New Experience: Cupping Therapy

In the latest Olympic Games, you may have seen some athletes with big red circles on their backs: people got curious about them, and eventually they figured out that those athletes were undergoing cupping therapy. As you may imagine, I got curious about it too, and last week I had the opportunity to try it myself!

Cupping is both a very old and quite modern therapy. It has been used in Asia for centuries, together with acupuncture. Recently, though, it has become a fad around the world, especially among some high performance athletes. The technique is more or less like this: the therapist applies a suction cup (either made of silicon or glass) on various parts of your body in order to "loosen" the muscles and increase blood flow in those areas. The therapist may move the cup around your body, in order to spread its effects on the body, and the therapist may also leave the cups for a small amount of time sitting on some specific parts of the body that need a little more time to get loose.

That was exactly what my therapist did to me: she used silicon cups (those are recommended for your first time, because they are a little gentler than the glass cups) and moved them around my back and my legs. Because the muscles on my upper back were quite stiff, she left the cups there for some time, which resulted in the famous red circles on me, as you can see in the second picture.

During the application of the cups, it felt intense: it really pulls your skin out. Afterwards, my upper back was a little bit sore, so when sitting down I had to be careful with my back, but it wasn't too bad. After some time I did feel my upper back a little less tense, but I will not discount the placebo effect.

All in all, it was a pleasant experience and I would do it again. Researching on Wikipedia, there is no proof that cupping does... anything, but just in terms of the experience itself it felt nice. I can't guarantee that for everybody, however, so you will have to try it yourself to find out!


(not me - just an illustrative picture)


(actual me, immediately after the cupping session - those are the typical red circles from cupping therapy)



Location: Snowbird, UT 84092, USA

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