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.