Grooming is done without looking.

One of the ideas behind grooming is that there are no mirrors in nature.

About half of your body, including your face, remains out of sight.

You can distinguish your reflection on water, but the image is distorted.

With no mirror, you wouldn't know what you look like and you would have to rely on others or use your sense of touch on yourself.

Most people usually take a fast glance at the mirror to see if their looks correspond to their general idea of what they should look like.
Then, they inspect specific aspects they're preoccupied about, but they don't actually look at themselves.
They're checking if their clothes, make-up and accessories are correctly positioned.
If you examine yourself in the mirror when you're fully dressed, wearing make-up, jewelry, glasses, a hat, ... what are you looking at?
You're not really studying yourself with those things on you.
Those accessories are not you.
Who do you think you're fooling?

Stop being a fake and present yourself unadorned and nude to your mirror.

Now, is what you see attractive?
If you don't think so; don't try to remedy the situation by hiding it behind phony decorations.
The ugliness of parts of your body is a sign of bad heath, an indication that you're not treating those regions correctly.
You have to change your habits and your lifestyle.

Nowadays, mirrors and cameras can be found everywhere.
But, when you observe some people, you can wonder if they've heard about them.

Make sure you are equipped with:
• a well-lighted facial mirror,
• a full length mirror,
• a camera app or a real one with a stand.

Use them as health tools.
Become your own specialist and observe every and all aspects of yourself in a critical manner.

DISTANT INSPECTION
What do other people see when they look at you?
• Photograph yourself from the side, from the back, at an angle, ...
• Film yourself while you walk, while you sit, while you speak, ...
• Observe the shape of your body in a full-length mirror.

CLOSE INSPECTION
You don't need a mirror or camera to closely examine the skin of part of your body for signs of deterioration.
But, most people don't even do that.
When was the last time you closely examined the skin if your knees?

Despite that; the only way you can observe your backside or face is with one of those devices.
Be innovative and use them to take a close look at the flip side of you.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND EXERCISE
If your problems relate to:
• the shape of your body,
• it's aspect when you move,
• your muscle tone,
• how thick the coat of fat is.
Then, daily physical activity and exercise associated with a strict diet will take care of them.

GROOMING YOUR SKIN
If your problems relate to:
• ugly skin,
• holes, bumps and spots,
• facial features,
• wrinkles and blemishes,
• pain or loss of sensitivity.
Then, grooming your skin daily will take care of them.

Grooming depends entirely on the sense of touch.
Flat nails evolved during a period extending from approximatively 60 million years ago to 40 million years ago in the primate family.

The first primates were possibly nocturnal animals and perhaps couldn't see that well in the dark.

Grooming was developed without using vision at all, so that you can heal any part of your body, even your back, in total darkness.
Our ancestors were relying entirely on their sense of touch.

But, the evolution of these early primates took a different turn.
They became diurnal and had to rely much more on their sense of sight.
Over several millions of years, primates have improved their sense of sight and it is now one of the best among all animals.

When there is a competition between the different senses of an animal, and one is used more, the others slowly decrease in ability.
The reliance on their eyesight of our early ancestors had an adverse effect on their senses of smell, hearing and touch.
This trend has continued and the sense of sight is now so strong in humans that is overpowers and silences all their other senses.

Proper grooming is performed using sensations emanating:
• from the skin that is being groomed and
• from your nail and fingertip as they manipulate the skin.
Those are very faint sensory signals and you have to dedicate all your attention to them in order to decode them.

As soon as you use your sense of sight, it takes precedence in relaying information to your brain.

Even when you are grooming correctly and relying on tactile data, the simple fact of taking a look at your hand shifts your perception back to visual immediately.

So, you can't look at yourself while grooming, even when no mirror is around.

Any visual information you gather from the surface of your skin is simply misleading or erroneous.
The folds and crossing that you want to unfold are fairly large structures, but their mass is almost entirely situated beneath the surface of your skin.
What you see has little relevance with the actual size, shape and angle of the skin deformation.

One has to admit that you feel much more secure about your actions in front of a mirror, mostly when you're a beginner.

When I started grooming, I had to answer the question "to groom or not to groom" when I felt an urge to work on my forehead while in bed in the middle of the night.

I was scared I would strike blood and wake up badly wounded.

To my surprise, all the grooming I had done during the night was helpful and my skin presented no ill effect.

Relying on a mirror is an easy habit to take, so I warn you against it.

Stay away from the mirror.

If you use a mirror more than 5% of the time, you are not really grooming.

You think you are, because your actions are similar, but you are not led by the right sensorial data.

Your visual perception is so strong it annihilates your small touching experience.

On the other hand, that 5% of your grooming time spent in front of the mirror is important.
You can visually spot problems that you haven't identified with your fingertip and nails.
You can gauge the progress of your grooming efforts.
Try to understand the relationship between what you see and what you feel while grooming an area.

While grooming, it's easy to get lost on your own skin because you don't see.

Your hands move all over it, while trying to free it, and you lose track of where you are.

You confuse the left with the right, the top with the bottom.

• Occasionally checking your position with a mirror is instructional.

• You can make the link between what you feel and what you see.

You may have developed an arduous relationship with your mirror.

Since your looks are continuously on the decline all your life, looking at yourself becomes more and more painful.

If you groom, you will find a new person staring at you.