Cupping

Have you ever had cupping? You may be familiar with this as a modern sports therapy, but it has been around for millennia with its origin in Chinese Medicine. It soothes tense, achy muscles and treats pain of various types throughout the body. It feels kind of like a strong massage but has the added bonus of pulling toxins out of the skin. As a result, it's also really helpful for treating more acute conditions like cold & flu, but it also can treat chronic cough by helping to clear the lungs.

Cupping promotes circulation, reduces swelling, warms the channels, helps expel pathogens, and disperses blood stagnation. I use the traditional method of fire cupping, which involves using heat to create a vacuum in a glass cup that is then placed on the skin to produce suction. Fire cupping has the additional benefit of gently warming the skin, which can further ease pain and help resolve conditions caused by cold.

There are various forms of cupping that we may use depending on the patient’s needs: sliding, retention, and flash cupping. With sliding cupping, we are gliding the cups over oiled skin to release tension and cover a particular area for treatment. Retention cupping is when we leave the cups in place in a certain area for a period of time, usually 5-10 minutes. This is the most common type of cupping performed. Finally flash cupping involves placing the cups very briefly on the skin and removing them over and over until the therapeutic effect has been achieved. This is often the modality used for more deficient patients. We may use a combination of these techniques depending on the patient’s needs.

At Sangha, you can book a cupping session on its own or you can request to add it onto your acupuncture treatment at no additional charge. Visit our services tab above or click “book now” to see a full list of our services.