.

On that basis, just one, video this time.

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

See you again next week.

The Stanford Medicine 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

If the stress over lack of sleep was not enough to cause you to just lie there, examining the spider’s webs by the bed, now we find that it is not just getting sufficient sleep, it is also about avoiding getting too much.

I suggest that, if you are already suffering for sleep, reading the sleep literature is not going to help much. It just seems to be designed to pile on the pressure.

Whilst I am trying out a number of supplements designed to assist with sleep (including magnesium), I am still finding that distracting any night-time thoughts with sound is a pretty good way of accelerating the snooze time to come your way. Hence the existence of this blog and its regular reviews of tracks for their potentially calming content.

I’ve run into a bit of a dead end with new material which is both free, online, and calming. So, I think that I am going to try for a while checking if the professional ASMR artist of the week also has some material in the Internet Archive. I’ve had a couple of successes with that of late, and no doubt, as I explore some more, free material will present itself.

Of late, I have missed the odd Calm track and so this week I shall reinstate it. Even though I know that a number of you do not have a subscription to Calm and are never going to have such a subscription. This one is from possibly my favourite voice on Calm which is Tamara Levitt:

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

Daily Calm

The Missing Piece

NARRATOR

Tamara Levitt

AUTHOR

Tamara Levitt

This is about how we have been trained to believe we need others to complete us but we can be complete on our own.

Given that will interest only a subset of the audience I’ll move swiftly along.

Of late, I have been delving into the past for my professional ASMR material and again the same this week. Possibly this time it would be nice to return to the medical theme from which I have wandered rather egregiously.

This ASMR artist has been covered a couple of times on the Procrastination Pen and so I am hopeful that this time will be yet another good one. It is, of course, Isabel Imagination ASMR a huge channel with 380K subscribers and six hundred and thirty-nine videos so something must be going right for Isabel. There are thirty-three playlists including a playlist of other people’s ASMR videos:

That is the first time I have seen that kind of thing on a professional ASMR channel. Share the love I suppose.

The video is this one:

ASMR HEARING TEST EAR CLEANING EAR TO EAR BREATHY WHISPER

It’s a channel for a professional ASMR artist and therefore the video is guaranteed to have notes and those notes are going to have a self-promotional aspect to them:

“1,146,191 views 11 Apr 2017

In this ASMR role play video Dr. Clarck will clean and examine your ears! You will get a hearing test!! Triggers are: personal attention, breathy sounds, breathy whisper, whisper, soft spoken, ear to ear.

For a look behind the scenes visit my other YouTube channel “Isabel backstage”!! This is the link to my 2nd channel: / @isabelfineart

Instagram (to stay updated on new ASMR projects of mine):

/ isabel_asmr

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabelimagin…

Who am I:

My name is Isabel and I’m Dutch. My approach to ASMR video’s is combining entertainment in a form of imagination and fantasy (almost movie like) with relaxation. All wrapped into one video for you. This way you can enjoy my videos either before you go to bed to drift off easier, or you can just take a moment of relaxation during the day to calm down and relieve stress.

I’ve been posting ASMR videos since the 20th of June 2016! This is video #72. I hope you like it!

I’m always trying to improve the quality of my video’s, if you’d like to contribute to this purpose, then that’s possible via donations on PayPal. My email is: isabelimaginationasmr@gmail.com

I’ve recorded this video with a Canon EOS 80D camera and an audio recorder Roland R-26 with 2 AKG C214 microphones for stereo sound. Here are the links:

Cam: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Canon-80D-cam…

Recorder: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Roland-R-26-R…

Mic: AKG C214, two microphones to create a nice stereo sound

Editing program: http://www.magix.com (I used Magix video deluxe 2016)

This video is meant for relaxation and can also help relieve anxiety, depression or stress, however I am not a psychiatrist, so if you are dealing with severe anxiety, depression or stress I suggest you go to a professional.”

As usual, the notes are substantial; so far, so professional ASMR artist.

The video itself is somewhat over twenty-three and a half minutes so not the hugest I have seen/heard. The style will be familiar to readers of this blog as I have a soft spot for Isabel as she is one of the artists that I used to listen to when I first came to YouTube for ASMR all those years ago now. It starts with a crackle and a whisper; the crackles stop, the whispering continues. The whispering presentation is a fairly classic ASMR technique and one with which we have become thoroughly familiar. There is some great ASMR out there that does not rely upon whispering but it is not as common as the whispered variety in my experience. Either that or I happen to get recommendations drawn only from the whispering ASMR artists. This one is a little on the breathy side for me. It is not that I dislike a breathy presentation, I just assume no one talks like this and therefore it always feels a little artificial – not to say that a consistent whisper is not equally artificial…

Of course, the voice is not the only thing we hear. There is a sound of a pen on a pad, the clicking of various pieces of equipment, rustling of clothing, that mouth clicking sound that ASMR artists love so much, a loud scraping noise (this seemed to go on for a while), nails clicking, the stroking of a set of headphones. There is a beeping sound designed to mimic a hearing test, not my preferred sound especially since I started losing my hearing.

