My story (in brief)

I can understand skeptics, being one myself.
I see skepticism as a healthy mental attitude.
Not believing everything that is told to you makes a lot of sense.
I always question everything, new or old.
From my very youth, I can remember doubting what I was told.
This distrust in the people led me to doubt science.
Had I not been skeptical about what I was being told about skin, I would not have put my nails to it.

What pushed me to start

I could feel lumps beneath the skin of my cheeks and back, the kind they tell women to look for in breast cancer early detection tests.
Some were large; about the size of half a peanut.
I knew that these nodules were remains of big pimples I had in my youth.
I pictured them as bloated sebaceous glands and nicknamed them jokingly «the old sebum mines of King Daniel».

First experiments

On the fifteenth of November 2002, pushed by curiosity, logic and instinct, I started digging my skin with my nails.
This was to be a three week experiment and I didn't care if I hurt myself; I was going to find out what was inside those lumps beneath my skin.
So I dug and dug and dug and dug ...
I hurt myself badly; pushing my nails right into the flesh.
I was working in blood, but I persisted.
It took me weeks and months to refine my technique and to understand the folds, but gradually, I would not harm my skin anymore.
Almost no more blood.

What I found out

Those lumps were only knots of  folded and refolded skin.
Using my nails, I could feel cracks between the folds and open them up.
You can compare this activity to unknotting your shoelace. You have to feel the boundaries between adjoining strands of string, find a hold, and pull them apart.
I found my whole body was folded from head to toes.
Furthermore, the crossings between these folds corresponded to my aches and pains: headache, backache, knee ache, ... I could eliminate them.
None of the damage was beneath the skin as I thought; it was the skin itself that was folded.
There were no sebum mines or overgrown sebum glands; just severely entangled healthy skin.

The chin goal

Now that I could feel and understand the folds, I started mapping them all over my body.
On my face, I noticed a series of folds going down my cheeks and over the edge of my jaw into the neck area.
Many seemed to join in the middle, just above my larynx.
I figured that, if I groomed away these folds, my whole chin and lower face would be freed.
Liberating my chin became my main goal.

Working on my eyebrows

Up to that point, I had felt unsure about running my nails over hairy areas such as my eyebrows and scalp.
I feared that the repeated passage of my nails would quickly remove all hair from the region.
However, my experiments on my cheeks and chin had not harmed my beard; on the contrary, new growth was visible.
So I tried it.
I found that no adverse effect could be observed on the hair.
Instead, I discovered that the skin of those areas was more folded than elsewhere; creating mounds of folds.

Grooming?

For the first year, I had not realized yet that what I was doing was grooming.
In my thinking, I was simply exploring my skin with my nails.
One day, I tried to portray what I looked like while doing my unfolding.
I probably looked like a chimpanzee.
That was it!
I was «grooming» just like the apes were.
I scrambled to find some images of primates grooming.
There it was!
It was like holding a mirror instead of a picture.
I was looking at a male bonobo with his hand on his forehead in exactly the same position I had been holding mine occasionally for the last year.
I could almost feel his skin beneath his nails.

The first years

My progress were so slow at first that only my firm belief that I was right about what I felt kept me going.
Of course, my technique was awful, so I would hurt my skin which was still very hard, yet fragile.
It would bleed easily.
Yet, I persevered and groomed all I could; sometimes spending the whole day at the task.

First release

My eagerness to groom was motivated by my conviction that grooming could help many people out of their pain.
I had to put this information out into the public even if my work on myself was far from finished.
In November 2006, I posted the first version of the «Human grooming rediscovered» video on the internet and sent an email announcing it and explaining grooming to all major;
•International news agencies,
•TV networks,
•Newspapers,
•Magazines,
•Dermatology associations, journals and societies,
•Psoriasis associations,
•Chronic pain associations,
•Arthritis associations,
•Headache associations,
•Aging associations,
•Seniors associations,
•Primatologists,
•Primate associations,
•and more.
But my story received very little interest.
It is true that, at that time, my face was grooved by deep folds because my grooming kept them open.
Seeing no advantage, people didn't even try to groom their skin.
So, I was considered a charlatan.

Preparing this site

In the following years, I had less time to devote to my grooming activities.
I knew that I would reapproach the Medias in a few years with better proof of my theories.
I had to finish what I had started on my face so people could see the difference.
I decided to write this site while I was doing it.

Discovering pressure grooming

In January 2009, I discovered that I didn't have to move my nail at all to unfold my skin.
Just pressing on the skin with the nail was enough.
All this time, I had been traveling my nail over my skin.
So «pressure grooming» became my main tool from then on.
I felt a bit shameful that it took me so long to find it out.

Acceleration of results

Over all these years, my skin has responded better and better to my grooming it, while of course my technique has also improved.
The difference between what I could achieve a few years back and what I can do now in the same time period is astounding.
The results I get have increased exponentially.

Next public release

I'm still grooming relentlessly, because I will soon be presenting irrefutable proof of the benefits of grooming.
I am planning to contact the Medias again in the summer of 2012.
See you soon.