Wednesday, July 07, 2010

New Experience. Bruised.

Last night I had an appointment with my natural health practitioner.  I'd been looking forward to this appointment as I had several questions for him, and I was even more relieved for the appointment to arrive because I've been fighting with some severely sore muscles and bad headaches for the last couple of days and knew enough to know that he would probably be able to relieve some of the symptoms.

This was a new one, though.  The muscles were so tight that he declared that "cupping" was the only thing that was going to quickly and effectively loosen the knots, giving me me relief.  (By the way, there was no bloodletting - which the article I linked to mentions!)

It worked, but let me tell you, you should see my back and shoulders.  They're much looser, and I have large, perfectly round bright reddish purple bruises where the cups were.  Ugly, big bruises.  Apparently this is from the release of toxins.  It wasn't all that painful, except for one, and even that was more of a growing pulling pressure than really pain.  But, let me tell you, I won't be wearing a bikini (or bathing suit of any kind really) or a low backed top, or really anything in which you can see the back of me anytime soon!

3 comments:

shallowfrozenwater said...

yeah, Wendy gets this done and it looks like she had a fight with a giant squid. she won though, she always wins.

Allie, Dearest said...

That's totally the type of stuff they're doing here in China. It's really popular and normal to have cupping other toxin releasing services done. I had the bloodletting of course, then cupping, on my foot. Not a great place to have anything done.

Lisa said...

I'd imagine that China would most definitely not be the best place to have anything done... I'm all for release of toxins, but I definitely want to fluently speak the language of anyone who is performing that sort of service for me... And bloodletting - I'd never have survived it!

As for the cupping, well, it wasn't too bad, other than the horrendous bruises, which, Ian, I thought you described rather nicely! And it worked - the muscles have been quite a bit less of a problem in the days since the treatment. Sore, but sore like after a good massage, not sore from knots on top of knots. I'd let my natural health guy do it again.

And, I'm getting huge mileage out of the bruises on my shoulder for shocking friends :) It's quite fun to tug down the neck/sleeve of my top and show them and see their faces before I explain!