What is Cupping and How Can it Help Me? 

Cupping has been used in many healing traditions across the world, and by families over many generations. What was once a bamboo cup is now plastic, glass but can still be bamboo. Gwenyth Paltrow made a splash by showing off her cup marks at an event years ago. Do you remember that?

Cupping can be used for general muscle tension and to relax, but that isn't all it can do. Cupping, done correctly, can help chronic pain and dramatically reduce the number of treatments needed to be pain free.

What Is Cupping?

Cups are placed on the area of pain or tension. The air in the cup is then removed either with a flame or suction. If a flame is used, it's then placed on the targeted body area. If a vacuum pump is used, it's place on the body and then the suction pump is used to remove the air and create a vacuum.

What happens next? The toxins and cellular waste trapped in the muscle tissue is brought to the surface of the skin, where the body can more easily remove it from the body. When there is tension, pain or trauma, it is difficult to promote healing as the cellular waste products can't exit the affected area. With cupping, that cellular waste is not only removed from the area, but new blood flow is brought to the area to assist healing.

The end result? If there is blockage and cellular waste, there is a coloring of the skin. If there is no tension, there will be no discoloration. The more tension and cellular waste, the more color is seen. Sometimes, cupping marks are dark purple. I'm always glad when this happens, as I know my patient will be feeling better soon!

Sometimes you have to see it for yourself. You can move a cup (when olive oil is put on the skin first) from one side of the spine to the other. On one side, there is hard suction, and when moved to the other side, there is almost no suction. There is no tension on the side with no suction. If two cups are left on each side for 10 min, you would see a coloring from light red to dark purple color form on the side with tension and no coloration on the other side.

How Can it Help Me?

Cupping can help speed your recovery from an acute or chronic condition resistant to other treatment modalities. What may take 5+ treatments to heal can be done in 1-2. This is the case with jaw pain, migraines, neck pain, back pain, hip pain and many other areas of pain and dis-ease.

If you can handle a little color, you can experience freedom from pain. How does that sound? If you'd like to add cupping to your healing regimen, give me a call; I'd be happy to help.

Yours in Health,

Kara

Kara Sorensen, MS, LAc
Acupuncture by Kara
15066 Los Gatos-Almaden Rd
Suite 200
Los Gatos, CA
e: kara(at)karasorensen.com
p: 408.805.5272 (KARA)
p: 800.514.1406