 You might have seen the picture of Michael Phelps during one of his races where he had all those weird red spots on his back And you're wondering what the hell is that? Does he have a weird skin disease? Is it some strange massage? What is going on here? Well in Chinese medicine, it's actually called cupping or baguang and cupping is one of the it's very ancient method used even in ancient Egypt found in one of the papyrus the scrolls and in this video I want to share what cupping is How it works and what the colors and what the shapes and everything means with the cupping So if you're wondering what cupping is, what does it do? How can it help this video? We're going to introduce you to that Hey, I'm Alex Hein author of the book master the day also a current doctoral student in traditional or classical Chinese medicine Now I've included the first link in the description there That's actually for a free download on five ways or five habits to add ten years to life with traditional or classical Chinese medicine So if you click that link below and you add your email you'll get a series of emails from me and the download there So first of all, what is cupping? I'm going to bust out a little set here So this is not fire cupping. These are just silicone cups that you can use to apply on your own And what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to apply one right on my forearm Let's see maybe the inside so that you can see What it really looks like after it's been hanging out there a while So I'll play two cups While we're here and at the end of the video, we're going to take them off and I can show you exactly what that looks like All right, so we've got these two silicone cups here That are not going to stay. I'll use your small ones And we're going to leave them there for the duration of the video So at the end of the video, I'm going to show you exactly what the shah looks like or what actually comes up and the color changes there So what really is cupping? I mean cupping was found historically even in ancient Egyptian manuscripts I think it one is called the Ebers papyrus probably spelled that and said it wrong But 1500 BC and since then it's been used all over Asia in China and in many Arabic speaking countries as well There's also a variation called wet cupping, which is actually where you bleed the patient sounds more barbaric than it really is You cup over the Area where you've pricked the patient and it will actually draw blood out and one of the ways you can use this is for example You can bleed a patient in varicose veins And even though you wouldn't necessarily want to cup that it's a similar theory where things have gotten stagnant and you can move them again So what is cupping really do like why was Michael Phelps and why do all these athletes do cupping in the first place? One of the things first of all in terms of biomedical lingo and Chinese medicine lingo is that it moves stagnant blood Or it just moves blood and lymph it increases circulation to that area in Chinese medicine we call this moving Qi and blood and Essentially you can see based on what ends up coming up how much quote stagnation there is there Sometimes it comes out very pale colored and sometimes it'll come out very very dark almost black And what's interesting is sometimes there's all kinds of modeling that shows up there can be even a wetness or moisture in the cup overall even though it also We say it moves for example Qi and blood or it moves Circulation and lymph increases lymphatic flow, but at the same time it also stimulates sensory nerves So we tend to use it for example with pain disorders digestive disorders circulatory disorders respiratory disorders Common colds and flus and even atrophy disorders Now generally speaking the darker the shah the more stagnation or blockage we consider So I'll show you guys a little bit of a cupping a little mini cupping silicone set I have here So you've got a couple different sizes of cups You have ones about this big even with the fire cupping as well and then you have So this one I only have three sizes. So this will be the biggest This will be the medium size and Then the small ones are currently on my arm with the shah I'll do one here actually on my calf So I can show you guys So I've got a big one the silicone ones are super simple because basically the only thing we're doing is just applying some suction You can see It's pulling up a little right With fire cupping it's much much stronger because you're creating a vacuum there And so you're getting a lot of suction and a lot of pull These you pull off you can see almost nothing. All right, but I'll show you What this looks like now so All right, you can see this one on the inside of my form It's one of the outside and you can already see the discoloration here, right? And I'll take this one off so you can see There's some discoloration here that would be maybe Maybe light to moderate And obviously my form is kind of an unusual place to cup You wouldn't normally cup that but I wanted to show you guys because I don't have a the person to demo here And I'll show you what my other side looks like This one is much redder You guys can see that one Much darker color and so really this one see this is already gone This is really almost no Shaw, but even that pretty big difference And It can get much much darker than that, but this is kind of you know do it yourself a DIY silicone cupping set Honestly, it's pretty good. This is not too bad to do some self cupping But it's not gonna be as strong as the fire cupping itself Now I hope that helps provide some insight on what cupping actually is and what we use it for So Phelps and other athletes are probably using it because they have sore muscles and probably even tendon injuries So they're probably it's an attempt to increase blood flow to that area So that's a very simplistic way of using it again if you want to stay in touch You can grab that free download the first link in the description Five habits to add ten years to her life with traditional or classical Chinese medicine You can also check out my last two videos right there and right there