The Cuphouse
Introducing our new thing:
Hooray! TNOTP friends now get access to even more aLIVEness
Well, this is rather exciting. We've just launched our brand-new thing 'the Cuphouse'. Woot! Woot! From here on out, we’ll be showering our friends with even more rad options, including exclusive skills and techniques from traditions we love, invites to events, plus heaps of newness to experience and enjoy.
Cupping explained
by Beau
The healing art of cupping is more than 5.000 years old. Our ancestors knew cupping (bleeding) is a perfect manner to draw ‘foreign’ matter* to the surface and remove it from the body.
*called ‘sha’ in Chinese, which can be translated as ‘sand’
regulation therapy
The body (like all things nature) is a (functional) harmonious system. A micro cosmos, built by cells, forming a perfect (internal) unity, a natural order. There are vital processes going on, making the organs, muscles, nerves, etc. do their thing. Every cell in the body is constantly linked (indirectly) with every other (healthy) cell. Damaged ones are shut out of the system, for the benefit of the whole, but this can create a gap in the functional unity and for example limit the organ (= built of cells) activity. A block in the great big regulation system.
Cupping is a form of regulation therapy. It helps to retune/rebalance the ‘disturbed’ self-regulatory mechanism of the body.
How?
-the cups (placed at specific points, blockages, that ask for attention) leave a mark on the body, a bruise/extravasation. It’s accumulated blood in the tissue.
-the body will interpret this as an irritating ‘foreign’ thing that needs to be eliminated asap!
-for this ‘removing’ (healing) process, the accumulated blood in the tissue needs to be broken down
-this induces certain processes which will (re)activate/strengthen the body’s self-healing powers which were disturbed by the gap/blockage
et voila: qi will move again!
+ during cupping, the damaged cells* are pulled out of the body.
segmental therapy
Cupping affects the whole body in sense of stimulus/segmental therapy on the skin.
Through the ages almost all cultures (mostly in folk medicine) have discovered & exploited the connections between the surface of the body - the outer landscape - & organs, muscles, the nervous system, blood, etc. - the inner landscape -
In time, it’s proved by scientists that the body has so called segments & ‘reflex paths’, connecting the skin, organs & the nervous system. So, through this connection, by placing a cup on a particular point on the surface, it’s influencing the deeper inner levels of the body & therefore able to draw out blockages/pathogens. Rebalancing the whole body, increasing Qi, blood flow, cell activity etc.
In Ancient Chinese Medicine it’s very common to influence (the energy of) internal organs/pathology in the inner landscape through certain points/meridians on the skin (Acupuncture/Acupressure/Moxa/Cupping).
blockages in the body
The body communicates and we can re-learn more and more to go ‘online’, establish a hotline and read the messages. Her ‘problems’ are s.a. communicated through pain, which is most of the time quite obvious…
Physical pain possibly implies blockage in the flow of qi through a particular area. A reason for this stagnation of energy can be: toxins*.
T’s disturb the natural processes & regulation system of the body, when being stagnant in the cells.
Cupping can help the body to get rid of T’s by drawing this ‘foreign matter’ to the surface where it’s much easier to eliminate them through superficial blood supply.
*T’s may have entered the body s.a. through the use of (medicinal) drugs, certain food/drinks, the environment or the mind/intention.
alchemical experience
From a broader perspective a cupping treatment can be an alchemical experience, re-aligning the communication between body & mind. Re-uniting spirit & matter. A way to move & bring consciousness to ‘deadened’ parts of the body & bring them back alive in the embodied experience/natural world.
