April 30, 2025 • 56 mins
Enroll in the Quietmind Yoga Teacher Training at https://www.quietmind.yoga/ytt
One of the first things I ask everyone to do inside the Quietmind Yoga Teacher Training is to create a self-care plan. Because you can’t give from an empty cup. You need a team. You need support. You need energy practices that nourish you just as much as you guide others in their practices.
In this episode, I talk with Dr. Tom Ingegno, bestselling author of The Cupping Book: Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Healing and founder of Charm City Integrative Health. We dive deep into the world of cupping—its surprising history, powerful benefits, and how it supports yoga teachers and practitioners in their own healing and transformation.
You’ll learn why cupping can be the missing link in your self-care, how it works (without the fluff), and how this ancient folk medicine became a modern healing staple used by Olympians and grandmas alike. We talk about safe use at home, what the “cupping marks” actually mean, and how cold plunges, red light therapy, and cupping are all part of the same conversation of getting back in sync with natural rhythms.
Whether you’re brand new to cupping or you’ve had it done but never really understood how it works—this episode will give you an insider’s understanding from someone who’s done it for 25+ years and taught at the university level. Plus, we get into meditation, Taoism, somatic healing, vagal tone, and what the future of medicine and self-care might look like.
Topics Covered
Why yoga teachers need a self-care plan and a support team
What cupping is and how it works (Eastern and Western perspectives)
The surprising global history and origins of cupping therapy
Fire cupping vs. silicone cupping: safety, tools, and use at home
How cupping improves circulation, reduces inflammation, and relieves pain
Understanding “Sha” and what cupping marks really mean
When not to use cupping (contraindications like pregnancy and DVT)
The connection between cupping, vagal tone, and nervous system health
Why traditional healing is resurging and what science now confirms
How to integrate cupping into your yoga practice and recovery routine
5 Key Quotes from this Episode:
“If you’re giving to others, you better be receiving too. Otherwise, you burn out.”
“Cupping is like a reverse massage—pulling instead of pushing—and it feels amazing.”
“It’s not just about treating illness. It’s about building a life that supports vitality.”
“You don’t need to be sick to benefit from cupping. This is for anyone moving their body, carrying stress, or needing better circulation.”
“Traditional wisdom is finally getting its seat at the table again—not just as ‘woo,’ but as science.”
Mentioned in this episode:
The Cupping Book: https://amzn.to/3EOib9g [Searchable on Amazon & digital formats]
Charm City Integrative Health: https://charmcityintegrative.com
Quietmind Yoga Teacher Training: http://www.quietmind.yoga/ytt
Subscribe for Free to “Self Care Sunday” (Free Weekly Updates & Exclusive Offers):
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
One of the first things I asked people to do inside of the Quiet
Mind Yoga teacher training is towork on yourself care plan and
one of my teachers early on saidyou need a team.
You need people to help you workwith energy, go through your own
transformations and work on yourown stuff as a teacher.
(00:22):
So you're not just giving and teaching others and helping
others, but you're receiving andtaking care of your needs and
receiving help and support from others as well.
And one of those practices that I really recommend is cupping,
often done with acupuncture and usually acupuncturist also do
cupping. And that's how I've experienced
(00:42):
it mostly. But today's episode we're going
to talk with Doctor Tom Ingenio all about this.
He literally wrote the book on cupping called The Cupping Book.
And if you want to go deeper into your own yoga training and
work with me and have me on yourteam and help you develop your
practices and yourself care and your team of support, then the
(01:03):
Quiet Mind Yoga teacher trainingis open for enrollment at Quiet
Mind dot yoga slash YTT. Or if you're listening to later,
you might catch the wait list for the next class.
But that's at Quiet Mind at Yogaslash YTT.
And you can have me on your teamin helping you learn anatomy,
philosophy, and everything that goes into teaching well in the
(01:24):
seven major styles of yoga. Hatha vinyasa, yin, gentle
restorative and more at Quiet Mind dot Yoga slash YT.
So Doctor Tom is my guest today.We're going to go into the
interview in just a moment, but I want to tell you a little bit
about him. He is the best selling author of
the cupping book Unlocking the secrets of ancient healing.
(01:44):
He owns and operates its Charm City Integrative Health in
Baltimore, MD. So if you're ever in Baltimore,
stop by. He has an incredible clinic
there with multi dimensional approach to reducing
inflammation, improving circulation and regulating the
immune system to help people thrive.
In addition to 1/4 century of clinical experience, Doctor Tom
(02:05):
is taught at 2 universities of East Asian Medicine and served
as chair of the Maryland Board of Acupuncture.
And he's just got a great energyand a great sense of humor.
I really love talking with him and I think you'll love this
interview. So let's jump right into it.
(02:25):
It's my great pleasure today on the Yoga Teacher Training
Podcast to be here with Tom Ingenio, the author of the
cupping book, Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Healing.
Cupping has been something supervaluable to me and I don't know
a whole lot about it, so I'm going to be like a lot of the
listeners. With a lot of.
Questions. So I'm excited to to talk to you
today with you, Tom, so welcome.Oh, thank you so much for having
(02:46):
me. I knew this was going to be a
good one. I didn't want to miss it.
So I'm, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm here.
Me too, me too. So I guess the first thing
people don't know what cupping is, we can just start there.
What is cupping? So I, I mean the, the nuts and
bolts of it, if you will, are you create a vacuum using a, a
jar or a lid or a cup. You know, traditionally these
(03:08):
were clay pots or pieces of bamboo or even water Buffalo
horn. You know, traditionally you
would use fire to eat the oxygenand create a vacuum and stick
that to the skin. Modern day now we have, you
know, pumps. We have silicone cups that you
can literally press the air out and create some suction.
The great thing about cupping isit is older than a lot of
(03:31):
practices in Chinese medicine. And we don't even know where it
comes from. You know, the Chinese started
writing about it in about 300 AD, but the physician that even
mentioned it said this is so much older.
We know it's folk medicine. You guys are looking down on it
as other healthcare practitioners, but we should
really be using it. Our first written text that we
(03:52):
know of was the Embers papyrus from 1515 BC in in Egypt.
And, you know, that's an amazingtext because they were
describing how to fix a nose that was severed, You know, I
mean, and very similar to what we're doing today.
Now, certainly they're using anaesthesia and they're using,
you know, sterile technique, butthey, they knew so much about
(04:15):
the human body that it always amazes me.
And I think that's why era Veda and Chinese medicine and a lot
of these traditional practices are really starting to get
their, their time in the sun again, right?
We're, we're not just going all that was old crap.
It's we have some great studies and we and we can really see
some value for people. Yeah, it's like the whole thing
(04:38):
that happened 1900s with the Rockefellers, like sort of
westernizing medicine, making everything, symptoms, disease
pills, drug surgeries and like all this old folklore stuff,
like natural stuff that doesn't do enough.
It's not strong enough. It's so, yeah.
It's like now the science is coming around to like, validate
(05:00):
all these ancient practices. And all of them, yeah.
And, and, you know, I mean, there's certain things that are
still crazy and out there, but Ifeel that there's some value in
that too. You know, we're, we're learning
so much about the, what the, theMayan can do, right.
So even even if we're just talking all that's all placebo,
do you care if you feel better? You know, like if I convinced
(05:20):
myself that I'm better and I'm better, do I care if the thing
really worked? And I think that's where we're
starting to see things like chanting and and prayer and
those kind of things that are a little too soft for Western
medicine. And now we're, you know, seeing
some quantum level physics going.
No, there's something to this. Right.
And then cupping is like to, at least to me, with the Western
(05:43):
mind where I'm born into like, it does seem like, well, you're
definitely doing something. Yeah, it's very physical, yeah.
And you can you can see the marks on your skin like you feel
it. It doesn't for anyone who's
hasn't done it doesn't really hurt at all.
It's. No.
Yeah, it's kind of pleasurable, like suction on the skin.
And and so there's a part of me that's like, well, I, I've
(06:06):
worked with a, a Chinese medicine practitioner for many
years and she would talk about how there's like sha this like,
yeah, yeah, that's coming up. Yeah, yeah.
You know, I, I always get a little bit hesitant to mention
that, right. So Sha comes from a like a
sister technique we call gua sha, right?
That's gua means to scrape. Sha means sand, right?
(06:27):
So it's different dialect. But the dog Sharpay that char is
Shaw and that means sand skin, right?
So their coat is very like sandycolored and sort of bristly.
But when we scrape, if you scrape nice and slow and you're
doing a gouache technique or you're doing sliding, cupping
where you would hear the cup andslide it, you'll feel these
(06:48):
little tiny speed bumps. And that's, that's adhesions in
the fascia, right? We can know that there's some
pain under that tissue because of that.
So without knowing that, you know, the adhesions were really
present, We, we had a physical sign to say, yes, there's,
there's something there. So pulling that blood up through
(07:09):
that tissue in a very physical way is bathing that tissue with
fresh blood, pulling more, I'm going to use the word stagnant
blood out of that tissue. So you get the metabolic waste
out of there, you get some of the inflammatory markers out of
there and you're filling it withfresh blood.
And that's where we promote healing.
So it's, it's kind of, it's kindof great because this, like I
(07:30):
said, it was folk medicine and people were doing it in their
houses. You know, I mean, we, we have a
long history of that traveling all around the globe and when we
have to be mindful of are we appropriating?
Are we not? This migrated everywhere.
You know, it was in Europe, it was in Africa, it was in Russia,
you know, it was in Asia and andit's it's kind of everybody's,
(07:52):
it was even in South America. We're not sure how it got there,
You know, did they discover it? Was it a Co evolution of a
technique or what? Were we actually talking to
them? Which is kind of like a like a
like a crazy mental exercise to kind of take into consideration,
you know, right. Yeah, there's that, that whole
research of like, monkeys on separate islands, learning a
(08:13):
skill. And like, once one group of
monkeys learns it on one island,now it suddenly appears on this
other island where there's no communication between them.
Yeah, there's things like that Ithink that are just like maybe
in the collective where cupping was there and it arose in the
collective at some point. I, you know what?
I'm so glad you mentioned that because I within within three
(08:34):
days, three people mentioned thetelepathy tapes.
I don't know if you've heard of this podcast, but it it's
specifically looking at non verbal autistic kids that not
only can learn to like type out words, but in a lot of cases, no
multiple languages can communicate with each other in
kind of this, you know, psychic space.
(08:57):
And you know, here's a bunch of like the the woman was actually
a Hopkins trained MD who then, you know, studied at Harvard,
who is publishing a lot of research on it.
And it is I, you know, it is such an amazing story about
like, the possibilities of humanconsciousness.
(09:18):
Yeah, So I haven't listened to this yet, but I have heard about
it as well. And it sounds fascinating.
And it's like there's, there's so much that we just don't know.
It's like that we're just beginning to scratch the surface
that we thought was like woo, woo and whatever.
But science is catching up with it.
And science is catching up with it.
And I, and I think that's, that's true when we talk about
(09:38):
traditional medicines too, they're, they're looking at both
the tangible and non tangible. And I think things like East
Asian medicine as a whole, really when it's looking at the
mind, body, spirit, all is one. That's where it has its best
success, right. And you know, you touched on it
before we're, we're not waiting to get sick.
What are we doing that are thoselongevity Wellness practices?
(09:59):
And if we do all of those littlethings, we stay up and running
longer and have healthier, more complete lives.
And in in Chinese medicine, we call it Yangshan and gendering
life, you know? Yeah, for me, I've gone to
cupping a lot, but never for like an injury or an illness or
(10:19):
like I have to do it as a medication or something.
But it's that it feels amazing. It's like, yeah, I love
massages, but this is like a sort of reverse massage or it's
like and. I and I love when people
describe it like that. You know, I had a patient say it
once, it feels like you're pulling out instead of pushing
in, and that's exactly what you're doing.
Right. So I'm curious for like the
(10:41):
listeners, somebody maybe like maybe I should be doing cupping,
Like what? What are the benefits?
Like how do I know if I should be doing cupping like this kind
of thing? Yeah, so we, we, we talked a
little bit about the preventative maintenance, right?
If you work out a lot, if you are moving your body like you're
supposed to, you might get a little sore here and there.
Cupping is a great like just let's get the blood moving.
