cupping

I went to a spa the yesterday, got a massage and tried cupping. The massage was actually good, thank god. Massages here are different than in the States. You usually don't take your clothes off unless you're at a bath house and I don't feel like the masseuses really have any training. It's usually a foot massage place that you can add an additional full body massage onto and there's a lot of shaking, jiggling and jackhammer motions involved. No bueno. Granted this place was pretty expensive compared to those kinds of places, so I guess it makes sense that it was better.

The cupping happened after my massage. I'd been warned that it is cool but painful. The glass cups are supposed to have the most give, then bamboo/wood, and porcelain are supposedly the most hardcore. I'm not 100% clear on the point of cupping but I believe it is to draw the toxins out of your skin. The literal translation of what the people that worked there told me is that it is good to do in spring because it removes the cold wind from your body.

I choose the glass cups for my first time. The woman took a small torch like thing, put it near the opening of the cups, quickly put them on my back and then twisted to vacuum seal them on my skin. The heat from the flame made my skin get sucked up into the cups.

She left them on me for fifteen minutes (ten was the baseline and fifteen was if I could handle it). To remove them, she just twisted each to break the vacuum. I didn't think it hurt at all. It just felt like a lot of pressure. Like something really heavy was on my back. It made it a little harder to breath, but not too bad.

Afterwards, my skin was all puffy where it was sucked up into the cups (naturally). The woman rubbed my back, almost like she was trying to smooth my skin back down, which wasn't the most comfortable feeling ever. The cups that left darker marks are supposedly where I had more cold wind in my body that needed to come out. The bit I'm slightly confused about here is that I'm right handed and carry a lot more tension on my right side, but my left has darker bruising.

Today I didn't shower, as you are not supposed to for a day or two after. I couldn't get a logical explanation as to why exactly, but I figured I should follow the directions I was given. Now at the end of the next day, I am slightly sore, but other than that I'm not really sure I see the point. I'll do it again though, mostly because it was different and make my second time around will be a bit more impactful.