The technique of not using your thumbs

In the mid- and late 1990s I went for 2 1/2 years without using my thumbs. Not that I had to do it that long, but because after going thumbless I really like it!

This happened because I was at a party at a house I lived in with about 17 others. We had a massive living room, and would hold raves and concerts there. At one concert a drunk jerk started a fight with one of the musicians, they "took it outside" and when the bigger one eventually started pounding the musicians head on the pavement three of us jumped in and pulled him off, and he walked away mumbling. In the process I hurt my right thumb.

It had a pretty good twist to it, so I knew I'd be injured for a little while and not be able to use it fully. Then I realized "Hey, I've never not used my thumbs!" Liking to do limit-stretching things like that, I just stopped using them, figuring it would be for about a week.

Some things were a little harder, but my brain soon adapted well, quicker than I thought it would. A few night later I had a vivid dream of living in a jungle, animal like. It was very nice living in a jungle, animal like.

So I kept on not using them. After a couple of weeks I didn't even think about it very much, everything was as easy as before after a bit. Had to hold a pen differently, and brush my teeth with the brush at a different angle. Everything that got familiar doing that was another limit-extender, just breaking or changing old habit patterns. It wasn't hard, so I kept it up. I don't know how long it took until the next step kicked it.

At some point I realized that our entire skin is calloused. All of it. Because when I stopped using my thumbs long enough they became uncalloused. Rubbing them very gently against anything was a wonderful tactile experience. When running them along any surface, the surface became so enlarged on a feeling level that it was like carrying around two mini-tactile magnifying glasses.

Of course hanging out with women was fun. Two friends in particular liked licking or sucking with just a little pressure (not gross or overtly sexual, for purposed of this thread). The feeling was sublime. So, all in all, things became easy, I liked the experience so much that I didn't use them for two and a-half years, and then for some reason I can't recall just started using them again. But not as often.

I still do lots of things without using my thumbs, it just seems natural (brain adaptation I suppose). I forget if I used to type with my thumbs, I haven't since.

So I highly suggest it as a technique, for at least a week, just to do a pattern-breaking exercise which isn't very hard after awhile (that's what you'd want, I'd say, is do it until everything gets easy, or when you don't even think about it any more). For anyone adventureous to go further and get rid of the skiin callous on those particular parts of the body - go for it, for sure. Very enjoyable and interesting.

And one more thing. Doing this living experiment made me so aware of what happens to babies when they're born, and happened to me when I was born. The entire skin of a newborn infant has no callous, and then suddenly it's pulled out of the womb, the gooey stuff is rubbed away by a nurse with a rough towel (believe me, no matter how soft a towel it would feel like scrapers), and the baby is wrapped in a blanket and passed around with the pressure of people's hands on the blanket. No wonder newborns are howling to high heaven - on top of the lights and the temperture change and the noise, it must be like every nerve end on their body is being highly stimulated, firing off on an unprecedented level every moment. Anyone expecting a child, please take that into consideration when giving the birthing staff instructions and when holding your newborn. Thanks.

Interesting read and without a doubt the weirdest thing (thats actually believable) Ive read on this site.

Any plans to expand on this and not use any other body parts in future?

Edit: reading that back it seems like a silly question but for the life of me I couldnt think of anything else to ask or say LOL

reply to post by Aleister


haha wow this is pretty out there almost at the same level of cyborg stephen hawkings, how does one go so many years without the use of ones thumbs?

man i cant even pull this off for more than a couple of seconds..

it was very interesting however the part about the newborns, this could actually have some truth behind it. man i keep giggling at the sight of someone not using their perfectly working thumbs on purpose.

So you whipped your hands out your pockets, showed off the baby-thumbs, and two babes commenced to sucking?

Originally posted by IkNOwSTuff
Interesting read and without a doubt the weirdest thing (thats actually believable) Ive read on this site.

Any plans to expand on this and not use any other body parts in future?

