Can the ancient practice of cupping fix my very modern aches and pains?
Dating back to ancient Egypt, hijama is a long-established tradition. Now, it’s being embraced by new devotees
Like Mary Poppins’ carpet bag, my own everyday tote is filled with endless sundries. A book for my commute to work that I have never touched, countless lip products, half-used packets of paracetamol, a handheld fan, gym clothes for the 7pm Hiit class I am likely to cancel, three pairs of sunglasses and whatever my mum asks me to pick up from the supermarket on the way home.
Carrying this ridiculously oversized bag has left me with an ache that travels between my neck, shoulder and back. The pain is only worsened by my seated posture and the hours I spend working in front of a screen. Even with a specially designed ergonomic office chair, I’m an inveterate sloucher.
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Like many who grew up around it, I was always taught that hijama — otherwise known as wet cupping — can heal most ailments. In this ancient practice, suction cups are applied over small incisions in the skin to draw out what advocates believe to be stagnant blood. It sounds painful and gory but I’m desperate to know whether it can do anything for my very modern aches and pains.
Ahlem Fellah, 33, opened Casa Ahlem Holistic last year and is accredited as a hijama therapist by the privately run, non-medical organisation the International Practitioners of Holistic Medicine. Her home-based studio in south-west London is not what I expected. It’s not a dark room at the back of a mosque or a family member’s house. The space is airy and calm, filled with plants and decorated with a movie poster for the 1989 Algerian comedy Le Clendestin. Sheer, flowy curtains nod to the Canary Island home Fellah was raised in.
The practice of hijama can be traced back as far as ancient Egypt. Abu Hurairah reported the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to have said: “If there is any good in any of the remedies you use, it is in cupping.”
“I still practise in the traditional sunnah way but I don’t want my clients to feel like they’re in a very religious, orthodox environment,” Fellah says. “Some of them have tattoos or piercings and worry they will be judged.”
I can be squeamish and often find massages to be uncomfortable. Fortunately, I don’t have much time to think before Ahlem rubs black seed oil over my back, places the cups on my skin and pulls on a pump to create a vacuum seal.
There are nine places on the body, known as the sunnah points, where it is advised to cup. Fellah tells me that focusing on my neck, upper shoulders, lower back and the back of my knees and calves will relieve my aches. As I lie on the massage table, Ahlem places two on the back of my neck, just below my ears, in the region known as al-akhdayin. It feels like she is putting my skin in a hair tie.
She removes the cups before making what feel like little scratches on my skin with a small surgical blade, then replaces them. The sensation is tight and uncomfortable, yet Fellah praises the amount of blood pooling into the cup.
“Most people are scared of seeing the blood,” she warns before showing me what she has wiped from my lower back. I was surprised to find myself fascinated by its jelly-like texture, which Fellah explains is normal coagulation.
“Most of my clients are people who know hijama. They are encouraged by family or friends or it’s practised in their culture,” she says. But recently she has received an influx of bookings from people who have been introduced to the practice by social media.
Wellness creator Ahlaam Ibraahim says she has had two cupping sessions a year for the past six years. She began after learning that athletes such as heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua and Olympic gold-medal-winning swimmer Michael Phelps both use it for recovery.
“If athletes, who get paid for their bodies to be the best of the best, are getting this treatment and there’s the added spiritual effect, I was like ‘Cool, let’s do this,’” she says.
When Ibraahim booked a session with a local woman who had been recommended to her by a friend she expected a cleansing and calm experience. What she received was something altogether different.
“She kept talking about protecting me from devils and evil eye,” she recalls. “My family came back home to a bloodbath.”
Many believe that hijama can be used to combat sihr (black magic), but Fellah does not offer such services at her clinic. “Not everybody who gets cupping wants a religious service,” she explains. Instead her clients tend to want someone who can blend hijama with a range of other contemporary massage and wellness techniques.
Balancing the religious and cultural expectations people have of hijama with what it is actually able to do is an everyday challenge for registered physiotherapists Muhammad Yasir and Asmita Kalsariya, who offer dry cupping, which does not draw blood, at the Physiomatrix clinic in west London.
“The way we explain it to clients is that the fascia, which covers the top of your muscles, is like the frame of your body and it gets stiff after long periods of sitting or injuries from heavy lifting,” says Asmita. “Cupping generates negative pressure to release the muscular fascia.”
Yasir goes on to explain that “cupping is not evidence-based, but people see it on social media or know hijama from Islam and think it is the treatment for them.” The clinic uses it simply as a complementary therapy alongside other treatments.
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Whether you’re seeking treatment for everyday muscle pains or want to ward off evil spirits, Kalsariya and Yasir both stress the importance of going to a responsible and trusted practitioner.
So, if cupping isn’t evidence-based, why do I feel better? My shoulders and neck are notably less stiff. Kalsariya’s explanation is that it is a classic “pseudopsychological” experience. According to her, feeling my skin pulled taut and imagining the blood pooling into the cup will have forced my brain to pay attention to those specific areas of my body, rather than the pain across my neck and shoulder. Then I would have felt an even greater relief when the cups were removed.
Even if it was an hour-long placebo, the circular bruises that remained on my body for several days did feel like an answer to my aches. Then again, it could’ve been the massage Ahlem gave me after the cups were removed, the lemon and manuka honey drink she made me — or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve finally emptied my bag.
