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Pain is an interpretation of electrical impulses received by the brain. You don't actually feel pain, you get physical stimuli which are passed to the brain and the brain instructs your body how to interpret the stumuli as sensations (hot, tight, pressure, tearing, achy, etc). The brain can only process so many impulses at any one time, though. If too many impulses are racing to the brain, only a portion of them can get through the theoretical gate to be interpreted.
There are small nerve fibres that that transmit pain to the brain and large nerve fibres that transmit comforting sensations to the brain. If you can flood the brain with enough stimuli on the large nerve fibres, they will crowd out many of the small nerve fibre impulses.
This is why things like effleurage, stroking, hair brushing, TENS and labouring in water are so very effective for blocking or mitigating "pain" in labour. Especially when you are submerged in water, the entire surface of the skin is being stimulated which leaves the brain less able to process contraction sensations efficiently.
The gate control theory was developed for people experiencing chronic pain. Those experiencing chronic pain from, say, back injuries can't take narcotics every day of their lives, so strategies were developed to help these people non-pharmaceutically.
This is pretty much my entire lesson on gate control theory. I teach it immediately after I teach the pain/tension/fear cycle during my class on comfort measures. I have a couple handouts in my book that explain and illustrate the theories.
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