(11:03):
That's why you see so many Olympic athletes covered in cups
every Summer Olympics. They're probably, probably in
the Winter Olympics, but those guys are wearing more clothing,
you know, with, with pain. That's the number one thing
where I can say there's been a lot of studies within the last
five years that are definitivelysaying neck, shoulder are low
(11:23):
back pain. We we know that it can help with
that. And in a lot of cases it's
almost immediate. It's kind of crazy other uses,
cold and flus, right? We can use it on the chest to
help break up congestion. The, the blood circulates up to
6 inches deep. So only the average person,
you're, you're more than halfwayinto their body just by putting
(11:44):
this cup on and creating the suction.
You know, and, and that has somebenefits beyond just even that
physical action. If you have medication in your
system and you want to drive it to a tissue, what better way
than to like force that area to get more circulation?
You know, I and, and the great thing about it is the book I
wrote, I didn't want to write itas a scholar, as a, you know, a
(12:08):
medical text. I wanted to write it like your
grandma's teaching you because that's traditionally who was
like kind of the family healer and how do we teach you how to
do this? How do we give you this
horseshoes and hand grenades version of it?
And what can we do to kind of make people feel better and get
get this back in the hands of the people, put it back into the
(12:30):
households where it where it belongs?
Yeah. So like the to do the cupping,
typically it's done on the back.Yeah, it really helps to have
someone else be applying it. Yeah, with that and, and I will
say typically when we're, especially when we're talking
about fire cupping, and I think this is really why it was such a
great time to write a book for home use.
(12:50):
Again, fire cupping kind of scares people.
One, I have an open flame. Two, I'm working with glass or
something and God forbid I mess up and I could start a fire cut
somebody, something like that. But like I have in my hand, I've
been fidgeting with it. This is a silicone cup, right?
It's nothing fancy. It looks like 1/2 of a handball,
and this will last forever. If you want to put something on
(13:12):
a smaller area, you mentioned back, right, It's a nice big
flat area where you can stick cups and they adhere well.
Well, these silicone cups have enough flexibility that they can
stick on forearms and things like that where we can get them
on smaller joints. So, you know, you go on Amazon
and you spend 20 bucks on cups and now you have a set.
(13:33):
If you keep them clean, if you store them well, they'll out
last you, you know. Yeah.
I didn't, I didn't know about these.
That's that's really nice. Yeah.
And and in the book we cover allof the modern non fire cupping
devices, right. So there's some that have
motorized pumps now there's somethat combined red light therapy
(13:53):
and heat and whether or not there's enough intensity of the
red light. I, I would argue that maybe not,
but they're, they're cheap enough where I think for the
book I might have spent $200 just trying to pick up all the
different types. And now and my wife made me
(14:14):
throw them all in my office. So they're in a big box over
here where, you know, they're all great, They all work well
and you don't need all of them to kind of figure out what you
want. And hopefully the book kind of
clarifies that for people if they want to, to kind of kick
the tires on a couple of different sets.
It's not a huge investment. And if you pick one set that you
(14:34):
like and you use it, you might go back on on the web and find
more. So it can be as simple as it's
going on Amazon, getting a set of silicone cups and then just
applying them. But so then I'm sure those
people have questions. They're like, well, how do I do
it? How long do I keep going on?
Am I doing it right? These kind of things, right?
(14:56):
Yeah, we cover all that in the book, you know, safety wise and
this great thing is that the fire cupping, you can put that
on very strong. And that's, that's probably best
left for the practitioner, right.
I put the cup on. I you're laying on the table,
you say, hey man, that's too much.
We adjust it at home. The silicone cups, you can get
(15:17):
them on pretty good, but more than likely they're not going to
be too intense. And then you have a window for
how long you can leave them on. And because they go on and off
so smoothly, so quickly, if you take it off and there isn't too
much redness, if there isn't, you know the relief, Oh well,
put it right back on for a few more minutes.
You know you, you have that ability.
(15:38):
Right. And when so like what?
And I worked with this person regularly for a while.
There was like maybe a certain point on my back that was always
very dark. Yeah.
Or you got a lot of Shaw here isa lot of blocked, you know, and
blocked chi. And so I'd be like, well, what
(15:58):
can I do is, is it just like to prevent these things like before
the cupping, you can like, is ithydration?
Is it, is it just because I'm like very active?
So my muscles are just, you know, getting inflamed from
exercise or. Yeah, it's, it's probably a
little of all of that, right, You know, and it really depends.
So along the back in the abdomen, we have points that
(16:20):
we'll sometimes call alarm points.
So there's areas on the back that correspond to the channels
and the organs in Chinese medicine.
So it's possible that one of those areas comes up dark
because it's constitutionally that's an area of weakness for
you. We all have them some and, and
it's kind of funny because the areas were weakest, we also have
(16:41):
the strongest attributes, whether it's a mental attribute
or a physical attribute, it it'sall there and we can do things
depending on where that comes upto nourish it.
So I don't want to say, oh, it'salways here.
So you got to do XY and Z because I don't know where on
your back it is. And then in certain areas,
depending on your kind of activity, right?
(17:03):
When we, when we move our bodies, the areas, the muscle
groups that we use the most, they call it angiogenesis,
right? We make more blood vessels in
that area. So more blood vessels, you get
more likely to rupture those capillaries because there's more
of them. So it's kind of this double
edged sword where somebody goes,oh, it's definitely means you're
(17:23):
toxic here, but in some cases itmight just mean you have more
blood vessels in that area. You know, so we, we talk about
that in the book, right? Because if you, if you go on
Instagram, you search company Marks and what do they mean?
You'll find 1000 charts, right? Oh my God, you got this, you got
that, you got this. This is what that means.
And I, you know, I really want to caution people not to jump
(17:43):
in, right? When we're in acupuncture
school, they always would say 1 sign is not a diagnosis, right?
You know, so OK, do you have anyof these other things?
No. Then chances are you're probably
OK. You know, if, if you're like, Oh
my God, it's in the heart area. And if I go up a flight of
stairs, my heart flutters. I'm not sleeping well.
(18:05):
You, you, you know, I'm, you know, I either have, you know, I
get manic or, you know, all these kind of heart symptoms
that we would say in Chinese medicine.
Well, then maybe there's something there.
There's just a red mark on your heart area.
Well, it's, it's between the shoulder blades.
These guys move a lot when you work out you're, you're really
stressed those if you're rock climbing or something, you're
(18:28):
you're putting the screws to them.
So maybe it's just physical activity.
So it's not wrong or right to say, oh, there's this, this,
this evil energy there, right? This evil energy sounds kind of
funny because yes, we translate it to evil, but it's not, it's
not like the Exorcist, you know,it's not.
It's just like, oh, there's energy somewhere doing something
(18:49):
it shouldn't. In the 70s, there was a movement
where they were trying to translate all these words more
accurately from Chinese to English.
And instead of using the word evil, which was, you know, easy
to understand and quick, they would say pernicious.
And they'd say, well, it's like,you know, teenagers hanging out
at a, you know, out front of a 711 or something.
(19:11):
They shouldn't be there. They're causing a bit of
problems. They're not, you know, they're
not murderers, but they're kind of being jerks, you know?
So, you know, you got to clear them off, you know, get them out
of here. They're probably going.
To get into some trouble later. Interrupted now, yeah.
And and that's really a great, great thing.
Excuse me? You got to sidestep it before it
(19:33):
becomes something severe. Yes.
So yeah, I, I love the preventative nature of that and
like seeing things from also like this perspective that you
have is very deep and very experienced and nuanced.
And this is kind of the modern issue of like things like Chachi
(19:54):
PT and TikTok and Instagram and Reels.
And these things are fast, supereasy, completely free for most
cases and helpful. But they're not as nuanced as an
expert or somebody who's done this and worked with lots of
people and seen lots of things. And yeah, I can miss guide
people. And that's how I know when I'm
(20:15):
talking to somebody who has experience because their answer
is not so black and white. It's like.
Actually, you, never you. Never want to, you know,
especially when we're talking about somebody's health, right?
We want to do our best. We want to get to down that
right rabbit hole. But sometimes it's not that
nuanced where, you know, I remember when I was teaching my,
my assistant was one of my closefriends and, and we came through
(20:37):
school together And, you know, they would come in and they go,
all right, today, you know, likeafter the class, beforehand,
they'd come to our class and they go, Oh, I think I have
phlegm misting the mind. And I go, why?
And they go, Oh, I can't sleep. And I go, there's, there's
10,000 reasons you can't sleep, You know, like, and, and my
(20:58):
assistant would lean over and she goes, like, I know what they
were talking about in class before this, right?
You know, it was always like, you know, like you, you know,
almost like you, you would adaptto this like hypochondriac kind
of situation. You're like, oh God, I can't
think. And it's like, maybe it's
because you're in school, you'reeating crap and you're, you
know, your schedule is horrible.You're not moving your body.
You know, there's 10,000 reasonsand you know, maybe some of you
(21:22):
have Flan misting the mind, but we don't that that is not the
only reason, you know, but it itwas always funny where they they
were, you know, oh, Oh yeah, that's got to be me.
That's got to be me because I have that symptom right of.
Course, and it helps. It feels good to have like a
diagnosis and like, OK, that's what it is.
But it's until you're working with an expert or somebody
(21:43):
really knows what they're doing,it's like you might be
misdiagnosing yourself. Yeah.
Yeah, and, and that's really what I love about East Asian
medicine as a whole, right? There isn't one thing you're
hanging the diagnosis of, right?So a lot of the styles I do or
are Japanese based. So there's a lot of palpation,
(22:05):
you know, and, and sometimes I don't ask too many questions and
I just start pressing on stuff and they go, oh, that's sore.
How'd you know that? And it's like, well, you, you,
you know, you were coming in. You have this colour under your
eyes. Your pulses said this.
I pressed here, you said, ow, I pressed here.
And I go, you know, a lot of times this is a symptom of eye
(22:25):
issues. And she goes, Oh my God, I just
started a prescription for, you know, I, you know, to help me
with my tear ducts. And you're like, oh, OK, cool.
You know, they're like, how did you know that?
It's like, well, there's a system here, right?
It's not, it looks like magic when you do it, but it's
thousands of years of real scientific method where like
(22:45):
every one of these cases was written down and you know,
somebody would say something once and it would be noted, but
somebody would say something 10,000 times across various
patients and various times. And oh wow, this must be a real
correlation, right? So correlation isn't causation,
but when you have, you know, 60 things pointing at this one
(23:08):
area, you're like, OK, that's where we got to explore first,
right? Is there any reason somebody
should not do cupping? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there's a we, we read about this in the book, too.
Now, I will say I've seen some celebrities get cupping when
they're pregnant. I cannot recommend that.
I, I, I, you know, people, do what you want.
(23:30):
I would err on the side of caution here.
One of the reasons is when we have a fetus developing, we say
that's an accumulation of chi and blood.
It's very like a classical concept.
We do not want to move chi and blood in this case, right?
That's that could cause a miscarriage.
I know of no cases. I know of no studies because it
would be super unethical to try and cause a miscarriage by doing
(23:53):
cupping. But don't do that on people who
are on heavy duty blood thinnersor who have hemophilia or have
open wounds. We don't cup there deep vein
thrombosis. So these big deep veins, a lot
of times they're in the thighs. That's not a, an appropriate
area to cup. So sometimes it's no, you can't
(24:15):
do cupping on this patient at all.
And sometimes it's just avoid these areas.
And I'm, I'm very cautious, especially when I'm telling
people to do things at home. So maybe my book is a little bit
too like, no, don't do that thenmore more so than it should be.
But I, I would, I would feel horrible if somebody did
something and they were like, well, you didn't say not to.
(24:38):
And and then it's like, Oh, well, you got hurt, right?
You know, I had a friend of minegreat.
You know, I was, I was part of this Goldman Sachs small
business group and they all cameout to buy book launch.
They all bought the books, they bought cups.
They, you know, and one of my friends, he's like, hey, man, I
fell asleep on the couch for three hours.
I had the cup on my shoulder andI saw him.
(25:00):
It was 3 weeks later, he still had the red circle on his
shoulder. He goes, I got to tell you one
my, my shoulder feels great. And I go, OK, that'll, that,
that'll, that should eventually go away, but please, you know,
set, set a timer. Yeah.
You know, like, at least, yeah, at least put something on your
phone that'll wake you up, tell you to take it off before you
pass out again, you know, because you can get blisters if
(25:24):
they're left on too long. Actually, we'll get some fluid
in between the skin and it's, it's painful.
You're not going to die. But it takes a while to heal.
And. And I don't want anyone hurt
That's. That's pretty extreme, right?
You got to leave it on for like hours.
Yeah, or. You know, like in fire cupping.
