My grooming 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 taught.

This distrust in the people led me to doubt science.

Had I not been skeptical about what I was told about skin, I would not have put my nails to it.

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».

Whatever they were, they made my face unattractive and ugly.

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 ... into my face.

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 that the lumps in my skin were actually folds and that I could unfold them.

Gradually, I would not harm my skin anymore.

No more blood.

Those lumps were only knots of folded skin.

I discovered that my whole body was folded from head to toes.

None of the damage was beneath the skin as I had thought; it was the skin itself that was folded.

There were no sebum mines or overgrown sebum glands; just severely entangled healthy 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.

Furthermore, the crossings between these folds corresponded to my aches and pains: headaches, backaches, knee aches, ... I could find their exact position and open them up, thus eliminating the pain.

For the first year, I had not yet realized 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» like the apes do.

My progress was so slow at first that only my firm belief that I was healing my skin 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 this task.

My eagerness to groom was motivated by my conviction that grooming could help and relieve many people.

I felt I should get 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;

•TV networks,

•Newspapers,

•Magazines,

•International news agencies,

•Dermatology associations, journals and societies,

•Psoriasis associations,

•Chronic pain associations,

•Arthritis associations,

•Headache associations,

•Aging associations,

•Seniors associations,

•Primatologists,

•Primate associations,

•and more.

In the end, my story received very little interest.

I was considered a charlatan.

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 a new tool from then on.

I felt a bit shameful that it took me so long to find it out.

Over all these years, my skin has responded better and better to my grooming it, and my technique has also greatly 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.

Grooming has become part of my life.

I can see the aesthetic benefits on myself, but I can also see the deterioration caused by a lack of grooming on the people I meet.

However, when pain attacks me somewhere on my body, and I can get rid of it by grooming; it becomes precious to me.

Most people visiting this site probably think I'm a lunatic and never put their nails to their skin.

I can understand their reaction, but it is unfortunate.

I wish you can overcome your skepticism and give grooming a try.

Good grooming.