Edit: reading that back it seems like a silly question but for the life of me I couldnt think of anything else to ask or say LOL

lol myself. What a nice compliment, taking into consideration the weird things that have passed thru in the night on ATS. No, I've never done that with other body parts, except when I did force myself to use my left arm to write and do other things with in college, when I just dropped my right arm by my side for a few weeks (I was lefty as a child, and then got changed to "righty" in grammar school). I do want to get better at using my toes, writing, etc, with them, but haven't gotten around to that yet. I did that stuff mainly for the limit-breaking and habit breaking. Once you do something for 90 minutes in a row the brain knows you're serious, and begins connecting neurons (if that's the correct word) in new ways to accomodate the new experiences.

Originally posted by EnoEht
reply to post by Aleister

 

haha wow this is pretty out there almost at the same level of cyborg stephen hawkings, how does one go so many years without the use of ones thumbs?

man i cant even pull this off for more than a couple of seconds..

it was very interesting however the part about the newborns, this could actually have some truth behind it. man i keep giggling at the sight of someone not using their perfectly working thumbs on purpose.

Well, like I said, it was first only going to be a week or so because I had hurt my right thumb enough. Then it got easy, then IT became a habit, and as that habit went along I discovered about the callouses, that the skin became noncalloused, and that was fun.

Originally posted by LizardSlicks
So you whipped your hands out your pockets, showed off the baby-thumbs, and two babes commenced to sucking?

Well, no. The two "babes" were friends, in whatever way that term can be used, and I guess knowing that my skin was so sensitive gave them an interest in doing that. I didn't mind, "please, no ladies, don't" didn't come to mind. But you did remind me of something I haven't thought of in years - when I had my hands in my pockets I made sure, with body awareness, not to brush my thumbs up against any fabric in the pocket, they just kind of hung in space there. I know this sounds weird as I report on this, but it became quite natural after awhile. We have lots of animals around who don't have opposable thumbs, and I was interested to see how they did it. It was easy, which shows me that most animals aren't advanced enough to use tools because they can use them without much problem if they "thought" of it.

reply to post by Aleister


You gave an absolutey sensible and logical explanation to a ridiculous comment about a borderline wacky concept.

This is a star that was truly earned.

Even on ATS I come across threads where I do a BBBBBbbb WTF?


You have won that award today!

Originally posted by LizardSlicks
reply to post by Aleister

 

You gave an absolutey sensible and logical explanation to a ridiculous comment about a borderline wacky concept.

This is a star that was truly earned.

Thank you, another nice compliment (I didn't expect that from this thread) and it's a star I will treasure. And thank you for reminding me about the pocket thing.

Originally posted by abeverageYou have won that award today!

Thank you, award gratefully accepted. What does BBBBbbb mean? I know WTF, know it too well.

Has anyone else done any limit-breaking things? A group of us once were....just remembered it, and that will be another whole thread, seriously, I have one that broke a whole lot of limits. I made notes on that one, wish I could get them (they're in another location). Thanks for giving me that idea! But if anyone has done anything that stretches limits (I've never skyjumped or even bunjijumped, that would do it) please either add to this thread or make another thread and link it to this one, or if other threads like this exist please link them here as well. I guess I like depositories, except Texas School Book ones. Thanks.

Originally posted by Aleister


And one more thing. Doing this living experiment made me so aware of what happens to babies when they're born, and happened to me when I was born. The entire skin of a newborn infant has no callous, and then suddenly it's pulled out of the womb, the gooey stuff is rubbed away by a nurse with a rough towel (believe me, no matter how soft a towel it would feel like scrapers), and the baby is wrapped in a blanket and passed around with the pressure of people's hands on the blanket. No wonder newborns are howling to high heaven - on top of the lights and the temperture change and the noise, it must be like every nerve end on their body is being highly stimulated, firing off on an unprecedented level every moment. Anyone expecting a child, please take that into consideration when giving the birthing staff instructions and when holding your newborn. Thanks.

This was very profound for me, for some reason now I remember this feeling, I've never had any memories of before I was two, I don't remember anything else except that feeling all over my body!

Originally posted by Aleister

Originally posted by abeverageYou have won that award today!