I've seen some people really, because we can get the, the
quicker you are with that technique, the stronger that
(25:45):
suction is. And I've been doing it for over
25 years now. And, and I get them on and
somebody's like, OK, that's a little too much, you know, and
you're like, OK, I got to slow down a little.
But if I were to leave that on and somebody was going to muscle
through it, they're, they'll probably end up with blisters if
I leave them on for more than a couple of minutes.
So, you know, dosage, you know, intensity versus time is kind of
(26:08):
a weird but accurate statement, right?
You know if it's not that intense, you can leave it on
longer, right? Where are you offering?
Where where are you practicing right now?
So so my. My clinic is called Charm City
Integrative Health. Charm City is the happy nickname
for Baltimore. I wanted to call it Mob Town,
(26:31):
which is our another name for Baltimore, which talks a little
bit more of our violent past. Fortunately, I was talked out of
that. But.
Charm City was an attempt of a mayor to drive more tourism to
Baltimore, and he was setting upthese little charm bracelets
(26:52):
where you go to all these monuments and you get a charm,
right? So you can complete the Charm
City bracelet. So Edgar Allan Poe's, you know,
grave and things like that, you go to and you have a little
charm. That idea never took off, but
Charm City kind of got stuck with us.
So I I this clinic I've had we opened 2016.
(27:15):
And. It's my biggest swing.
I have four other acupuncturist there with me, one massage
therapist and then three techs that kind of help run some of
the services and, and really keep the office running well.
So I'm, I'm very blessed. They're amazing people and they
get the mission. You know, we're, we're really,
(27:36):
if I wanted to make a lot of money, I probably would have
done something else, but I want to have a big impact on people's
lives. So I, I think you can do both.
I just haven't figured the the other half out yet.
Oh. It's beautiful, Yeah.
I just want to make sure if anyone wants to find you and
work with you, that's the Charm City place to go Charm.
Cityintegrative.com is our website.
(27:57):
You can find, you know, we, we do a lot of lecturing, a lot of
teaching, a lot of podcasts likethis because I really, you know,
want to get the education out there.
So if anybody wants to hit me upand ask questions or have me
come out and lecture to a group,I'm more than happy to do that.
Yeah. Very cool.
So the the fire cupping I I wentto just a few times and it's so
(28:21):
cool Yeah the. Cool.
Factor to this, you know. I, I had a, there was a teacher
who unfortunately passed away and he was kind of this, he, he
was crazy. He had this Italian fro, he had
tattoos up and down his arms. He trained like Mongolian
horseback archery, just a weird,like eccentric dude.
But he had a translating companyin, in China and he gave a
(28:45):
lecture and, and I didn't get tostudy with him too much more
other than this two day workshop.
But he talked about the showmanship of what we do.
And when you get something like that and really like, let's not
play this down like, oh, you're getting fire cupping.
This is rare. This is fancy.
Sometimes it, it's funny becausewe can do it on the upper chest,
(29:05):
we can do it on the abdomen. Most times people are face down.
So they got their head in the face cradle and they'll see the
room get a little lighter, right?
They'll see, they'll see some light, but they have no idea
what it is. And then sometimes, especially
if they're coming in for chest infections and I do something on
on their upper pecs, they're like, Oh my God, you've been
using a torch on me this whole time.
And it's like the torch never touches you.
(29:27):
We don't heat the cup up. That's a bad time.
We're just burning the oxygen. So if it's in and out super
quick and I just love that ASMREkind of like, you know, torch
sounds and you know, the flame and even taking the cup off,
there's like a little bit of a pop.
You kind of burp them like Tupperware.
(29:47):
You press down on the edge of the lip and, you know, so it
it's it's such a fun sound. And and you know, like I said,
20 I think yeah, you know, I wasdoing it in school in 98I
graduated in 2001. So I've been doing it for quite
a long time, but like every timeI put cups on and off, I kind of
(30:10):
smile a little. It's just, it's so much fun.
And, you know, people really like it and they feel like, you
know, they, you know, they'll goover to the gym and people say,
where'd you get that done? And it's like, it's also like a
business card, you know, it's like how people are like, who
did that? You know that?
Oh, just up the street, you know, so so we love doing it
and. You.
(30:31):
Know all this stuff is so therapeutic and so fun that I
can't get upset about anything in my field.
I'm really blessed, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's really cool.
And so if anyone hasn't experienced the fire cupping,
definitely recommend. It's a cool experience and
something you you just will always be in person like you
(30:54):
can't replace that with yourselfor online.
It's like you go do I. I have seen, I've seen a lot of
grandma's do fire cupping at home.
Oh, yeah. That being said, I'm not
recommending that to the averageperson, one, because that kind
of puts me on the hook a little bit for liability.
But two, there's so many great products out there that are dirt
(31:18):
cheap, You know, I mean, you'll,you'll see people even like
Godfather Part 2, Fredo, when he's an infant, they put him on
the kitchen table and the grandma comes down and puts a, a
fire cup on his chest. It's it's like a drinking glass
she puts on and it's, it's such a cool nod to this traditional
thing. And you, you know, like I said,
(31:38):
we're not sure where it came from.
It was it Greece, was it Egypt? Was it Persia?
Certainly somewhere around that Mediterranean kind of area.
But they were doing it a lot longer than you know, then until
they, you know, when they wrote it down and already been in
practice for quite some time. So, you know, we, we don't, we
lost that to history, but everybody does it.
(32:01):
It's so cool, even as. A kid, I would like to put cups
on my face and like, do like suction on the lips and like the
yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and
unfortunately, I'll, I'll tell you a funny story.
I don't think my, my brother's going to listen to this.
So, so back in school, right, wehad these like holiday, you
know, stores where like mom would send you in with like 1020
(32:22):
bucks and you go buy gifts for the whole family.
We're we're, we were raised Roman Catholic.
He bought a hollow dreidel, you know, you can take the top off
and fill it with candy or something.
And he came home and he had thisperfectly almost like a, almost
like a ventriloquist nominee, these two lines and it, this
area was purple. And my, my, my mom is freaking
(32:46):
out. She's calling the school going,
why does he have this rash? Why does he have this rash?
Why does he have this rash? You know, are you, does it, is
it itchy? Does it hurt?
He goes no, no, no, no. About two hours later, my mom
sees him with the cut, the dreidel, the bottom half of the
dreidel, sucking it onto his his, his chin, through his lip.
(33:07):
And she goes, Oh my God, he gavehimself a Hickey.
But that's essentially what cupping is.
You're giving yourself a Hickey.You know, yeah.
And so when I was doing this more regularly, they're just
there's where I live now, there's practitioners only year,
like half the year, but. Where are you?
Very small. Town in Mexico on the coast.
(33:29):
OK, so it's more like a travelling kind of people travel
through half the year. And so there is a woman who does
acupuncture and cupping and other moxibustion.
I haven't experienced that one yet.
Moxa. Is amazing and and that was
another one that started as a folk medicine older than
(33:51):
acupuncture, right? They, they can burn stuff before
they can work with metal. And you know, we do a lot of
that in our clinic because it's absolutely amazing.
But it kind of, it kind of was considered passe or for peasants
for a while in, in China. So we fell out of favor.
But I would, you know, one of the cool things is in Spanish,
(34:12):
we call this ventosa, you know, and it means to suck, you know,
like that that, you know, is, isthat root, that Latin root is to
suck, which is really cool. And the a lot of the coronderos,
like a lot of the traditional, traditional South American
healers do it. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of use of copal here.
(34:33):
Yeah, yeah. And like the native plant
medicines like peyote and thingslike this.
So is this more the healing tradition is very strong and
something I love here and too also the these traditions that
are more connected to lineage like in Chinese medicine and
Ayurveda and here in Mexico is like the grandmothers, the
(34:53):
grandfathers are very respected and seen as elders.
And whereas in the US typically there's not that level of like
respect or tradition. No, no.
And I, I think, I, I think what we're seeing now is where we
have like, you know, adult care centers where these people are
just wasting away. And that's because they don't
(35:14):
feel appreciated, They don't feel taken care of.
And, and these, these people, you know, if, if they're, if
they're in the communities, if they're taken care of, I, I
guarantee you levels of dementia, Alzheimer's, these
things would be so much easier. And we can point to multiple
factors, you know, what Americans have done to their
diet and lifestyle, you know, just destroying their
(35:35):
environment internally and externally.
It's very sad. But there's so much wisdom
there. You know, some of the
acupuncture's I look up to are in their 90s.
You know, they're still treating.
They're not treating like they used to.
But imagine that many years of experience.
I have a book here from one of them.
It was written a few years ago, 50 years in in practice is what
(35:59):
it's called. And it's, I, I mean, he's just
giving so much to the field, youknow, modern day master.
Yeah, it's such a weird mental construct that you have to
retire at 65 or just decline. Well, I I, I.
I have a feeling retiring in this in in this country is not
going to happen anymore. But let's not get political.
(36:23):
Yeah, but even here, like there's so many grandmothers
cook in kitchens or in the US that might be seem like a low,
like a sort of low status thing or disrespectful, but it's
actually like everyone respects and trusts their grandmother.
She's going to make the best food.
Oh my God. Yeah, she's been doing.
(36:43):
It so long, she's had so much time to perfect that, yeah.
It's yeah. So I love that energy of like
respecting tradition elders and like decades of experience in
something to bring it out. And so, you know, I see that
very much in the Chinese medicine and I see that here in
the Eastern traditions of Ayurveda and yoga and things
like this as well. Yeah, it's it, it's really
(37:07):
amazing when we look with a moreglobal lens, how much we can
learn from the generations that came before us.
And yeah, you know, I don't, I don't want to start going back
to like, you know, going to a Barber and taking a pint of
blood every day. But even even bleeding
techniques we do used in, in classical medicine and, and with
(37:28):
some real good success. It's not, you know, bleeding you
dry, you're not going to be palewhen you're done.
But a few drops here, a few drops there can really help with
pain relief, fevers, those kind of things.
Yeah, Yeah. Some techniques are meant to
late stay in the past, but I'm sure.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I.
Gave a lecture to it's very funny Walter Reed here, the
hospital system that's through the military, they would do
(37:52):
these hour long lunch and learns.
And they've had me do about six of them now.
And the second one they, they had me do in October and I said,
well, it's Halloween you guys here's 7 topics I'd be happy to
present. Do you want me to do some like
like gross weird stuff, you know, do you want me to talk
about some old creepy stuff fromChinese medicine?
And I, I was kind of like tryingto show the doctor in charge
(38:15):
that I was like nuts, you know, and he goes, I want to hear that
lecture. He's like, that's the one I
want. And we had this discussion about
maggot therapy and Leech therapyand, you know, eating, eating
placenta and, you know, basically stool, stool.
(38:36):
Why can't I think of the word now?
But basically, you know, treatment of C diff with, you
know, fecal transplant. And you know, here's here's the
Chinese antecedent and here's what your guys are doing now.
And I thought I was going to lose all these docs, but the
chat started exploding where they're like, oh, God, we used,
you know, we used maggots on this guy's Abscess on his head.
(38:58):
And oh, you know, God, we used leeches after surgery.
Oh, you know, we had, we saved somebody's life with fecal
transplant and you, you know, it's, it's so gross.
But even when I was doing research on the fecal
transplant, we, we had a, a famous Chinese physician,
honestly, the same one that kindof told people to use
practitioners to use cupping. He, he was the one that was like
(39:21):
doing this thing called yellow soup treatment, kind of gross.
But he, he, he saved people's lives.
You know, before you had antibiotics, if you had
diarrhea, you were probably going to die.
You know? Yeah.
It gets back to that traditional, like, even though
it's gross, even though it's old, doesn't mean it doesn't
have value. Absolutely.
(39:44):
And what you do, you mentioned like working in the future of
medicine now. So I'm curious like where you
see the future of medicine or self-care, these kind of
practice from that tradition we talked about a lot.
So where do you think it's going?
I I. Think I think.
Integration is is really what what needs to happen, right.
So if you're in one of the majorhospitals in China, right, you
(40:08):
get triaged and that may be surgery, that may be Western
medicinals, but it also will be an acupuncture cupping Mark
Sebastian, you know, Tweena bodywith Chinese body work, Guasho,
whatever you need, you're going to get.
And I I firmly believe, you know, I'm in Baltimore.
We have Johns Hopkins, we have University of Maryland Medical
(40:28):
Center. We have some really big name
hospitals. And in some cases they're
they're saying they want to be more integrative and that's more
lip service, You know, like let me see if I can get some grants.
