diff --git a/TESTING.asciidoc b/TESTING.asciidoc
index aa5431ed69b..a1a01a8f231 100644
--- a/TESTING.asciidoc
+++ b/TESTING.asciidoc
@@ -25,12 +25,6 @@ run it using Gradle:
 gradle run
 -------------------------------------
 
-or to attach a remote debugger, run it as:
-
--------------------------------------
-gradle run --debug-jvm
--------------------------------------
-
 === Test case filtering.
 
 - `tests.class` is a class-filtering shell-like glob pattern,
@@ -480,7 +474,7 @@ Combined (Unit+Integration) coverage:
 mvn -Dtests.coverage verify jacoco:report
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
-== Debugging from an IDE
+== Launching and debugging from an IDE
 
 If you want to run elasticsearch from your IDE, the `gradle run` task
 supports a remote debugging option:
@@ -489,6 +483,17 @@ supports a remote debugging option:
 gradle run --debug-jvm
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
+== Debugging remotely from an IDE
+
+If you want to run Elasticsearch and be able to remotely attach the process
+for debugging purposes from your IDE, can start Elasticsearch using `ES_JAVA_OPTS`:
+
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ES_JAVA_OPTS="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:server=y,transport=dt_socket,address=4000,suspend=y" ./bin/elasticsearch
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Read your IDE documentation for how to attach a debugger to a JVM process.
+
 == Building with extra plugins
 Additional plugins may be built alongside elasticsearch, where their
 dependency on elasticsearch will be substituted with the local elasticsearch