I rather like this, which was unsurprising as I’ve already said that I have liked other videos by this ASMR artist (and so do a heck of a lot of others). I would give this one a review yourself and see what you think.

The video shows its age in that more recent videos are interrupted every few minutes to fit in yet more adverts – this one just relies upon adverts at the start and the end of the video. To think I used to regard this arrangement as objectionably intrusive. Now you are fortunate to get a few minutes of video time without some useless gismo being promoted at great volume (and pace). (Part of my drive to move, ultimately, onto a different solution). I notice that a number of commentators to this video rate the presentation highly but they rate the adverts poorly. This fits, exactly, with my own perception. I have looked this week at removing the YouTube adverts by signing up to a paid-for YouTube option. I went to my favourite AI chatbot to ask about this and got this answer:

“Current UK prices for YouTube Premium (May 18, 2026):

Individual: £15.99/month

Family (up to 6 people): £23.99/month

Student: £6.99/month

Premium Lite: £6.99/month (if available in your account)

Prices can vary by payment method and may change; check https://www.youtube.com/premium for your account’s exact rate.”

So, the thick end of £16.00 a month or the best part of £200 a year. If I was paying £200, I would really want YouTube to be my main viewing option but I am old school and I still largely use the television for that. I imagine if you are a generation or so younger than me and the Internet is your natural home, then this option can look a lot more appealing. I would certainly love to see the back of those adverts.

The Internet Archive only seems to have a couple of resources for Isabel; one I have covered in a previous article and neither of them are medical in nature. So, there is just one left and it is this one:

Close-Up ASMR Kisses for Anxiety Relief

https://archive.org/details/isabel-imagination-asmr-20240523

I’m a little concerned by the title. There are some other kinds of ASMR videos out there and I am not keen to stray in that direction with this blog. If anything, I want ASMR to be free of any associations with sexual behaviour which seems to have dragged along behind it, probably long before I ever discovered it and certainly ever since then.

The notes, however, allay my fears somewhat: ” Close-Up ASMR Kisses for Anxiety Relief

By Isabel imagination ASMR

Publication date 2024-05-23

Topics ASMR, deleted, YouTube

Language English

Item Size 410.3M

In this calming ASMR show and tell video, you can relax to the sound of my close-up ear to ear whispers and get tingles from the layered sounds in your ears.

Sit back and relax with headphones on, let this video comfort you before bedtime!

Added date 2024-06-12 14:06:10

Collection added additional collections social-media-video additional collections video

Colour

Identifier isabel-imagination-asmr-20240523

Original URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd-hi8zIVW0

Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.7.0

Sound “

No expectations of picking up the content on an OnlyFans website for a start. Usually a strong clue as to which ASMR video you will have happened across, (unless you were looking for exactly that kind of video in which case it seems this one isn’t going to be it).

The video is a little less than twenty and a half minutes and is on the whispery side of whispery and also somewhat breathier than is my preferred sound for an ASMR artist.

There are in addition those kissing sounds mentioned in the title, which, surprisingly, turns out to be not that special a sound to; listen to, the sound of skin rubbing (hands together); the sound of nails clicking; the rustling of clothing in motion; deep breathing noises; that mouth clicking noise that ASMR professionals seem so fond of.

It’s not my favourite Isabel video. I have reviewed better videos on this site previously but hey, it is advert free and it features a professional ASMR artist whose voice I personally rate, so in my opinion still worthy of a review.

Today’s inadvertent ASMR video comes from a channel that will be familiar to regular readers: MGA Nursing has only fifty-five subscribers and forty-three videos. That is quite sad just barely more than one subscriber per video. We have found a few worthwhile videos on this channel and I have no doubt we will find a few more.

There are two playlists. One is on a medical theme but features a video not actually found on MGA nursing itself:

The other is strangely off topic, both for this blog and for MGA nursing itself:

Today’s video is a whisp of a thing, so brief it is barely there, but comes from someone who features often on the same channel. So, plenty of scope to return and have another delve.

The video is:

Cody Evans- General survey

And unless I have got this wrong, Cody turns up about nine times on the same site so we may (depending upon his voice) return over and again to listen to videos featuring Cody.

The video was posted in 2017 and has no notes and no comments. The setting appears domestic and so outside of this channel, I would guess there is limited to no opportunity of finding much else about Cody, his place of study, his chosen career path or any other markers that in the past I have used to verify this is a genuine medical video and not a fabricated one. I would say it has a feel of a genuine video and given we have seen MGA nursing before, I am pretty happy that this was made for the purposes of medical study and not for any ASMR devotees.

The video is just a little over one and a half minutes long and so hardly exists at all and is on the quiet side. When I say quiet, the volume control for this one is going to need to be way up.

There is a knock at the commencement which is also not loud. Cody is proven to have an excellent voice (which is not clearly heard). The patient could be (but isn’t necessarily) Crystal Klanzilotta. (I could not hear it well and the YouTube captions process mangled it altogether).

Crystal (if that be her name) has a slightly louder voice than Cody but none the worse for that, and as a team they seem to make for the commencement of a good ASMR video.

It continues quiet and just like that it is all over.

So, it is a reasonable one but also a rather brief one this week.

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