But speaking to groups of younger doctors or doctors that
are in Med school now, future doctors, they know that like, I
(40:51):
can't just give somebody this drug and send them on their way.
That's not in their best, you know, interest.
That's not solving the problem, that's not keeping them healthy,
that's not keeping them out of their office.
And, and they're looking for this, right.
We have a doctorate now in lifestyle medicine, which I'm
like, do I need another doctorate?
Should I go back and get that? And then I look at the course
work and it's like there's, there's, there's three classes
(41:14):
on, on telling people to sleep, right.
There's three classes on nutrition, there's three
classes. And I'm like, this is all stuff
that we forgot as humans, you know, And, and if you want to
fix that, I, I'm not going to gotoo far down this rabbit hole
because it's going to, it's going to make me want to destroy
capitalism as a whole. But you can't, you can't be
(41:36):
grinding 24/7. That's not a sustainable thing.
You know, So the hustle culture is really doing us more damage
than that. It's helping us.
So, you know, not saying that weshould live within our means or,
or anything like that. And if you're passionate about
something right yet do it with all your heart.
But recovering and, you know, doing things methodically
(41:58):
without spreading yourself too thin is really where I think
Chinese medicine, you know, the roots of that are all in Taoism.
And some of the earliest Taoist teachings were like, don't sleep
too much, don't eat too much, don't work too much, don't lay
down too much. You know, it's like, you know,
all this moderation and it's like, well, that doesn't sound,
you know, that's like ground breaking.
(42:18):
We're not, you know, we're not, we're not going to write a New
York Times bestseller on that, right?
Like what do you do? You know, everything in
moderation. You know, it's a it's a one page
book, but there's there's a lot of truth in that, you know, but
it's not sexy. It's not a a perfect weight loss
program. It's not a diet and exercise
program. It's not it.
It's just good, solid advice that no one takes.
(42:42):
So if everything is in moderation, like, what do you
think about these extreme thingsthat have become more popular,
like cold plunges, saunas, Yeah.Yeah.
So we we, we offer those in our office.
And I joke that like, if people were outside more, none of this
would ever have happened, right.You know, if you're in a
moderate climate, you're going to get cold in the winter.
(43:03):
You're going to get warm in the summer.
You're going to get more daylight in the summer.
You're going to get less daylight in the winter.
You're going to follow this cycle of like drawing in, right?
So in the winter, we're supposedto draw in.
That's our planning time. We stay in, we eat hearty foods.
We, you know, we might bulk up alittle, we might put on a few
pounds. But then when we come out in the
spring, we're moving, we're growing, we're, we're expanding.
(43:24):
And those are the things that we, we kind of lost, right?
You know, artificial light, these kind of things.
What I can work 24 hours, right?I'm sitting under a bright blue
light that's messing up my circadian rhythms right now.
Why? Because I don't want to look
like I'm sitting here in the dark and you're wondering who I
am. Like, you've hidden my identity
for safety, you know? But we we do so much to offset
(43:49):
the natural rhythms that I feel things like sauna, cold plunge,
cryotherapy, red light therapy, like.
You guys are. So far that way that to get you
back, I need to hit you with a hammer to knock you back the
other way. Right.
The pendulum is swung so hard one way that going the other way
makes sense. Why?
I mean, if we slow that pendulumdown, if we if we keep that
(44:13):
closer to the midline, Yeah, we don't necessarily have as many
highs. We don't need to go, you know,
swim in a frozen lake, but we also don't have the the extreme
on the other end where we're burnt out, where, you know, our
nervous system is shot or vagal nerve tone is horrible, you
know, and that's why I think things like, you know,
meditation are so important, right?
(44:35):
We're going to, we're going to regulate that, right?
What do we do? We sit there and do nothing,
right? You know, at the at the heart of
meditation, doesn't matter what style you're doing, what system.
I'm kind of doing a lot of nothing and I'm trying
intentionally trying to do nothing, right.
You know, it's like. They I saw some meme is like
more and more every year. I understand why old people like
(44:56):
to just sit on a bench and stareout into nature and do nothing.
That's. It's so crazy that when we, when
we get good at meditation, you know, we see all these changes.
We don't, we don't fly off the handle as quickly, right?
Our amygdala gets smaller and that's our fear center, right?
So we're better at dealing with stress, right?
(45:16):
We're not triggering this giant spiking cortisol.
We're not freaking out all the time.
I mean, I'm still a hot mess, but without daily meditation, I
think I would, I would be, I would be off the rails 24/7.
And honestly, I'm probably more stressed than I should be now
because I got sick, you know? The the Chinese medicine
(45:37):
practitioner I worked with, I I was asking her about cold
plunges and she said, you know, you got to be careful because
that that cold energy, she can be stuck in your body now and
it's become stored as this cold energy that's got to move
somewhere. You got to do something with it.
So for somebody, yeah, yeah. So if you're.
Already cold if you're constitutionally cold.
I I, I agree with her. Yeah.
(45:58):
Yeah. I I've had so many arguments
with other practitioners like, you know, and it's like, well,
here's here's all the research, you know, So, yes, there was a
lot of wisdom in Chinese medicine.
Is this great for everybody? No.
And I can almost tell constitutionally, you know,
bigger guys with red faces, coldplunge is OK, right?
(46:18):
You know, and, and even even in one of our, our textbooks they
sell, they, they talk of a storyof a guy who had a fever, right?
Because there's some practitioners say ice is for
dead people, right? You know, and, and while there's
some truth with that, like here's a guy that, you know, guy
came to him with a fever. He had his assistant get 100
(46:41):
buckets of water and leave him outside.
He put this guy in the tub and he kept dumping the buckets
over, over the patient trying tobreak this fever.
You know, people are coming by going, you know, you're going to
kill him, you're going to kill him, you're going to kill him.
And you know, the 100th bucket, the fever broke and he survived,
you know, and he, he, he was cured.
(47:01):
And it comes down to the differential diagnosis being
accurate, you know, and, and really knowing the constitution
of that person and where that imbalance lays.
So blanket statement treatments,you know, just because
everyone's doing it, you know, like if, if everyone was jumping
off a bridge, would you, is, is kind of the, the, the thing that
your mom would tell you when youdid something stupid?
(47:24):
But it's why am I doing? What am I trying to get out of
it? You know, and, and do I need
that? And and if we're really
listening to our body, you know,maybe there's a time and a place
where everyone should be using cryo or cold plunge, but then
there's times when they should be.
Yeah. And that's, again, that's the
voice of wisdom and experience. Like it depends.
(47:46):
The answer is usually it depends, right?
It depends. I had a teacher that would say
that all the time. And you know, where, you know,
you hear of these weird case studies where somebody does
everything contradictory towards, you know, the, the, the
diagnosis and the patient gets better and they'll say, well,
this one symptom was, was, was the thing I was hanging on to
(48:09):
because it was the most severe. And, you know, I don't want to
take risks with people. And certainly I'm not going to
say don't go to a hospital or something, don't take the
Western medicine. But you know, if we can do
things naturally, if we can see and, and really diagnose
somebody right, they'll, they'llget some amazing results without
having to be pushed too hard or driven too far.
(48:32):
Or you don't have what we call ahealing crisis where we treat
somebody too strong and then they feel like crap for a few
days after, you know? So then I guess for the
listeners who may be interested in this, maybe they're not doing
anything else, like no acupuncture, maybe you get
massage every now and then or something.
But yeah, could they just start receiving cupping sessions?
(48:54):
And like that by itself is like,how often should they go?
I guess, yeah. It's, it's a stand alone
treatment. It definitely can be a stand
alone treatment. A lot of times we, we wrap it
into our acupuncture treatment, right?
We mix some modalities for better results within that.
You know, WellCare is fine. You're feeling stressed out.
You know, your traps are starting to get a little tight
(49:16):
and your, you know, shoulders are near your ears.
Have somebody put some cups on your base of your neck and your
shoulders and along the shoulderblades and, you know, leave them
on for a few minutes and see howyou feel.
You know, one of the other things that's kind of cool And,
and I think this is where a lot of these traditional therapies,
even even yoga has the this amazing effect, right?
(49:37):
We're regulating that, that vagal nerve tone, right?
Get Me Out of fight or flight, put me in the rest of digest.
What happens? My heart rate slows down, my
blood vessels start circulating blood better, right?
How beneficial is that to every system in our body, right?
So we see these benefits go everywhere and they feedback.
So a lot of times people do cupping and even when we put
(49:58):
them on super tight, after a minute or two, they're, they're,
they're like, Oh my God, this isso relaxing, right?
You know, and it, you know, it looks like they stood in front
of a, you know, a baseball pitching machine.
You know some of the marks, but it, it feels so good, you know?
Yeah, it is surprising how painful it can look, but it
(50:19):
actually is not painful. Like if you've never experienced
you, you. You can't you And you also like,
you can't have that argument with somebody.
They have to experience it before.
Yes, yeah. You know, they're like, no, no,
I know what a bruise is. And you're like, technically
it's not a hematoma. You know, they're like, it
doesn't matter. It's a bruise, OK, You know.
(50:41):
And then is it? To me, there's a a progress sort
of part of my brain, it's like, and I've had this at times where
like maybe I have a certain darkspot on my back that yeah,
repeated sessions, it starts to get less dark, less dark.
Yeah. And some of that is the blood
vessels that are being formed atthe surface of the skin, those
capillaries that were breaking, when they reform, they're
(51:04):
healthier, right? So it's harder to break them,
you know. So, you know, getting that blood
there is is therapeutic. So even the bruise itself has
some therapeutic value because your body still goes, oh, we got
to break up this bruise. We got to get this blood out of
here. And while they're doing it, it's
rebuilding blood vessels that are healthier and happier.
(51:24):
Yeah. Amazing.
So it's kind of like the how trees get stronger with wind and
elements and yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And, and, you know, if we call it hormesis, which is a, a buzz
where they throw around a lot in, in, you know, the, the
biohacking fields, which I, I, I, I've moved away from that
term. But yeah, you know, this idea
(51:44):
that we stressed the body a little to get a big result.
I mean, you know, for a long time, a lot of these therapies
we call micro trauma, right? But I hurt you just a little,
you know, to get your body to dosomething we wanted to do.
Yeah, and the yoga tradition is even this idea of calling yoga
from BKSA anger. You'd say yoga is a controlled
stress experiment, so I like. That.
(52:07):
I like that a lot. Yeah, yeah.
So you actually are stressing out the body in a healthy way,
but gently. And then you get a little
stronger, a little more flexible.
And, and then I think that is like such a good foundation for
for most of listeners are yoga practitioners here.
So that's like that foundation. And then something like cupping
is like just so much more beneficial and your body so much
(52:30):
more receptive to it. And then the recovery process is
more effective and efficient andfaster.
And so it's like yoga is such a good foundation for health and
Wellness, But then there's like the things we can do in cupping,
you can't do in yoga. So it's well, you know the.
Synergistic effect really where we're, we're laying, layering
different related services on top of each other.
(52:52):
And it's funny, you know, my wife is a yoga teacher.
She does a lot of accessible teaching.
She teaches us cherry yoga and restorative and those kind of
things. But we've talked about doing,
you know, because silicone cups,if they, if they fall off and
hit the mat, they're not going to shatter.
You know, we talked about putting together some, some
courses where we would go aroundand put the cups on while people
were in hold holding poses, right?
(53:14):
So you can't really do a, a fastflow or something like that.
You certainly don't want to do pick room with it, but, you
know, to be able to warm up those areas and get some more
blood flow would be amazing. Even, you know, we use magnets
and and ear seeds, right? We traditionally put them in the
ear, but they can be put on acupuncture points and people
could do classes like that. So my wife and I are working on
(53:37):
putting some of those together. And hopefully, you know, in the
future being able to offer trainings in that because, you
know, anything we can do to hybridize things and take two
good ideas, you know, like chocolate and peanut butter or
something like that. Oh yeah.
Is that chocolate and peanut butter last night?
Yeah. And I have worked with somebody
(53:57):
to do this. Yeah.
Like restorative yoga and acupuncture.
It's such a good. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, you know, for for a while before COVID, there
was a ton of yoga, you know, studios in, in, in Baltimore.
And I worked with a few to do that, and it was a lot of fun.
You know, I feel like they got more relaxed than they would
even just in an acupuncture treatment.
(54:19):
A lot of snoring in that room. You know those classes.
Always sold out whenever I did that with this person.
Yeah, it's very popular. So yeah, look forward to to
reading your book so we could find it on Amazon all the
places, right. The cupping book.
