Introduction to grooming

Your parents should have groomed you and taught you how to do it yourself.
Now, your skin is folded all over, but most folds are hard to see.
Yet you can feel and find them easily with your nails.
Grooming is the activity of unfolding your skin.

Putting pressure on the skin

         

This is the basic movement of grooming.
Since it is continuously repeated, it is similar to pecking your skin.
Don't look where you place your nail, feel it.
You want to exert all the force you can without hurting yourself.
Apply pressure on one spot for one to ten seconds, and then move to another.
This action may leave nail marks on your skin, but they should fade out in a few minutes.
If they don't, reduce the strength you use with your finger.

Feeling what is inside

As you put pressure, your skin will open up and your nail will find breaches, gaps it can penetrate.
Slightly change the angle and direction of your nail to go as deep as you can.
You will feel the folds like craters and mountains.
Place your nail in the deepest pits or on the highest ridges you find and press.

What you want to do

You want to open or crush any hardened structure you meet.
Peck an area of skin to locate its underlying fold formations.
Pay close attention to sensations such as pain or relief as you groom.
Your skin is supposed to be completely supple and elastic, it has become hard and thick.
Crush any hardness or tension to flatness.

Why use your nails?

Q: With today's technology, wouldn't there be a simpler and faster method?
A: Your nails are the most adequate and advanced tools for this task.
Stay away from abrasives such as: rasps, stones, exfoliating brushes or gloves, exfoliating cleansers and soaps, chemical exfoliants, ...
Their action does not discriminate between folded and unfolded skin.

Folded skin can resist to pressure,
but unfolded skin will bleed immediately.

Unlike chemical or mechanical exfoliants and abrasives, your nails can feel.
They can easily distinguish the folds.
Their blunt edges allow you to put enormous pressure on your skin in precise locations.
You can hold back their action as soon as you feel pain.

Where to groom

Your entire body should be groomed daily.
However, your skin is supposed to tell you itself where it needs to be groomed.
Itches, prickles, pruritus, twinges, pangs, stitches, aches, pains and throes are all increasingly rude orders to groom specific places.
Ignoring such signals has put you in the state you're in.
You should also groom a region because it shows visible marks, spots, lesions, holes, bumps or because it has aesthetically deteriorated.

Your pain is "in" your skin

Closely reconsider your theories about each of your personal aches and pains.
What I'm telling you is that you are wrong and that your doctor is wrong about where it hurts.
Check this out immediately by pecking an aching area with your nail.
You will find your pain right there, inside the folds of your skin.

Science and scientists
are mistaken about pain

Cartilage, discs, ligaments, tendons, bones, organs and muscles cannot hurt.
Pain receptors (nociceptors) are scarce or absent in them.
Moreover, those they have can only produce a dull, non-localized pain.
Your skin, on the other hand is laced with millions of free nerve endings and specialized nociceptors, and you know quite well the acute, sharp, localized pain they generate.

Pain, unpain and grooming

When you groom an area where no pain is present, your skin generates a pleasant feeling I have called «unpain».
This tingling, itching but nice sensation is simply how skin feels when it is unfolded.
The more unpain the better! Let unpain be your guide!
In painful regions, grooming immediately anesthetizes the skin.
The aching subsides or disappears completely to let you work. Sometimes you will get a mix of pain and unpain.

Three types of grooming strokes

Your grooming work is done in strokes, each lasting one second or more.
But when you vary your nail's orientation and introduce motion, you get three types of strokes.

Pressure strokes
The basic. You simply apply pressure to a spot without moving away from it. The two following strokes simply add motion to this one

Scraping strokes
You first put some pressure, then slowly pull your nail inwards, thus scraping the skin beneath. Your nail is perpendicular to the motion.

Slicing strokes
This time your nail is turned to be in line with your movement. Put pressure then pull. Your nail creates a long, thin nail mark. Slicing strokes are particularly effective when you follow the path of a fold.

The jerk

At the end of a grooming stroke, your nail is often lodged deeply into your skin. You can feel the resistance that hardened folds offer to your nail. You could simply remove your nail from their hold or you can give a final attack by swiftly twist/pulling the nail out of the fold crossing.

What finger to use?

You can use any finger you wish.
The index finger on your writing hand is usually the most sensitive.
However, you will often find the need to use several fingers at once to cover large surfaces.

Single finger grooming		Four finger grooming

Using two hands

I use both hands 90% of the time.
Even if you wanted to use only one hand, grooming would force you to use the other in order to reach some places on your body.
But your second hand is more useful as a helper to the first.
In various places, your skin will need to be held down by one hand so the other can work.
The main technique is called «underpinning». You squeeze the skin between your two index fingers, one does the grooming, the other supports.

Where are the folds?

The folds crisscross your whole body in all directions and create a grid.
Some folds are vertical, some are horizontal while others are the result of all the movements, positions and expressions you have held during your life.
The greatest folding occurs:
•Around the eyes, mouth and larynx, extending to the whole face,
•In the neck/nuque area,
•At every articulation on your body.
The skin of these regions is continuously deformed by your moves.

Precautions and warnings

Don't stay too long on one spot.
Each region of your skin will respond differently to your grooming.
I recommend that you test-groom every area.
Marks and lines made by your nails should disappear in minutes and if they are still visible on the next day, you are putting too much pressure.
Generally speaking, skin that is less tense will react better to your work.
In hardened areas, your skin may bleed after only a few strokes.
As soon as you strike blood, stop your activities at that place until it heals.
But slight bleeding and small contusions are part of the healing process. Just keep them under control.

Reversibility

Grooming has the amazing ability to restore your skin's healthy condition.
All the folds on your body can be unfolded.
Even the worst problems seem reversible.