By Katie Ladner, L.E.
Have you ever seen someone walking around with weird circular bruising on their back, well that my lovelies is called cupping. Cupping started back in Chinese traditional medicine in 281 CE. The Chinese medicine practitioners would hollow out horns and use the technique to drain toxins from the body. Over time the horns were replaced with bamboo and glass cups.
Cupping has also been used in many different cultures like the Native Americans, Egyptian and Islamic medicine and females often were the practitioners of this technique. Some of the uses for cupping were colds, flu, muscular problems, indigestion and chest pain. Today we still use cupping for most of these issues, however, we have also discovered them for beauty practices!
So why facial cupping? Some experts say that facial cupping helps detox the skin and stimulates cells to create a smoother appearance by reducing fine lines and wrinkles, puffy eyes, and dark circles. It has also been known to help clenching and teeth grinding (which yours truly suffers from).
I discovered facial cupping after thousands of dollars spent trying to find out why one side of my face is constantly swollen. After seeing the 3rd specialist and CAT scans the last doctor told me I have a really bad case of TMJ. I contacted a colleague of mine and she discussed buying an at home facial cupping set as well as a jade roller and a facial massager.
I went ahead and got all three. I like the jade roller but didn’t see a huge difference but felt good. I got a Beauty Bar facial massager which I absolutely love!!! To be honest a glass of wine, my beauty bar and Netflix is my jam! I can massage my face for an hour with that thing. I actually have to be careful not to overdo it. Finally the facial cupping kit was a gift from a close friend. She bought them, loved the results and sent a pair for me to try.
The little silicone cups are now my new best friends. I followed the instructions, cleansed my skin with the silicone exfoliator it came with and got my favorite facial oil and patted the oil into my skin and began the cupping technique. It was very easy to do, but also very easy to overdo. I did get a little over zealous and got a few hickies. But if you’ve had a treatment by me you know that I am heavy handed and look for results! I really liked how this kit has little cups for the under eyes and lips. I gotta say — I am using the little cups every day on my lips for plumping! So now I can say I am fully addicted to this treatment and it helps me stay on top of my TMJ issues at home. I also am now looking forward to incorporating the cups into my facial treatments too!