Yeah, yeah. And we got a digital version if
you don't care, if you want to save some trees, if you want
(54:40):
the, if you want the, the paperback version, yeah, you'll
hopefully you, you use it is what I'm asking people to do,
you know, So don't buy it if you're not going to use it
because I, I want to, I really am am strongly passionate about
people taking taking up control of their own health.
Right, right. Yeah.
And it's so easy now with the digital books, so coming book.
(55:05):
And then if they want to check out your center, you come to
Charm City. Yeah, it's Charm.
Cityintegrative.com and you can find out all about the services
we offer, all the things we're up to as a clinic, all the
things I'm up to. It's a juggernaut of a site, but
I have an amazing person that kind of keeps that all together
for me. Are you on the social medias
(55:26):
too? Yeah, we're.
On everything I got to say I, I hate to say this, I consume it,
but I abhor it. So I don't.
I don't necessarily post. So that's mostly my staff, you
know, and it's not, I'm not saying I'm too old to do it.
I just, I, I, I want to have real connections with people,
you know? Absolutely.
(55:48):
I think, I think we all want that, really.
So, yeah, thank you for connecting with me today.
It's been really nice to talk toyou, Tom.
Thank you, Jeremy. This is great man, I really
enjoyed it.
One of the first things I asked people to do inside of the Quiet
Mind Yoga teacher training is towork on yourself care plan and
one of my teachers early on saidyou need a team.
You need people to help you workwith energy, go through your own
transformations and work on yourown stuff as a teacher.
(00:22):
So you're not just giving and teaching others and helping
others, but you're receiving andtaking care of your needs and
receiving help and support from others as well.
And one of those practices that I really recommend is cupping,
often done with acupuncture and usually acupuncturist also do
cupping. And that's how I've experienced
(00:42):
it mostly. But today's episode we're going
to talk with Doctor Tom Ingenio all about this.
He literally wrote the book on cupping called The Cupping Book.
And if you want to go deeper into your own yoga training and
work with me and have me on yourteam and help you develop your
practices and yourself care and your team of support, then the
(01:03):
Quiet Mind Yoga teacher trainingis open for enrollment at Quiet
Mind dot yoga slash YTT. Or if you're listening to later,
you might catch the wait list for the next class.
But that's at Quiet Mind at Yogaslash YTT.
And you can have me on your teamin helping you learn anatomy,
philosophy, and everything that goes into teaching well in the
(01:24):
seven major styles of yoga. Hatha vinyasa, yin, gentle
restorative and more at Quiet Mind dot Yoga slash YT.
So Doctor Tom is my guest today.We're going to go into the
interview in just a moment, but I want to tell you a little bit
about him. He is the best selling author of
the cupping book Unlocking the secrets of ancient healing.
(01:44):
He owns and operates its Charm City Integrative Health in
Baltimore, MD. So if you're ever in Baltimore,
stop by. He has an incredible clinic
there with multi dimensional approach to reducing
inflammation, improving circulation and regulating the
immune system to help people thrive.
In addition to 1/4 century of clinical experience, Doctor Tom
(02:05):
is taught at 2 universities of East Asian Medicine and served
as chair of the Maryland Board of Acupuncture.
And he's just got a great energyand a great sense of humor.
I really love talking with him and I think you'll love this
interview. So let's jump right into it.
(02:25):
It's my great pleasure today on the Yoga Teacher Training
Podcast to be here with Tom Ingenio, the author of the
cupping book, Unlocking the Secrets of Ancient Healing.
Cupping has been something supervaluable to me and I don't know
a whole lot about it, so I'm going to be like a lot of the
listeners. With a lot of.
Questions. So I'm excited to to talk to you
today with you, Tom, so welcome.Oh, thank you so much for having
(02:46):
me. I knew this was going to be a
good one. I didn't want to miss it.
So I'm, I'm glad. I'm glad I'm here.
Me too, me too. So I guess the first thing
people don't know what cupping is, we can just start there.
What is cupping? So I, I mean the, the nuts and
bolts of it, if you will, are you create a vacuum using a, a
jar or a lid or a cup. You know, traditionally these
(03:08):
were clay pots or pieces of bamboo or even water Buffalo
horn. You know, traditionally you
would use fire to eat the oxygenand create a vacuum and stick
that to the skin. Modern day now we have, you
know, pumps. We have silicone cups that you
can literally press the air out and create some suction.
The great thing about cupping isit is older than a lot of
(03:31):
practices in Chinese medicine. And we don't even know where it
comes from. You know, the Chinese started
writing about it in about 300 AD, but the physician that even
mentioned it said this is so much older.
We know it's folk medicine. You guys are looking down on it
as other healthcare practitioners, but we should
really be using it. Our first written text that we
(03:52):
know of was the Embers papyrus from 1515 BC in in Egypt.
And, you know, that's an amazingtext because they were
describing how to fix a nose that was severed, You know, I
mean, and very similar to what we're doing today.
Now, certainly they're using anaesthesia and they're using,
you know, sterile technique, butthey, they knew so much about
(04:15):
the human body that it always amazes me.
And I think that's why era Veda and Chinese medicine and a lot
of these traditional practices are really starting to get
their, their time in the sun again, right?
We're, we're not just going all that was old crap.
It's we have some great studies and we and we can really see
some value for people. Yeah, it's like the whole thing
(04:38):
that happened 1900s with the Rockefellers, like sort of
westernizing medicine, making everything, symptoms, disease
pills, drug surgeries and like all this old folklore stuff,
like natural stuff that doesn't do enough.
It's not strong enough. It's so, yeah.
It's like now the science is coming around to like, validate
(05:00):
all these ancient practices. And all of them, yeah.
And, and, you know, I mean, there's certain things that are
still crazy and out there, but Ifeel that there's some value in
that too. You know, we're, we're learning
so much about the, what the, theMayan can do, right.
So even even if we're just talking all that's all placebo,
do you care if you feel better? You know, like if I convinced
(05:20):
myself that I'm better and I'm better, do I care if the thing
really worked? And I think that's where we're
starting to see things like chanting and and prayer and
those kind of things that are a little too soft for Western
medicine. And now we're, you know, seeing
some quantum level physics going.
No, there's something to this. Right.
And then cupping is like to, at least to me, with the Western
(05:43):
mind where I'm born into like, it does seem like, well, you're
definitely doing something. Yeah, it's very physical, yeah.
And you can you can see the marks on your skin like you feel
it. It doesn't for anyone who's
hasn't done it doesn't really hurt at all.
It's. No.
Yeah, it's kind of pleasurable, like suction on the skin.
And and so there's a part of me that's like, well, I, I've
(06:06):
worked with a, a Chinese medicine practitioner for many
years and she would talk about how there's like sha this like,
yeah, yeah, that's coming up. Yeah, yeah.
You know, I, I always get a little bit hesitant to mention
that, right. So Sha comes from a like a
sister technique we call gua sha, right?
That's gua means to scrape. Sha means sand, right?
(06:27):
So it's different dialect. But the dog Sharpay that char is
Shaw and that means sand skin, right?
So their coat is very like sandycolored and sort of bristly.
But when we scrape, if you scrape nice and slow and you're
doing a gouache technique or you're doing sliding, cupping
where you would hear the cup andslide it, you'll feel these
(06:48):
little tiny speed bumps. And that's, that's adhesions in
the fascia, right? We can know that there's some
pain under that tissue because of that.
So without knowing that, you know, the adhesions were really
present, We, we had a physical sign to say, yes, there's,
there's something there. So pulling that blood up through
(07:09):
that tissue in a very physical way is bathing that tissue with
fresh blood, pulling more, I'm going to use the word stagnant
blood out of that tissue. So you get the metabolic waste
out of there, you get some of the inflammatory markers out of
there and you're filling it withfresh blood.
And that's where we promote healing.
So it's, it's kind of, it's kindof great because this, like I
(07:30):
said, it was folk medicine and people were doing it in their
houses. You know, I mean, we, we have a
long history of that traveling all around the globe and when we
have to be mindful of are we appropriating?
Are we not? This migrated everywhere.
You know, it was in Europe, it was in Africa, it was in Russia,
you know, it was in Asia and andit's it's kind of everybody's,
(07:52):
it was even in South America. We're not sure how it got there,
You know, did they discover it? Was it a Co evolution of a
technique or what? Were we actually talking to
them? Which is kind of like a like a
like a crazy mental exercise to kind of take into consideration,
you know, right. Yeah, there's that, that whole
research of like, monkeys on separate islands, learning a
(08:13):
skill. And like, once one group of
monkeys learns it on one island,now it suddenly appears on this
other island where there's no communication between them.
Yeah, there's things like that Ithink that are just like maybe
in the collective where cupping was there and it arose in the
collective at some point. I, you know what?
I'm so glad you mentioned that because I within within three
(08:34):
days, three people mentioned thetelepathy tapes.
I don't know if you've heard of this podcast, but it it's
specifically looking at non verbal autistic kids that not
only can learn to like type out words, but in a lot of cases, no
multiple languages can communicate with each other in
kind of this, you know, psychic space.
(08:57):
And you know, here's a bunch of like the the woman was actually
a Hopkins trained MD who then, you know, studied at Harvard,
who is publishing a lot of research on it.
And it is I, you know, it is such an amazing story about
like, the possibilities of humanconsciousness.
(09:18):
Yeah, So I haven't listened to this yet, but I have heard about
it as well. And it sounds fascinating.
And it's like there's, there's so much that we just don't know.
It's like that we're just beginning to scratch the surface
that we thought was like woo, woo and whatever.
But science is catching up with it.
And science is catching up with it.
And I, and I think that's, that's true when we talk about
(09:38):
traditional medicines too, they're, they're looking at both
the tangible and non tangible. And I think things like East
Asian medicine as a whole, really when it's looking at the
mind, body, spirit, all is one. That's where it has its best
success, right. And you know, you touched on it
before we're, we're not waiting to get sick.
What are we doing that are thoselongevity Wellness practices?
(09:59):
And if we do all of those littlethings, we stay up and running
longer and have healthier, more complete lives.
And in in Chinese medicine, we call it Yangshan and gendering
life, you know? Yeah, for me, I've gone to
cupping a lot, but never for like an injury or an illness or
(10:19):
like I have to do it as a medication or something.
But it's that it feels amazing. It's like, yeah, I love
massages, but this is like a sort of reverse massage or it's
like and. I and I love when people
describe it like that. You know, I had a patient say it
once, it feels like you're pulling out instead of pushing
in, and that's exactly what you're doing.
Right. So I'm curious for like the
(10:41):
listeners, somebody maybe like maybe I should be doing cupping,
Like what? What are the benefits?
Like how do I know if I should be doing cupping like this kind
of thing? Yeah, so we, we, we talked a
little bit about the preventative maintenance, right?
If you work out a lot, if you are moving your body like you're
supposed to, you might get a little sore here and there.
Cupping is a great like just let's get the blood moving.
(11:03):
That's why you see so many Olympic athletes covered in cups
every Summer Olympics. They're probably, probably in
the Winter Olympics, but those guys are wearing more clothing,
you know, with, with pain. That's the number one thing
where I can say there's been a lot of studies within the last
five years that are definitivelysaying neck, shoulder are low
(11:23):
back pain. We we know that it can help with
that. And in a lot of cases it's
almost immediate. It's kind of crazy other uses,
cold and flus, right? We can use it on the chest to
help break up congestion. The, the blood circulates up to
6 inches deep. So only the average person,
you're, you're more than halfwayinto their body just by putting
(11:44):
this cup on and creating the suction.
You know, and, and that has somebenefits beyond just even that
physical action. If you have medication in your
system and you want to drive it to a tissue, what better way
than to like force that area to get more circulation?
You know, I and, and the great thing about it is the book I
wrote, I didn't want to write itas a scholar, as a, you know, a
(12:08):
medical text. I wanted to write it like your
grandma's teaching you because that's traditionally who was
like kind of the family healer and how do we teach you how to
do this? How do we give you this
horseshoes and hand grenades version of it?
And what can we do to kind of make people feel better and get
get this back in the hands of the people, put it back into the
(12:30):
households where it where it belongs?
Yeah. So like the to do the cupping,
typically it's done on the back.Yeah, it really helps to have
someone else be applying it. Yeah, with that and, and I will
say typically when we're, especially when we're talking
about fire cupping, and I think this is really why it was such a
great time to write a book for home use.
(12:50):
Again, fire cupping kind of scares people.
