Pressure grooming techniques are used to flatten and open up the cutaneous folds and their crossings on your body.
By putting pressure on the flesh, you can gradually flatten them to nothingness over time.
This applies to any hardened structure or deterioration that you find in your skin.
Pressure grooming is used to cure aches and pains, to solve aesthetic problems, to restore nerve and blood circulation, ...

Human grooming is accomplished stroke by stroke.
Strokes are distinct, repetitive, tactical, individualized actions.
Many activities such as: swimming, paddling, racquet sports, painting, knitting, ... are executed one stroke after another.
In each grooming stroke; your nail strikes your skin.

Pressure strokes are easy to perform.
They are three-step operations that can last anywhere from half a second to over one minute.

STEP 1

STEP 2

STEP 3

Repeat this procedure over and over.

Pressure strokes can be divided into two categories:
• Short pressure strokes; lasting two seconds or less,
• Long pressure strokes; lasting longer than two seconds.

Your goal, while pressure grooming, is to crush and open up hardened formations inside your skin.
To achieve this, you have to apply lots of pressure.
You want to exert all the force you can without injuring the skin.
When you don't put enough pressure, pressure grooming becomes too slow and time-consuming.

The skin of different parts of your body may react differently to pressure grooming.
Go slowly at first, and test each region to see how far you can go.

Your nails will leave marks on your skin, but they should fade away rapidly.
In most circumstances, they should be gone within 10 to 20 minutes.
However, if you groom an overly sensitive patch of skin, or if you apply too much pressure, the marks can take days to disappear.
Inspect your skin regularly to check for any damage after grooming it.
Let the nail marks heal completely before working on an area again.

I can pressure-groom my skin for hours, and still meet people afterward.
If nail marks remain a problem for you; don't conclude that your skin cannot be groomed; refine your technique instead.

At the end of a pressure grooming stroke, your nail is often lodged deeply into your skin.
You can simply remove your nail.
Or, you can give a final attack by swiftly twist-pulling the nail out of the fold crossing.
The jerk is an optional and violent ending to your pressure strokes.
You use it when your stroke has reached a point of resistance that hampers any further movement.

The main reasons to use short pressure strokes are:
• Crushing large regions of firm skin to soften it,
• Exploring the skin, to locate skin defects and weak spots.

Short pressure grooming strokes are incredibly easy to perform.
•1 Press your nail into your skin,
•2 Retract your finger,
•3 Start over immediately, almost at the same place.

Short pressure strokes, lasting two seconds or less, are by far the grooming technique you should use the most.
They are performed repeatedly, and in large numbers.
These short pressure strokes are often located very close to each other, as you try to crush a particular skin structure.
In fact, you can place hundreds of short pressure strokes on almost the same spot without harming yourself.

Even if your skin seems normal and good-looking, pecking it with your nails will reveal another story.
You'll immediately find out that your skin is a very uneven surface; full of toughened bumps and holes.
With time, you'll understand that those are folds and fold crossings.

You want to crush away all the hardened elements within your skin with your nails.
Thousands of short pressure strokes will be necessary.
Cover the whole surface of an area with pecking strokes, without spending too much time on specific skin problems; you'll treat them with long pressure strokes.
Your goal is to restore the skin's suppleness.
Crush any hardness you find.

In the worst cases, your nail won't even penetrate your skin.
The skin is covered by a layer of some type of hardened transparent varnish.
You'll have to get rid of it first; using multiple short pressure strokes.

Pecking your skin with short pressure strokes will gradually restore its suppleness.
Skin pecking should be repeated every day for several weeks, often several months.

Exploring your skin with your nail is the most basic grooming step.
Before applying long pressure strokes, you first have to find out where the problems are.
So, any significant pressure grooming starts with several short strokes to map the skin defect you want to remove.

Once you've identified where the problems are, your goal changes.
You want to find a weak spot in the hardened skin structure, in order to apply long pressure strokes on it.

Is this a weak spot?

Weak spots in skin defects are not easy to identify.
You can apply dozens of short pressure strokes before you locate one.
So, until you find one, keep on crushing the hardened skin with short pressure strokes.

Where is the weak spot?

Long pressure strokes are used to:
• Relieve pain,
• Remove skin defects,
• Restore nervous transmission,
• Restore blood circulation,
• Restore limb mobility,
• ...

Long pressure grooming strokes are relatively easy to perform, but hard to master.
•1 Press your nail into your skin, and apply pressure,
•2 Maintain the pressure for several seconds,
•3 Retract your finger.

Long pressure strokes are the key to successful grooming.
Without them, you'll never get your grooming done.

•1 Explore your skin with short pressure strokes,
•2 Locate a skin defect, a fold crossing.
•3 Find a weak spot of the fold crossing,
•4 Freeze your hand position; don't move at all,
•5 Slowly increase the pressure on your nail(s), and be attentive,
•6 You'll feel your skin open up, while your nail(s) dives deeper and deeper,
•7 Only relieve the pressure when you feel you've reached the point where no more advancing or crushing can occur.
The whole process can last anywhere from 2 seconds to over one minute.

