Human Senses 3. Touch and Vision (2 of 22)

Human Senses

l can't feel anything at all.
And as the ultimate test of mind over body we'll see what happens when a brave volunteer tries taking part in a circus act, you'd think would be excruciating.
Jim Rose and his team of circus performers are experts in self-mutilation.
They specialise in stunts that look very painful.
We're going to find out how it's possible to do all this without apparently feeling intense pain.
We basically over come what we would call discomfort, and l think you might, er a lot of people might call er pain.
We're going to find out how we can all learn to combat pain by controlling our sense of touch to an astonishing degree.

We use touch to explore the world.
lnstantly we can tell how something feels to us.
its kind of wet...
flaky and, slimy, sandy.
Frozen and grungy.
But our sense of touch does much more than just tell us what's there.
Urgh.
Oh it's horrible.
When we feel something straight away we know whether we like or loathe it.
That is a foul huh.
Urgh.
There are things most of us find repulsive.
that is really gruesome.
Oh god.
Urgh Oh my god they're maggots.
Strange to believe but it l think l like that one.
But touching something smooth and soft feels lovely.
Ooh that's very nice.
l could sleep in a in a large mattress of this stuff.
Yeah nice and fluffy.
So why do we care so much about how things feel?
We've come to Jodhpur in Northern lndia, to pay a visit to some distant relations, a trop of hanaman Langers.