One, I have an open flame. Two, I'm working with glass or
something and God forbid I mess up and I could start a fire cut
somebody, something like that. But like I have in my hand, I've
been fidgeting with it. This is a silicone cup, right?
It's nothing fancy. It looks like 1/2 of a handball,
and this will last forever. If you want to put something on
(13:12):
a smaller area, you mentioned back, right, It's a nice big
flat area where you can stick cups and they adhere well.
Well, these silicone cups have enough flexibility that they can
stick on forearms and things like that where we can get them
on smaller joints. So, you know, you go on Amazon
and you spend 20 bucks on cups and now you have a set.
(13:33):
If you keep them clean, if you store them well, they'll out
last you, you know. Yeah.
I didn't, I didn't know about these.
That's that's really nice. Yeah.
And and in the book we cover allof the modern non fire cupping
devices, right. So there's some that have
motorized pumps now there's somethat combined red light therapy
(13:53):
and heat and whether or not there's enough intensity of the
red light. I, I would argue that maybe not,
but they're, they're cheap enough where I think for the
book I might have spent $200 just trying to pick up all the
different types. And now and my wife made me
(14:14):
throw them all in my office. So they're in a big box over
here where, you know, they're all great, They all work well
and you don't need all of them to kind of figure out what you
want. And hopefully the book kind of
clarifies that for people if they want to, to kind of kick
the tires on a couple of different sets.
It's not a huge investment. And if you pick one set that you
(14:34):
like and you use it, you might go back on on the web and find
more. So it can be as simple as it's
going on Amazon, getting a set of silicone cups and then just
applying them. But so then I'm sure those
people have questions. They're like, well, how do I do
it? How long do I keep going on?
Am I doing it right? These kind of things, right?
(14:56):
Yeah, we cover all that in the book, you know, safety wise and
this great thing is that the fire cupping, you can put that
on very strong. And that's, that's probably best
left for the practitioner, right.
I put the cup on. I you're laying on the table,
you say, hey man, that's too much.
We adjust it at home. The silicone cups, you can get
(15:17):
them on pretty good, but more than likely they're not going to
be too intense. And then you have a window for
how long you can leave them on. And because they go on and off
so smoothly, so quickly, if you take it off and there isn't too
much redness, if there isn't, you know the relief, Oh well,
put it right back on for a few more minutes.
You know you, you have that ability.
(15:38):
Right. And when so like what?
And I worked with this person regularly for a while.
There was like maybe a certain point on my back that was always
very dark. Yeah.
Or you got a lot of Shaw here isa lot of blocked, you know, and
blocked chi. And so I'd be like, well, what
(15:58):
can I do is, is it just like to prevent these things like before
the cupping, you can like, is ithydration?
Is it, is it just because I'm like very active?
So my muscles are just, you know, getting inflamed from
exercise or. Yeah, it's, it's probably a
little of all of that, right, You know, and it really depends.
So along the back in the abdomen, we have points that
(16:20):
we'll sometimes call alarm points.
So there's areas on the back that correspond to the channels
and the organs in Chinese medicine.
So it's possible that one of those areas comes up dark
because it's constitutionally that's an area of weakness for
you. We all have them some and, and
it's kind of funny because the areas were weakest, we also have
(16:41):
the strongest attributes, whether it's a mental attribute
or a physical attribute, it it'sall there and we can do things
depending on where that comes upto nourish it.
So I don't want to say, oh, it'salways here.
So you got to do XY and Z because I don't know where on
your back it is. And then in certain areas,
depending on your kind of activity, right?
(17:03):
When we, when we move our bodies, the areas, the muscle
groups that we use the most, they call it angiogenesis,
right? We make more blood vessels in
that area. So more blood vessels, you get
more likely to rupture those capillaries because there's more
of them. So it's kind of this double
edged sword where somebody goes,oh, it's definitely means you're
(17:23):
toxic here, but in some cases itmight just mean you have more
blood vessels in that area. You know, so we, we talk about
that in the book, right? Because if you, if you go on
Instagram, you search company Marks and what do they mean?
You'll find 1000 charts, right? Oh my God, you got this, you got
that, you got this. This is what that means.
And I, you know, I really want to caution people not to jump
(17:43):
in, right? When we're in acupuncture
school, they always would say 1 sign is not a diagnosis, right?
You know, so OK, do you have anyof these other things?
No. Then chances are you're probably
OK. You know, if, if you're like, Oh
my God, it's in the heart area. And if I go up a flight of
stairs, my heart flutters. I'm not sleeping well.
(18:05):
You, you, you know, I'm, you know, I either have, you know, I
get manic or, you know, all these kind of heart symptoms
that we would say in Chinese medicine.
Well, then maybe there's something there.
There's just a red mark on your heart area.
Well, it's, it's between the shoulder blades.
These guys move a lot when you work out you're, you're really
stressed those if you're rock climbing or something, you're
(18:28):
you're putting the screws to them.
So maybe it's just physical activity.
So it's not wrong or right to say, oh, there's this, this,
this evil energy there, right? This evil energy sounds kind of
funny because yes, we translate it to evil, but it's not, it's
not like the Exorcist, you know,it's not.
It's just like, oh, there's energy somewhere doing something
(18:49):
it shouldn't. In the 70s, there was a movement
where they were trying to translate all these words more
accurately from Chinese to English.
And instead of using the word evil, which was, you know, easy
to understand and quick, they would say pernicious.
And they'd say, well, it's like,you know, teenagers hanging out
at a, you know, out front of a 711 or something.
(19:11):
They shouldn't be there. They're causing a bit of
problems. They're not, you know, they're
not murderers, but they're kind of being jerks, you know?
So, you know, you got to clear them off, you know, get them out
of here. They're probably going.
To get into some trouble later. Interrupted now, yeah.
And and that's really a great, great thing.
Excuse me? You got to sidestep it before it
(19:33):
becomes something severe. Yes.
So yeah, I, I love the preventative nature of that and
like seeing things from also like this perspective that you
have is very deep and very experienced and nuanced.
And this is kind of the modern issue of like things like Chachi
(19:54):
PT and TikTok and Instagram and Reels.
And these things are fast, supereasy, completely free for most
cases and helpful. But they're not as nuanced as an
expert or somebody who's done this and worked with lots of
people and seen lots of things. And yeah, I can miss guide
people. And that's how I know when I'm
(20:15):
talking to somebody who has experience because their answer
is not so black and white. It's like.
Actually, you, never you. Never want to, you know,
especially when we're talking about somebody's health, right?
We want to do our best. We want to get to down that
right rabbit hole. But sometimes it's not that
nuanced where, you know, I remember when I was teaching my,
my assistant was one of my closefriends and, and we came through
(20:37):
school together And, you know, they would come in and they go,
all right, today, you know, likeafter the class, beforehand,
they'd come to our class and they go, Oh, I think I have
phlegm misting the mind. And I go, why?
And they go, Oh, I can't sleep. And I go, there's, there's
10,000 reasons you can't sleep, You know, like, and, and my
(20:58):
assistant would lean over and she goes, like, I know what they
were talking about in class before this, right?
You know, it was always like, you know, like you, you know,
almost like you, you would adaptto this like hypochondriac kind
of situation. You're like, oh God, I can't
think. And it's like, maybe it's
because you're in school, you'reeating crap and you're, you
know, your schedule is horrible.You're not moving your body.
You know, there's 10,000 reasonsand you know, maybe some of you
(21:22):
have Flan misting the mind, but we don't that that is not the
only reason, you know, but it itwas always funny where they they
were, you know, oh, Oh yeah, that's got to be me.
That's got to be me because I have that symptom right of.
Course, and it helps. It feels good to have like a
diagnosis and like, OK, that's what it is.
But it's until you're working with an expert or somebody
(21:43):
really knows what they're doing,it's like you might be
misdiagnosing yourself. Yeah.
Yeah, and, and that's really what I love about East Asian
medicine as a whole, right? There isn't one thing you're
hanging the diagnosis of, right?So a lot of the styles I do or
are Japanese based. So there's a lot of palpation,
(22:05):
you know, and, and sometimes I don't ask too many questions and
I just start pressing on stuff and they go, oh, that's sore.
How'd you know that? And it's like, well, you, you,
you know, you were coming in. You have this colour under your
eyes. Your pulses said this.
I pressed here, you said, ow, I pressed here.
And I go, you know, a lot of times this is a symptom of eye
(22:25):
issues. And she goes, Oh my God, I just
started a prescription for, you know, I, you know, to help me
with my tear ducts. And you're like, oh, OK, cool.
You know, they're like, how did you know that?
It's like, well, there's a system here, right?
It's not, it looks like magic when you do it, but it's
thousands of years of real scientific method where like
(22:45):
every one of these cases was written down and you know,
somebody would say something once and it would be noted, but
somebody would say something 10,000 times across various
patients and various times. And oh wow, this must be a real
correlation, right? So correlation isn't causation,
but when you have, you know, 60 things pointing at this one
(23:08):
area, you're like, OK, that's where we got to explore first,
right? Is there any reason somebody
should not do cupping? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So there's a we, we read about this in the book, too.
Now, I will say I've seen some celebrities get cupping when
they're pregnant. I cannot recommend that.
I, I, I, you know, people, do what you want.
(23:30):
I would err on the side of caution here.
One of the reasons is when we have a fetus developing, we say
that's an accumulation of chi and blood.
It's very like a classical concept.
We do not want to move chi and blood in this case, right?
That's that could cause a miscarriage.
I know of no cases. I know of no studies because it
would be super unethical to try and cause a miscarriage by doing
(23:53):
cupping. But don't do that on people who
are on heavy duty blood thinnersor who have hemophilia or have
open wounds. We don't cup there deep vein
thrombosis. So these big deep veins, a lot
of times they're in the thighs. That's not a, an appropriate
area to cup. So sometimes it's no, you can't
(24:15):
do cupping on this patient at all.
And sometimes it's just avoid these areas.
And I'm, I'm very cautious, especially when I'm telling
people to do things at home. So maybe my book is a little bit
too like, no, don't do that thenmore more so than it should be.
But I, I would, I would feel horrible if somebody did
something and they were like, well, you didn't say not to.
(24:38):
And and then it's like, Oh, well, you got hurt, right?
You know, I had a friend of minegreat.
You know, I was, I was part of this Goldman Sachs small
business group and they all cameout to buy book launch.
They all bought the books, they bought cups.
They, you know, and one of my friends, he's like, hey, man, I
fell asleep on the couch for three hours.
I had the cup on my shoulder andI saw him.
(25:00):
It was 3 weeks later, he still had the red circle on his
shoulder. He goes, I got to tell you one
my, my shoulder feels great. And I go, OK, that'll, that,
that'll, that should eventually go away, but please, you know,
set, set a timer. Yeah.
You know, like, at least, yeah, at least put something on your
phone that'll wake you up, tell you to take it off before you
pass out again, you know, because you can get blisters if
(25:24):
they're left on too long. Actually, we'll get some fluid
in between the skin and it's, it's painful.
You're not going to die. But it takes a while to heal.
And. And I don't want anyone hurt
That's. That's pretty extreme, right?
You got to leave it on for like hours.
Yeah, or. You know, like in fire cupping.
I've seen some people really, because we can get the, the
quicker you are with that technique, the stronger that
(25:45):
suction is. And I've been doing it for over
25 years now. And, and I get them on and
somebody's like, OK, that's a little too much, you know, and
you're like, OK, I got to slow down a little.
But if I were to leave that on and somebody was going to muscle
through it, they're, they'll probably end up with blisters if
I leave them on for more than a couple of minutes.
So, you know, dosage, you know, intensity versus time is kind of
(26:08):
a weird but accurate statement, right?
You know if it's not that intense, you can leave it on
longer, right? Where are you offering?
Where where are you practicing right now?
So so my. My clinic is called Charm City
Integrative Health. Charm City is the happy nickname
for Baltimore. I wanted to call it Mob Town,
(26:31):
which is our another name for Baltimore, which talks a little
bit more of our violent past. Fortunately, I was talked out of
that. But.
Charm City was an attempt of a mayor to drive more tourism to
Baltimore, and he was setting upthese little charm bracelets
(26:52):
where you go to all these monuments and you get a charm,
right? So you can complete the Charm
City bracelet. So Edgar Allan Poe's, you know,
grave and things like that, you go to and you have a little
charm. That idea never took off, but
Charm City kind of got stuck with us.
So I I this clinic I've had we opened 2016.
(27:15):
And. It's my biggest swing.
