hard dreads

im new here so hello everybody.

my dreads are currently 1.5 years old, they were made and maintained with crochet at the salon. They are extremely hard and stiff, but i didn't really care cause my hair are very very thick and i had a lot of them. recently i've decided its time maybe to make them be a liitle more loose since they are close to wires. i started to tighten them the way this guy do (

) but after few minuets my fingers were literally full of blood. i really dont want to cut them but i would like to have loose dreads which are... well look at this photo, its horizontal...:/