Your therapist will leave the cups in place for minutes, depending on your specific need. The release of pressure often feels calming, or like your body feels lighter and less tense. Sometimes, your therapist will apply lotion or oil to your skin and create a lesser pressure so the cups can glide across your skin.
Your therapist will glide the cups toward your lymph glands, as a way of helping your body expel toxins and waste through your lymphatic system. While the cups are on your skin, they loosen and lift your connective tissues, which increases blood and lymph flow to your skin and muscles.
The targeted blood flow brings oxygen rich blood and lymph to the affected area. Your lymphatic system is responsible for clearing the cellular waste and toxins from your body. Cupping gives your body an extra boost in clearing toxins. You can read about more benefits of cupping in our blog post here.
They very rarely hurt. Bruises are caused by impact trauma that breaks capillaries in the injured area. She explained that where she comes from the Czech Republic , cupping is not such a strange idea. I reminded myself that the practice has been widespread throughout much of the world for thousands of years, and attempted to relax into the experience.
Left alone in the darkened therapy room, I stripped to my underwear and wondered what the next 60 minutes would bring. The therapist came into the room and the deep tissue massage began. It turns out that I like massages. I think I needed some tension squeezing out of me. It was painful at times, yes, but I felt like I deserved it. I did my research before embarking on this mission, and I learned that there are three main types of cupping: wet, fire, and dry.
In wet cupping, after a few minutes of cupping, small incisions are made in the skin, the cups are then replaced on the skin so that blood is drawn out. I opted for dry cupping, which involves neither fire nor bleeding. Then, it was time for the cupping.
We started on a simple rubber cup; she pinched the rubber, and it was attached to my body. She drew it up and down my back, still tightly stuck to my skin. In places, particularly nearer my neck, there was some associated pain, but nothing too extreme. It was a good pain. It felt cathartic, as if it was doing something constructive below my skin.
But, after the plastic cupping ended, the therapist moved on to glass cups and… flaming cotton wool. I had not expected fire. I winced and tensed. I breathed a sigh of relief, but I still tensed each and every time I sensed the heat near my skin. Each cup was first attached to my lower back before being dragged to its resting place further up — that was a little sore, but it was nothing like as bad as the marks it left behind. It was an odd sensation. Preliminary studies vouch for the benefits of cupping, though a major obstacle in extensive research is that it's pretty tough to do a double-blind trial on cupping.
That said, there's a lot of literature that shows how cupping can offer relief for pain-related conditions, including back and neck pain and even shingles.
In a study , patients receiving cupping therapy found that their chronic neck and shoulder pain was reduced by more than half, even after just one treatment.
The pain scale the researchers used included physical markers like blood pressure. Don't let the red marks fool you— it doesn't hurt. And though, again, you'll likely leave the office with hickey-like circles on your skin thanks to the suction of blood to the skin's surface , you can expect those to disappear within a few days.
I've gotten traditional cupping, "wet" cupping which entails a prick of a needle before the suction , and even facial cupping —the last of which doesn't leave any marks but a fantastic, lit-from-within glow. Also, there are glass cups, bamboo cups, silicone cups, and more! Want to see for yourself?
Medically, I was doing everything that could be done. I went on a drug that made my hair fall out and caused me to feel nauseous almost every single day. It was supposed to put me into temporary menopause and hopefully buy me some time to make decisions about what to do next.
I was consulting with a fertility specialist about the potential for pursuing in vitro fertilization before it was too late. And I was seeing an acupuncturist in the hopes of alleviating some of my other symptoms. I loved acupuncture, if only because it was the one thing I was doing that actually made me feel as though I might have some control.
My acupuncturist was amazing, teaching me a bit more about my body at each and every session. Then came the day when she told me she wanted to try something new. When she went for my ears or my toes, I always knew I had to breathe deeply in order to stop myself from leaping off the table. This day was different, though. After working on my ears, toes, and eyelids yes, my eyelids for a while, my acupuncturist told me to turn over on my stomach.
Having no idea what she was talking about, I immediately had to stifle a laugh. Am I wrong, or is there just something that sounds a little dirty about that? She started pulling out some massage oils and other goodies.
I actually got excited. For a minute there, I thought I was about to get a serious massage, the kind that a girl who is in a constant state of pain lives for.
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