After getting in a car accident this summer, I spent the entirety of first semester in physiotherapy twice a week to treat my whiplash. This experience, while frustrating and time consuming, opened me up to two types of massage therapy, “TENS”—which you can read about here—and “cupping.”
Cupping is quite trendy (and used by many Olympic athletes such as Michael Phelps) so I had heard about it before. However, I had absolutely no idea what it was, what its purpose was, or why someone would get it done.
The first time I tried cupping my physiotherapist explained that while massage presses out tension, cupping pulls it out. That was pretty much the extent of my questioning; I was willing to try anything if there was even the slightest chance that my back and neck pain would lessen.
While I rolled onto my stomach, my physiotherapist grabbed a small machine and a little glass cup. She explained that she was going to place the cup on my lower back and create suction, which would pull the blood to the surface of my skin, expand the blood vessels in that area, and draw out the tension.
Originally— the cupping technique dates back to ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern cultures—and still in some places today, this suction would be created by placing something flammable (like alcohol, herbs, or paper) into the cup, setting it on fire, and then turning it upside down onto the skin as the fire goes out. Thankfully, this was not what happened to me; I may be pretty tough, but I would have screamed.
Instead, the machine my therapist used operated like a pump, and sucked the air out sans-fire. I’ll be brutally honest: it does sort of hurt. However, it hurts in that good sort of way when you press down really hard on a knotted muscle. The therapist should check with you to make sure the amount of suction is all right (not too much, but not too little) and that you are comfortable with the feeling of it, especially if it is your first time getting it done. Sometimes they will drag the cup around your back, and I cannot stress how strangely incredible this feels; it makes you feel like you are an Etch a Sketch, the cup is the little magnet pen, and whatever going on inside your muscles is the aluminum powder.
You may only have one cup, or may have a bunch of cups going at the same time, but your therapist will leave the cup(s) in the same spot for about a minute in order for it to do its magic. It will feel weird when the tension is released and the cups are removed, because the blood will start dispersing again.
The main warning I have about cupping is the marks they will leave on you. Your therapist will warn you that they will most likely leave a red, circular mark (almost like a perfectly round, alien hickey) wherever the cup was placed. The first few times I had this therapy, I actually didn’t see the marks; they didn’t hurt and I forgot to check for them. However, the third time (when I had four different cups and looked like a reptilian alien from a poorly done speculative horror film) I had it done I had very prominent marks on my upper back for about a week.
This is what my back looked like after twenty minutes, and it continued to darken for the rest of the day. You can see that two of the marks are far more prominent than the other two (the final colour of the lighter ones was about that of the darker ones you can see here). That being said, it was the coolest conversation starter and they didn’t hurt at all. In fact, I felt great.
The effects definitely aren’t long lasting, but work in a similar way to massage; if you want the full benefits of it, you will have to do it repeatedly and not just once or twice. It definitely isn’t a cure all! However, not only is it highly effective at releasing tension, but it’s a neat experience and—if you’re interested—is something I would recommend if you have it done professionally.