The Mechanism of the Cup of Cupping (Known as air-cups)

Cupping tends to make a kind of blood congestion in the upper part of the back (the shoulder blades) by using special cups known as (air-cups) with a small potbelly and a little elongated neck of a diameter less than the belly and ends in a round regular opening.

In ancient times these cups were made from hollow horns of some animals or from the reeds of hard hollow plants such as the branches of bamboo (known to the Chinese). Then they were developed later to be made of hand-made glass because of easiness in cleaning and sterilizing and for its transparency which permits the cupping-practitioner to see the blood extracted from the cupped person.

We start burning a piece of paper made in a form of a cone, i.e. in the shape of a funnel. The piece of paper is better to be cut from a newspaper for easiness of burning and the possibility of inserting it through the opening of the used cup.

After inserting the burning cone into the cup, we stick the opening of the cup right away near the lower end of the shoulder blade (the scapula) in the place between the spine and the inside limit of the scapula. In turn, the burning paper will burn a big quantity of the air inside the cup and decrease the pressure, and hence it sucks the skin and pulls it out from the opening of the cup to equalize the decrease in pressure inside it, and as a result the local blood congestion takes place.

The pull on the skin and the little high temperature inside the cup cause a superficial vascular dilation in the region of the shoulder blade on which the cup is fixed. Also the blood succumbs to the pull and increases the redness of the place. Letting the cup pull the skin for a while (2-3 min) prevents the assembled blood from mixing with the circulation to a certain degree. After that the cupping-practitioner starts scratching some superficial cuts on the congested region of the skin (after removing the cup) by the edge of a sharp sterile blade taking into consideration the other complete practical rules of cupping in view of timing, age and the physiological condition of the body as we have already indicated.