Oh my gosh, have you ever had such seriously tight muscles that you just wish you could replace them? Maybe not replace them totally, but surely loosen them up and stop the pain?! I have! I have a history of tight traps – those muscles on top of your shoulders. You know, the ones that tighten up and cause your shoulders to rise up towards your ears. Yup, those muscles! I used to do a lot of road cycling and my traps would get really tight. So tight that they would cause me stabbing pain. I needed a way to release them. Hello cupping!
Cupping is a therapy to move stagnation, clear heat from the body, help the lungs, and help those sore aching muscles. It’s nothing new. It’s as ancient as acupuncture. Sometimes cupping is used as a treatment option during an acupuncture session and/or a stand alone treatment. So what exactly is it?
Cupping involves cups. Literally, cups. They can be made of plastic, glass, silicone, etc. They’re placed on certain parts of the body depending on the reason for using them. They can remain in place or they can “slide” across an area. I’m a huge fan of sliding cups for muscle aches and tightness. Because cupping moves stagnation within the body, there can be bruising of the skin. It doesn’t always happen, but it can. Cupping helps improve circulation, reduce inflammation, decrease soreness, and improve range of motion.
When I learned how to do cupping in acupuncture school, we had to pass a test. We had to learn how to properly use the fire glass cups before we could use the pump glass cups. Fire cups – yes, they involve fire! You light an alcohol soaked cotton ball on fire, then insert it ever so carefully into the glass cup, remove it, and then quickly put the glass cup on the body. The heat from the flame creates a suction and the glass cup stays on the body. Once you could do that properly, you graduated to using the pump to create suction. Woohoo! The pump is so much easier to adjust the suction.
That’s cupping in a nutshell!