Long pressure strokes are special and very rewarding.
They provoke sensations that you've never felt before; so they can go unnoticed.
Yet, performing them is not an obvious procedure.
Yes, you simply maintain the pressure on your skin for a long time; but feeling the unfolding, deep inside your skin, takes some effort and concentration.

When you perform long pressure strokes, you rely on faint signals coming from the skin just beneath your pressing nail.
Focus your full attention on these low-intensity stimuli.
Since you've never felt these sensations before, you may not detect their presence.

The feelings you're trying to perceive are:
• Your nail sinking deeper and deeper into the skin defect,
• The skin beneath your nail giving-in under the pressure.

Only stop applying pressure when you feel that the skin is no longer unfolding.

DON'T MOVE Freeze your hand position

Most often, you use only one finger for your pressure grooming strokes, because you need to dedicate all your attention and dexterity to the task at hand.
However, your body is far too large to be groomed with one finger; so, bundle up four fingers together.

This position gives you a powerful grip on your skin.
Use it on large folds, and wide-open skin areas.

Instead of just relying on the strength of your fingers, you can use the force of your entire arm to pull the nails into the flesh.
In some places, you can even place your thumb on the other side of a limb, so you can grasp it.

You normally want to put equal pressure on each finger, but because the skin is so uneven, some nails always do more work.
Since your middle finger is longer, it sometimes takes the lead, blurring the distinction between single and four-finger grooming.
It could also be called “two-finger” or “three-finger” grooming depending on the situation.
You can increase the effectiveness of your strokes by practicing individual control over each finger's action.
Some fingers press in deeply, while others open up the fold more.

To groom large regions, or to reach deep problems in painful areas; two-handed four-finger strokes provide more pressure than any other.

Four-finger pressure strokes, performed with both hands simultaneously, provide maximum performance.
They are very powerful and effective.

Two-handed pressure strokes are much more successful when the movements of both hands are synchronized.
Both hands do the same thing at the same time.

The hands don't have to stay close to each other.
Since your body is symmetrical; putting each hand at the same place on each side enables you to compare similar skin features.

Long pressure strokes cannot be performed anywhere on your body.
They can only be executed on cutaneous folds and their crossings.
You may hurt yourself if you apply them elsewhere.

Your first goal, when you start pressure grooming your skin, is to find folds and fold crossings.
Your skin is not folded everywhere.
When your nail lands on your skin, there are 3 possibilities.
It falls on:
• Unfolded skin,
• Folded skin,
• A fold crossing.

The major difference between folded and unfolded skin is hardness.
As you peck your skin with your nail, you'll feel some rigidity inside your skin in some sectors.
That's folded skin!
It's this firmness that you want to crush away with pressure grooming strokes.

Your body is criss-crossed by thousands of cutaneous folds, created by all your movements and expressions.
Your system considers the folds as injuries.
It paves the floor of each fold with fresh epidermis cells in a process called; superficial cicatrization.
The folds become permanent.

Permanent fold filled with epidermis cells

The folds are a problem by themselves.
But, the bigger problem comes from the places where the folds meet; the fold crossings.
The center of the fold crossings becomes a deep hole in your skin.

Your system paves the whole crossing with coats of fresh epidermis cells.
As more coats of epidermis cells are added, the fold crossing keeps on growing, and deepening inside your skin.
The skin hardens around the center.

FOLD CROSSING

Your system keeps on trying to cover the fold crossing completely:
• Often, it doesn't fill the gap entirely, leaving only a small depression; creating an open fold crossing.
• Sometimes it succeeds in paving the opening completely; creating a closed fold crossing.
A dome is formed, which can become a visible outgrowth.

There is a weak spot in the center of the fold crossing.

Even if they've become extremely hard, fold crossings are unstable and collapsible.
They can be flattened and deformed with your nails.
When your nail is near the center of a crossing, putting moderate to high pressure on it will open it up, and crush its foundations.
But, if your nail is precisely in the right place; the crossing may burst open in just a few seconds.

Most people will have difficulty detecting cutaneous folds and their crossings in their skin.
That's because you can't use your sense of sight to identify them.
Only a few fold crossings on your body can be spotted visually.
So, all your information comes from your nails, your fingertips, and from the skin you're working on itself.
Your sense of sight is so strong, that if you look at your skin while grooming, you'll be guided by incorrect information, and this will prevent you from grooming properly.

Humans are visual animals; they rely on what they see, and they have trouble getting around in the dark.
Finding your way inside your skin, and identifying cutaneous structures, will always remain a challenge.
You may work for hours on one spot, while the place you should be grooming is just an eighth of an inch away.

Pressure points, used in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine, massage, acupuncture, ... are simply misidentified fold crossings.
These therapies have understood that pain comes from those places.
However, they don't realize that the skin is simply folded in those spots.
So, they use their hands, fingers, and needles to apply pressure on them with poor results.
In fact, you have to use your nails, to crush and open up the fold crossings.
Associating these fold crossings with ailments all over the body is silly and wrong.