TaoSen provides various cupping therapies as part of or separate from other treatments.           Including:

Ba' Guan (flame cupping)

Suction Pump Cupping

Herbal Infused Bamboo Cupping

Russian Cupping Massage

Soft Cupping

Facial Cupping

 

Cupping Therapy

 Cupping is a traditional therapy that remains favoured by millions of people throughout the world because it is a time-honoured, safe, comfortable and effective treatment for many health disorders. For practitioners, cupping requires only simple and inexpensive instruments, is time and energy efficient and achieves excellent results. Cupping is usually performed by introducing heat into a glass cup or similar object and placing it immediately on the skin. The vacuum created produces a suction effect that increases blood circulation to the local area, relaxes muscle tissue and releases the factors causing pain. Another popular method is to withdraw the air from inside the cup with a suction pump.

 Traditional practice and experience recognises the ability of cupping to move vital energy and correct internal imbalances, as well as to clear the effects of external injury and climatic influences such as wind and cold. This therapeutic method has been practised by both medically trained and household practitioners in most parts of the world for thousands of years. Cupping is a universal therapy. It has been and continues to be practiced in every culture throughout the world.

 North American natives and Africans used buffalo horns as cupping vessels and women healers in villages throughout Europe and Russia continue the practice of cupping on relatives and neighbours and pass down their knowledge as a family tradition. In present day Vietnam, cupping is commonly seen in clinics, in homes and at roadside stops, while in China much research has been carried out on cupping and the practice is a mainstay of government-sponsored hospitals of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

 

The Discolourations/Marks left by the Cups

 or 'When a 'Bruise' is not a Bruise!' What do they represent?

 A common and unfortunate misconception concerning cupping is the misinterpretation of the marks - those round circles you can see in the above photo taken at a temple in Vietnam - that often appear during and after a cupping treatment. These are not satisfactorily explained as bruises, and therefore should not be referred to as 'cupping bruises'.

 Rather they are 'discolourations' or 'marks' which only occur when the therapeutic cupping process has successfully drawn pathogenic factors to the skin surface. Usually also, within 24 hours, there is a very noticeable change and they are typically resolved in a few days. 'Bruising' is incorrect because it gives the impression that they result from a traumatic procedure. A handful of good explanations why they are not bruises include:

1. When we have a bruise (due to trauma), experience tells us that it is tender to touch. After proper cupping there is no such accompanying tenderness.

2. By definition, a bruise is the result of trauma cause by the impact of a flat surfaced object. This is certainly not the case with a hollow cupping vessel.

3. Many times cupping does not produce a show of discolouration.

4. Let us imagine a case where a cup has been placed on a part of the body and has produced a strong discolouration (maybe even a deep dark circle - inevitably when there is a long term problem). After that has resolved and another cup is reapplied at the same spot, the marking is typically only a half as 'ferocious' as the former time. Then again another application at that same location brings only a faint and barely coloured showing. Usually by the fourth treatment, no skin colour change is likely - even though each time the cup has been focussed on the same spot for the same duration and with the same force. Clearly a case where the internal unwanted pathogens/toxins have systematically been resolved.

5. In those parts of the world where cupping is a part of the national culture, and in those traditional medical systems and folk medical practices in which cupping is valued, the colourations have never been interpreted in a negative way. The same can be said for the practice of gua sha - another method that can produce colouration to the skin surface - though the kind of pathologic factor that gua sha releases to the surface is a different kind of disturbance known as sha.

 

Thanks to Bruce Bentley

of

The Australian School of Traditional Thai Massage

for the above descriptions