Cupping / Gua-Sha
Cupping therapy is an ancient form of alternative medicine in which a therapist puts special cups on your skin for a few minutes to create suction. People get it for many purposes, including to help with pain, inflammation, blood flow, relaxation and well-being, and as a type of deep-tissue massage.
What is Cupping?
Cupping, also known as suction cup therapy, is a form of alternative medicine. With cupping therapy, a practitioner places cups on the skin, creating suction to stimulate blood flow and increase circulation. The cups are usually made from glass or silicone and come in varying sizes. And, cupping practitioners use a variety of techniques, depending on the patient’s needs.
While our blood and other fluids do flow naturally throughout our bodies, they sometimes need stimulation. Much like a massage, this increased circulation has a relaxing, healing effect.
Cupping has been used in China for thousands of years to help restore balance within the body. Now, it is being used as an alternative medicine therapy all over the world. It can be combined with acupuncture and other alternative medicine treatments, and it can also be integrated with conventional medicine approaches to promote healing.
What Does Cupping Treat?
So, what is cupping for? It depends on the person getting the suction cup therapy, but usually, it is done to help with pain and/or inflammation in the back or neck. Cupping can reduce tension in muscles, work out muscle knots, treat scar tissue in the connective tissue and muscles, help increase circulation, and it can also be relaxing for the patient, similar to a back massage.
Some patients also use cupping therapy to help treat headaches, migraines, and chronic illness. It can also be used to help treat fertility problems, skin problems, anxiety and depression, blood pressure issues, coughs, and congestion.
Benefits of Suction Cup Therapy
Cupping is a gentle therapy that improves overall wellness, but doesn’t require pharmaceutical drugs or other chemicals. It is very safe, provided that you go to a trained cupping practitioner. This relaxing, balancing treatment is ideal for people who want to explore alternative pain and inflammation relief. In addition to its physical benefits, many patients say that it also provides emotional relief. It is great at relieving tension in both the mind and the body.
Suction cup therapy is frequently used by athletes to help boost muscle recovery, reduce muscle spasms, and much more. Since cupping is safe for the vast majority of people, it’s ideal for anyone from high school athletes to Olympic athletes.
Cupping has many of the benefits of acupuncture treatments, but it doesn’t involve needles—so it’s a good alternative for patients who are uncomfortable with the idea of acupuncture.
The Side Effects of Cupping
Cupping often causes temporary red marks on the skin where the cups are placed. However, in the vast majority of cases, it doesn’t hurt. Rather, it feels like a deep-tissue massage, and it can provide days of relief from tense muscles. While slight discomfort may occur during the treatment, this is Any red marks or bruises will disappear within a few days.
Like most alternative medicine treatments, cupping can help reduce the use of medications which cause serious side effects. When you consider the side effects of medications, it puts things into perspective: temporary red marks are a small price to pay.
What is Gua-Sha?
Gua-Sha is a natural holistic therapy that involves gentle scraping of your skin with a massage tool to improve and promote Qi & blood circulation in surface pores to deeper muscle layers which often has stagnation lodged on the meridians or channels and cause chronic pain or knots in muscle due to repetitive motion.
Gua-Sha is generally performed on patient’s upper back, thoracic spine, neck and shoulder. Patients with back muscle knots, stiff neck or suffer from summer heat with over heated body and fever are good candidates for a Gua-Sha treatment.
In addition, a gentle version of Gua-Sha is even used on the face as a facial rejuvenation regimen.