I have four other acupuncturist there with me, one massage
therapist and then three techs that kind of help run some of
the services and, and really keep the office running well.
So I'm, I'm very blessed. They're amazing people and they
get the mission. You know, we're, we're really,
(27:36):
if I wanted to make a lot of money, I probably would have
done something else, but I want to have a big impact on people's
lives. So I, I think you can do both.
I just haven't figured the the other half out yet.
Oh. It's beautiful, Yeah.
I just want to make sure if anyone wants to find you and
work with you, that's the Charm City place to go Charm.
Cityintegrative.com is our website.
(27:57):
You can find, you know, we, we do a lot of lecturing, a lot of
teaching, a lot of podcasts likethis because I really, you know,
want to get the education out there.
So if anybody wants to hit me upand ask questions or have me
come out and lecture to a group,I'm more than happy to do that.
Yeah. Very cool.
So the the fire cupping I I wentto just a few times and it's so
(28:21):
cool Yeah the. Cool.
Factor to this, you know. I, I had a, there was a teacher
who unfortunately passed away and he was kind of this, he, he
was crazy. He had this Italian fro, he had
tattoos up and down his arms. He trained like Mongolian
horseback archery, just a weird,like eccentric dude.
But he had a translating companyin, in China and he gave a
(28:45):
lecture and, and I didn't get tostudy with him too much more
other than this two day workshop.
But he talked about the showmanship of what we do.
And when you get something like that and really like, let's not
play this down like, oh, you're getting fire cupping.
This is rare. This is fancy.
Sometimes it, it's funny becausewe can do it on the upper chest,
(29:05):
we can do it on the abdomen. Most times people are face down.
So they got their head in the face cradle and they'll see the
room get a little lighter, right?
They'll see, they'll see some light, but they have no idea
what it is. And then sometimes, especially
if they're coming in for chest infections and I do something on
on their upper pecs, they're like, Oh my God, you've been
using a torch on me this whole time.
And it's like the torch never touches you.
(29:27):
We don't heat the cup up. That's a bad time.
We're just burning the oxygen. So if it's in and out super
quick and I just love that ASMREkind of like, you know, torch
sounds and you know, the flame and even taking the cup off,
there's like a little bit of a pop.
You kind of burp them like Tupperware.
(29:47):
You press down on the edge of the lip and, you know, so it
it's it's such a fun sound. And and you know, like I said,
20 I think yeah, you know, I wasdoing it in school in 98I
graduated in 2001. So I've been doing it for quite
a long time, but like every timeI put cups on and off, I kind of
(30:10):
smile a little. It's just, it's so much fun.
And, you know, people really like it and they feel like, you
know, they, you know, they'll goover to the gym and people say,
where'd you get that done? And it's like, it's also like a
business card, you know, it's like how people are like, who
did that? You know that?
Oh, just up the street, you know, so so we love doing it
and. You.
(30:31):
Know all this stuff is so therapeutic and so fun that I
can't get upset about anything in my field.
I'm really blessed, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's really cool.
And so if anyone hasn't experienced the fire cupping,
definitely recommend. It's a cool experience and
something you you just will always be in person like you
(30:54):
can't replace that with yourselfor online.
It's like you go do I. I have seen, I've seen a lot of
grandma's do fire cupping at home.
Oh, yeah. That being said, I'm not
recommending that to the averageperson, one, because that kind
of puts me on the hook a little bit for liability.
But two, there's so many great products out there that are dirt
(31:18):
cheap, You know, I mean, you'll,you'll see people even like
Godfather Part 2, Fredo, when he's an infant, they put him on
the kitchen table and the grandma comes down and puts a, a
fire cup on his chest. It's it's like a drinking glass
she puts on and it's, it's such a cool nod to this traditional
thing. And you, you know, like I said,
(31:38):
we're not sure where it came from.
It was it Greece, was it Egypt? Was it Persia?
Certainly somewhere around that Mediterranean kind of area.
But they were doing it a lot longer than you know, then until
they, you know, when they wrote it down and already been in
practice for quite some time. So, you know, we, we don't, we
lost that to history, but everybody does it.
(32:01):
It's so cool, even as. A kid, I would like to put cups
on my face and like, do like suction on the lips and like the
yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, and
unfortunately, I'll, I'll tell you a funny story.
I don't think my, my brother's going to listen to this.
So, so back in school, right, wehad these like holiday, you
know, stores where like mom would send you in with like 1020
(32:22):
bucks and you go buy gifts for the whole family.
We're we're, we were raised Roman Catholic.
He bought a hollow dreidel, you know, you can take the top off
and fill it with candy or something.
And he came home and he had thisperfectly almost like a, almost
like a ventriloquist nominee, these two lines and it, this
area was purple. And my, my, my mom is freaking
(32:46):
out. She's calling the school going,
why does he have this rash? Why does he have this rash?
Why does he have this rash? You know, are you, does it, is
it itchy? Does it hurt?
He goes no, no, no, no. About two hours later, my mom
sees him with the cut, the dreidel, the bottom half of the
dreidel, sucking it onto his his, his chin, through his lip.
(33:07):
And she goes, Oh my God, he gavehimself a Hickey.
But that's essentially what cupping is.
You're giving yourself a Hickey.You know, yeah.
And so when I was doing this more regularly, they're just
there's where I live now, there's practitioners only year,
like half the year, but. Where are you?
Very small. Town in Mexico on the coast.
(33:29):
OK, so it's more like a travelling kind of people travel
through half the year. And so there is a woman who does
acupuncture and cupping and other moxibustion.
I haven't experienced that one yet.
Moxa. Is amazing and and that was
another one that started as a folk medicine older than
(33:51):
acupuncture, right? They, they can burn stuff before
they can work with metal. And you know, we do a lot of
that in our clinic because it's absolutely amazing.
But it kind of, it kind of was considered passe or for peasants
for a while in, in China. So we fell out of favor.
But I would, you know, one of the cool things is in Spanish,
(34:12):
we call this ventosa, you know, and it means to suck, you know,
like that that, you know, is, isthat root, that Latin root is to
suck, which is really cool. And the a lot of the coronderos,
like a lot of the traditional, traditional South American
healers do it. Yeah.
Yeah, there's a lot of use of copal here.
(34:33):
Yeah, yeah. And like the native plant
medicines like peyote and thingslike this.
So is this more the healing tradition is very strong and
something I love here and too also the these traditions that
are more connected to lineage like in Chinese medicine and
Ayurveda and here in Mexico is like the grandmothers, the
(34:53):
grandfathers are very respected and seen as elders.
And whereas in the US typically there's not that level of like
respect or tradition. No, no.
And I, I think, I, I think what we're seeing now is where we
have like, you know, adult care centers where these people are
just wasting away. And that's because they don't
(35:14):
feel appreciated, They don't feel taken care of.
And, and these, these people, you know, if, if they're, if
they're in the communities, if they're taken care of, I, I
guarantee you levels of dementia, Alzheimer's, these
things would be so much easier. And we can point to multiple
factors, you know, what Americans have done to their
diet and lifestyle, you know, just destroying their
(35:35):
environment internally and externally.
It's very sad. But there's so much wisdom
there. You know, some of the
acupuncture's I look up to are in their 90s.
You know, they're still treating.
They're not treating like they used to.
But imagine that many years of experience.
I have a book here from one of them.
It was written a few years ago, 50 years in in practice is what
(35:59):
it's called. And it's, I, I mean, he's just
giving so much to the field, youknow, modern day master.
Yeah, it's such a weird mental construct that you have to
retire at 65 or just decline. Well, I I, I.
I have a feeling retiring in this in in this country is not
going to happen anymore. But let's not get political.
(36:23):
Yeah, but even here, like there's so many grandmothers
cook in kitchens or in the US that might be seem like a low,
like a sort of low status thing or disrespectful, but it's
actually like everyone respects and trusts their grandmother.
She's going to make the best food.
Oh my God. Yeah, she's been doing.
(36:43):
It so long, she's had so much time to perfect that, yeah.
It's yeah. So I love that energy of like
respecting tradition elders and like decades of experience in
something to bring it out. And so, you know, I see that
very much in the Chinese medicine and I see that here in
the Eastern traditions of Ayurveda and yoga and things
like this as well. Yeah, it's it, it's really
(37:07):
amazing when we look with a moreglobal lens, how much we can
learn from the generations that came before us.
And yeah, you know, I don't, I don't want to start going back
to like, you know, going to a Barber and taking a pint of
blood every day. But even even bleeding
techniques we do used in, in classical medicine and, and with
(37:28):
some real good success. It's not, you know, bleeding you
dry, you're not going to be palewhen you're done.
But a few drops here, a few drops there can really help with
pain relief, fevers, those kind of things.
Yeah, Yeah. Some techniques are meant to
late stay in the past, but I'm sure.
Yeah, yeah. You know, I.
Gave a lecture to it's very funny Walter Reed here, the
hospital system that's through the military, they would do
(37:52):
these hour long lunch and learns.
And they've had me do about six of them now.
And the second one they, they had me do in October and I said,
well, it's Halloween you guys here's 7 topics I'd be happy to
present. Do you want me to do some like
like gross weird stuff, you know, do you want me to talk
about some old creepy stuff fromChinese medicine?
And I, I was kind of like tryingto show the doctor in charge
(38:15):
that I was like nuts, you know, and he goes, I want to hear that
lecture. He's like, that's the one I
want. And we had this discussion about
maggot therapy and Leech therapyand, you know, eating, eating
placenta and, you know, basically stool, stool.
(38:36):
Why can't I think of the word now?
But basically, you know, treatment of C diff with, you
know, fecal transplant. And you know, here's here's the
Chinese antecedent and here's what your guys are doing now.
And I thought I was going to lose all these docs, but the
chat started exploding where they're like, oh, God, we used,
you know, we used maggots on this guy's Abscess on his head.
(38:58):
And oh, you know, God, we used leeches after surgery.
Oh, you know, we had, we saved somebody's life with fecal
transplant and you, you know, it's, it's so gross.
But even when I was doing research on the fecal
transplant, we, we had a, a famous Chinese physician,
honestly, the same one that kindof told people to use
practitioners to use cupping. He, he was the one that was like
(39:21):
doing this thing called yellow soup treatment, kind of gross.
But he, he, he saved people's lives.
You know, before you had antibiotics, if you had
diarrhea, you were probably going to die.
You know? Yeah.
It gets back to that traditional, like, even though
it's gross, even though it's old, doesn't mean it doesn't
have value. Absolutely.
(39:44):
And what you do, you mentioned like working in the future of
medicine now. So I'm curious like where you
see the future of medicine or self-care, these kind of
practice from that tradition we talked about a lot.
So where do you think it's going?
I I. Think I think.
Integration is is really what what needs to happen, right.
So if you're in one of the majorhospitals in China, right, you
(40:08):
get triaged and that may be surgery, that may be Western
medicinals, but it also will be an acupuncture cupping Mark
Sebastian, you know, Tweena bodywith Chinese body work, Guasho,
whatever you need, you're going to get.
And I I firmly believe, you know, I'm in Baltimore.
We have Johns Hopkins, we have University of Maryland Medical
(40:28):
Center. We have some really big name
hospitals. And in some cases they're
they're saying they want to be more integrative and that's more
lip service, You know, like let me see if I can get some grants.
But speaking to groups of younger doctors or doctors that
are in Med school now, future doctors, they know that like, I
(40:51):
can't just give somebody this drug and send them on their way.
That's not in their best, you know, interest.
That's not solving the problem, that's not keeping them healthy,
that's not keeping them out of their office.
And, and they're looking for this, right.
We have a doctorate now in lifestyle medicine, which I'm
like, do I need another doctorate?
Should I go back and get that? And then I look at the course
work and it's like there's, there's, there's three classes
(41:14):
on, on telling people to sleep, right.
There's three classes on nutrition, there's three
classes. And I'm like, this is all stuff
that we forgot as humans, you know, And, and if you want to
fix that, I, I'm not going to gotoo far down this rabbit hole
because it's going to, it's going to make me want to destroy
capitalism as a whole. But you can't, you can't be
(41:36):
grinding 24/7. That's not a sustainable thing.
You know, So the hustle culture is really doing us more damage
than that. It's helping us.
So, you know, not saying that weshould live within our means or,
or anything like that. And if you're passionate about
something right yet do it with all your heart.
But recovering and, you know, doing things methodically
(41:58):
without spreading yourself too thin is really where I think
Chinese medicine, you know, the roots of that are all in Taoism.