Thank you, award gratefully accepted. What does BBBBbbb mean? I know WTF, know it too well.

Has anyone else done any limit-breaking things? A group of us once were....just remembered it, and that will be another whole thread, seriously, I have one that broke a whole lot of limits. I made notes on that one, wish I could get them (they're in another location). Thanks for giving me that idea! But if anyone has done anything that stretches limits (I've never skyjumped or even bunjijumped, that would do it) please either add to this thread or make another thread and link it to this one, or if other threads like this exist please link them here as well. I guess I like depositories, except Texas School Book ones. Thanks.

edit on 13-2-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

edit on 13-2-2013 by Aleister because: (no reason given)

When you shake your head really hard in disbelief and make a Bbbbbb noise...

I have ambidexterity because of a broken bone I had to teach myself to do things with my left hand. I have gotten lazy gone back to my right a lot but I still do things like brush my teeth or hair with the left...

reply to post by 1nf1del


Yes, it has to be a feeling that we all carry with us, and the important thing is what decisions we make during those intense feelings. I don't mean verbal decisions, but survival stuff that connects right into the feeling and the trauma of incidents like that. Being born is a bad trip for most people, which is why some of them organized that "quiet birth" movement a long time ago (not its exact name) where they keep the lights low, and submerge the baby in water up to its chest or neck directly after birth, they are very quiet in the room (the first thing a baby doesn't want to hear is about the doctor's golf game the day before), and other precautions to make those minutes as easy as possible on the child's psyche.

reply to post by abeverage


So when you changed to left-handed with the broken bone you retained some of the new "training" that your body had to go through. Nice. In every cloud there is a silver lining, and some people try to pocket it!

Thanks for the explanation of the BBBBBbbbbbb sound. I just made the head shake and there's a little growl in there too, or a liquidy sound. Reminds me, I heard a great laugh yesterday from a woman in a bookstore. Someone should record great laughs and release them on a CD or DVD, but that would be hard to do on command, you'd have to have a continuous running tape and get lucky. I bet the people in governments who spy on the public must have hundreds of great laughs recorded. I ramble and digress.

Cool experiment. I did something similar, but only for a day. I didn't speak. Keep in mind I have four dogs who I take out in the morning and evening and I usually give commands, but found that I actually didn't need to speak. They read my body language and obeyed every "command".

I think it's very eye-opening to challenge yourself with something like this. Try going a day with a blindfold, or with earplugs in ...

reply to post by Aleister

No wonder newborns are howling to high heaven - on top of the lights and the temperture change and the noise, it must be like every nerve end on their body is being highly stimulated, firing off on an unprecedented level every moment. Anyone expecting a child, please take that into consideration when giving the birthing staff instructions and when holding your newborn. Thanks.

One day a couple weeks after my 21st birthday, I asked my Mom about a memory that had always been with me.
She thought my Dad and I were playing a joke on her. I described the whole scene of my birth down to what the Doc looked like.

reply to post by randyvs


Author Ray Bradbury could do that, he said he had total memory of his birth. But he did spend at least 20 minutes every morning scanning his childhood memories and picking up new ones and new feelings.

But the real question is, can you remember your 21st birthday? If you do, you weren't doing it right.

Of course you realize that people that rely on their hands to count are going to have a problem with this.....

Originally posted by Aleister
reply to post by abeverage

 

So when you changed to left-handed with the broken bone you retained some of the new "training" that your body had to go through. Nice. In every cloud there is a silver lining, and some people try to pocket it!

Thanks for the explanation of the BBBBBbbbbbb sound. I just made the head shake and there's a little growl in there too, or a liquidy sound. Reminds me, I heard a great laugh yesterday from a woman in a bookstore. Someone should record great laughs and release them on a CD or DVD, but that would be hard to do on command, you'd have to have a continuous running tape and get lucky. I bet the people in governments who spy on the public must have hundreds of great laughs recorded. I ramble and digress.

Head Shake Uh....Bbbbbbbbbb @ 2:36



Enjoy!