My Cupping Experience at Cupping Studio Portland
You might be thinking to yourself, what the cup is cupping? I’ll be honest, when the Portland Cupping Studio first reached out to me for a collaboration I wasn’t sure what to expect. It looked kind of scary and I wasn’t sure what the marks it left on your body meant. While cupping has become “mainstream” due to celebrities and professional athletes, this practice is an ancient Chinese medicine that dates back over 3,000 years.
“The old Chinese medical maxim holds that pain results from the congestion, stagnation, and blockage of Qi, or vital energy, vital fluids, lymph, phlegm, and blood. If pain is the essence of disease, then suffering is a result of obstructed or irregular flow in the body. Chinese cupping is therefore a method of breaking up the blockage to restore the body’s natural flow of energy (Pacific College of Oriental Medicine).”
The marks that are left after cupping look like bruises, but they actually aren’t. In fact they are the opposite. Bruises are created by impact trauma with compressed breakage of capillaries and a reactionary rush of fluids to the damaged location from the tissue injury (CuppingTherapy.Org). In cupping, there is no compression, but rather your skin and its multiple layers underneath are being pulled up.