Back Cupping

The Ancient Art of Back Cupping is Alive and Well

Back cupping is the practice of drawing toxin-loaded blood to just below the skin where it is diffused, just like a bruise disperses. During back cupping, the treated area is gently drawn upwards by the vacuum within the cup.

Back cupping originated in ancient China, and, in one form or another, has been practiced for over 3000 years. For centuries back cupping has also been known about and widely used in Greece, Turkey, Italy, France and Eastern Europe.

To help relieve muscle pain, spasm or stiffness are good reasons to use back cupping, as well as helping to reduce joint problems.

Traditional Chinese thinking behind back cupping is that injury or stress causes the body’s energy flow to become unbalanced. To correct this imbalance, the energy flow must be restored.

Nowadays, the glass ‘cups’ used in back cupping are refined, yet robust, and an oil or cream is applied to the area to be treated before the back cupping begins.

Up until recently the vacuum within the back cupping ‘cup’ was created using a cotton wool ball on a skewer in methylated spirit, and ignited by a candle flame... This seems all a bit cumbersome and sounds dangerous.

These days back cupping practitioners use a simple and safe gas lighter making back cupping a modern model of alternative therapies.



The visible signs of a back cupping session are circular reddish-purple bruise- like marks not unlike love bites.

Gwyneth Paltrow caused a stir at a New York film premiere in a low cut top revealing a back covered in large circular bruises. At first glance they looked like large love bites, but in fact they were caused by a form of alternative therapy. Gwyneth had cupping, a kind of acupuncture. It involves placing heated cups over the skin to encourage blood flow and ease stress, aches and pains.

(Picture courtesy of news.BBC.co.uk)

As the idea behind back cupping is to increase blood circulation and remove toxins, which restrict blood flow, this bruising is considered 'healthy', and normally disperses within a week.

An interesting observation is that the more toxins, which are in the blood, the darker the bruise from back cupping appears.

The good news is that this “poison” has been drawn up from the deeper layers of tissue and cleaned up in the body’s pathways (or Meridians in Chinese medicine terms) and the body has started its own recovery cycle.

Blood circulation has also increased to carry more oxygen to vital organs.

All this healing power generated by the ancient art of back cupping.