And some of the earliest Taoist teachings were like, don't sleep
too much, don't eat too much, don't work too much, don't lay
down too much. You know, it's like, you know,
all this moderation and it's like, well, that doesn't sound,
you know, that's like ground breaking.
(42:18):
We're not, you know, we're not, we're not going to write a New
York Times bestseller on that, right?
Like what do you do? You know, everything in
moderation. You know, it's a it's a one page
book, but there's there's a lot of truth in that, you know, but
it's not sexy. It's not a a perfect weight loss
program. It's not a diet and exercise
program. It's not it.
It's just good, solid advice that no one takes.
(42:42):
So if everything is in moderation, like, what do you
think about these extreme thingsthat have become more popular,
like cold plunges, saunas, Yeah.Yeah.
So we we, we offer those in our office.
And I joke that like, if people were outside more, none of this
would ever have happened, right.You know, if you're in a
moderate climate, you're going to get cold in the winter.
(43:03):
You're going to get warm in the summer.
You're going to get more daylight in the summer.
You're going to get less daylight in the winter.
You're going to follow this cycle of like drawing in, right?
So in the winter, we're supposedto draw in.
That's our planning time. We stay in, we eat hearty foods.
We, you know, we might bulk up alittle, we might put on a few
pounds. But then when we come out in the
spring, we're moving, we're growing, we're, we're expanding.
(43:24):
And those are the things that we, we kind of lost, right?
You know, artificial light, these kind of things.
What I can work 24 hours, right?I'm sitting under a bright blue
light that's messing up my circadian rhythms right now.
Why? Because I don't want to look
like I'm sitting here in the dark and you're wondering who I
am. Like, you've hidden my identity
for safety, you know? But we we do so much to offset
(43:49):
the natural rhythms that I feel things like sauna, cold plunge,
cryotherapy, red light therapy, like.
You guys are. So far that way that to get you
back, I need to hit you with a hammer to knock you back the
other way. Right.
The pendulum is swung so hard one way that going the other way
makes sense. Why?
I mean, if we slow that pendulumdown, if we if we keep that
(44:13):
closer to the midline, Yeah, we don't necessarily have as many
highs. We don't need to go, you know,
swim in a frozen lake, but we also don't have the the extreme
on the other end where we're burnt out, where, you know, our
nervous system is shot or vagal nerve tone is horrible, you
know, and that's why I think things like, you know,
meditation are so important, right?
(44:35):
We're going to, we're going to regulate that, right?
What do we do? We sit there and do nothing,
right? You know, at the at the heart of
meditation, doesn't matter what style you're doing, what system.
I'm kind of doing a lot of nothing and I'm trying
intentionally trying to do nothing, right.
You know, it's like. They I saw some meme is like
more and more every year. I understand why old people like
(44:56):
to just sit on a bench and stareout into nature and do nothing.
That's. It's so crazy that when we, when
we get good at meditation, you know, we see all these changes.
We don't, we don't fly off the handle as quickly, right?
Our amygdala gets smaller and that's our fear center, right?
So we're better at dealing with stress, right?
(45:16):
We're not triggering this giant spiking cortisol.
We're not freaking out all the time.
I mean, I'm still a hot mess, but without daily meditation, I
think I would, I would be, I would be off the rails 24/7.
And honestly, I'm probably more stressed than I should be now
because I got sick, you know? The the Chinese medicine
(45:37):
practitioner I worked with, I I was asking her about cold
plunges and she said, you know, you got to be careful because
that that cold energy, she can be stuck in your body now and
it's become stored as this cold energy that's got to move
somewhere. You got to do something with it.
So for somebody, yeah, yeah. So if you're.
Already cold if you're constitutionally cold.
I I, I agree with her. Yeah.
(45:58):
Yeah. I I've had so many arguments
with other practitioners like, you know, and it's like, well,
here's here's all the research, you know, So, yes, there was a
lot of wisdom in Chinese medicine.
Is this great for everybody? No.
And I can almost tell constitutionally, you know,
bigger guys with red faces, coldplunge is OK, right?
(46:18):
You know, and, and even even in one of our, our textbooks they
sell, they, they talk of a storyof a guy who had a fever, right?
Because there's some practitioners say ice is for
dead people, right? You know, and, and while there's
some truth with that, like here's a guy that, you know, guy
came to him with a fever. He had his assistant get 100
(46:41):
buckets of water and leave him outside.
He put this guy in the tub and he kept dumping the buckets
over, over the patient trying tobreak this fever.
You know, people are coming by going, you know, you're going to
kill him, you're going to kill him, you're going to kill him.
And you know, the 100th bucket, the fever broke and he survived,
you know, and he, he, he was cured.
(47:01):
And it comes down to the differential diagnosis being
accurate, you know, and, and really knowing the constitution
of that person and where that imbalance lays.
So blanket statement treatments,you know, just because
everyone's doing it, you know, like if, if everyone was jumping
off a bridge, would you, is, is kind of the, the, the thing that
your mom would tell you when youdid something stupid?
(47:24):
But it's why am I doing? What am I trying to get out of
it? You know, and, and do I need
that? And and if we're really
listening to our body, you know,maybe there's a time and a place
where everyone should be using cryo or cold plunge, but then
there's times when they should be.
Yeah. And that's, again, that's the
voice of wisdom and experience. Like it depends.
(47:46):
The answer is usually it depends, right?
It depends. I had a teacher that would say
that all the time. And you know, where, you know,
you hear of these weird case studies where somebody does
everything contradictory towards, you know, the, the, the
diagnosis and the patient gets better and they'll say, well,
this one symptom was, was, was the thing I was hanging on to
(48:09):
because it was the most severe. And, you know, I don't want to
take risks with people. And certainly I'm not going to
say don't go to a hospital or something, don't take the
Western medicine. But you know, if we can do
things naturally, if we can see and, and really diagnose
somebody right, they'll, they'llget some amazing results without
having to be pushed too hard or driven too far.
(48:32):
Or you don't have what we call ahealing crisis where we treat
somebody too strong and then they feel like crap for a few
days after, you know? So then I guess for the
listeners who may be interested in this, maybe they're not doing
anything else, like no acupuncture, maybe you get
massage every now and then or something.
But yeah, could they just start receiving cupping sessions?
(48:54):
And like that by itself is like,how often should they go?
I guess, yeah. It's, it's a stand alone
treatment. It definitely can be a stand
alone treatment. A lot of times we, we wrap it
into our acupuncture treatment, right?
We mix some modalities for better results within that.
You know, WellCare is fine. You're feeling stressed out.
You know, your traps are starting to get a little tight
(49:16):
and your, you know, shoulders are near your ears.
Have somebody put some cups on your base of your neck and your
shoulders and along the shoulderblades and, you know, leave them
on for a few minutes and see howyou feel.
You know, one of the other things that's kind of cool And,
and I think this is where a lot of these traditional therapies,
even even yoga has the this amazing effect, right?
(49:37):
We're regulating that, that vagal nerve tone, right?
Get Me Out of fight or flight, put me in the rest of digest.
What happens? My heart rate slows down, my
blood vessels start circulating blood better, right?
How beneficial is that to every system in our body, right?
So we see these benefits go everywhere and they feedback.
So a lot of times people do cupping and even when we put
(49:58):
them on super tight, after a minute or two, they're, they're,
they're like, Oh my God, this isso relaxing, right?
You know, and it, you know, it looks like they stood in front
of a, you know, a baseball pitching machine.
You know some of the marks, but it, it feels so good, you know?
Yeah, it is surprising how painful it can look, but it
(50:19):
actually is not painful. Like if you've never experienced
you, you. You can't you And you also like,
you can't have that argument with somebody.
They have to experience it before.
Yes, yeah. You know, they're like, no, no,
I know what a bruise is. And you're like, technically
it's not a hematoma. You know, they're like, it
doesn't matter. It's a bruise, OK, You know.
(50:41):
And then is it? To me, there's a a progress sort
of part of my brain, it's like, and I've had this at times where
like maybe I have a certain darkspot on my back that yeah,
repeated sessions, it starts to get less dark, less dark.
Yeah. And some of that is the blood
vessels that are being formed atthe surface of the skin, those
capillaries that were breaking, when they reform, they're
(51:04):
healthier, right? So it's harder to break them,
you know. So, you know, getting that blood
there is is therapeutic. So even the bruise itself has
some therapeutic value because your body still goes, oh, we got
to break up this bruise. We got to get this blood out of
here. And while they're doing it, it's
rebuilding blood vessels that are healthier and happier.
(51:24):
Yeah. Amazing.
So it's kind of like the how trees get stronger with wind and
elements and yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And, and, you know, if we call it hormesis, which is a, a buzz
where they throw around a lot in, in, you know, the, the
biohacking fields, which I, I, I, I've moved away from that
term. But yeah, you know, this idea
(51:44):
that we stressed the body a little to get a big result.
I mean, you know, for a long time, a lot of these therapies
we call micro trauma, right? But I hurt you just a little,
you know, to get your body to dosomething we wanted to do.
Yeah, and the yoga tradition is even this idea of calling yoga
from BKSA anger. You'd say yoga is a controlled
stress experiment, so I like. That.
(52:07):
I like that a lot. Yeah, yeah.
So you actually are stressing out the body in a healthy way,
but gently. And then you get a little
stronger, a little more flexible.
And, and then I think that is like such a good foundation for
for most of listeners are yoga practitioners here.
So that's like that foundation. And then something like cupping
is like just so much more beneficial and your body so much
(52:30):
more receptive to it. And then the recovery process is
more effective and efficient andfaster.
And so it's like yoga is such a good foundation for health and
Wellness, But then there's like the things we can do in cupping,
you can't do in yoga. So it's well, you know the.
Synergistic effect really where we're, we're laying, layering
different related services on top of each other.
(52:52):
And it's funny, you know, my wife is a yoga teacher.
She does a lot of accessible teaching.
She teaches us cherry yoga and restorative and those kind of
things. But we've talked about doing,
you know, because silicone cups,if they, if they fall off and
hit the mat, they're not going to shatter.
You know, we talked about putting together some, some
courses where we would go aroundand put the cups on while people
were in hold holding poses, right?
(53:14):
So you can't really do a, a fastflow or something like that.
You certainly don't want to do pick room with it, but, you
know, to be able to warm up those areas and get some more
blood flow would be amazing. Even, you know, we use magnets
and and ear seeds, right? We traditionally put them in the
ear, but they can be put on acupuncture points and people
could do classes like that. So my wife and I are working on
(53:37):
putting some of those together. And hopefully, you know, in the
future being able to offer trainings in that because, you
know, anything we can do to hybridize things and take two
good ideas, you know, like chocolate and peanut butter or
something like that. Oh yeah.
Is that chocolate and peanut butter last night?
Yeah. And I have worked with somebody
(53:57):
to do this. Yeah.
Like restorative yoga and acupuncture.
It's such a good. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, you know, for for a while before COVID, there
was a ton of yoga, you know, studios in, in, in Baltimore.
And I worked with a few to do that, and it was a lot of fun.
You know, I feel like they got more relaxed than they would
even just in an acupuncture treatment.
(54:19):
A lot of snoring in that room. You know those classes.
Always sold out whenever I did that with this person.
Yeah, it's very popular. So yeah, look forward to to
reading your book so we could find it on Amazon all the
places, right. The cupping book.
Yeah, yeah. And we got a digital version if
you don't care, if you want to save some trees, if you want
(54:40):
the, if you want the, the paperback version, yeah, you'll
hopefully you, you use it is what I'm asking people to do,
you know, So don't buy it if you're not going to use it
because I, I want to, I really am am strongly passionate about
people taking taking up control of their own health.
Right, right. Yeah.
And it's so easy now with the digital books, so coming book.
(55:05):
And then if they want to check out your center, you come to
Charm City. Yeah, it's Charm.
Cityintegrative.com and you can find out all about the services
we offer, all the things we're up to as a clinic, all the
things I'm up to. It's a juggernaut of a site, but
I have an amazing person that kind of keeps that all together
for me. Are you on the social medias
(55:26):
too? Yeah, we're.
On everything I got to say I, I hate to say this, I consume it,
but I abhor it. So I don't.
I don't necessarily post. So that's mostly my staff, you
know, and it's not, I'm not saying I'm too old to do it.
I just, I, I, I want to have real connections with people,
you know? Absolutely.
(55:48):
I think, I think we all want that, really.
So, yeah, thank you for connecting with me today.
It's been really nice to talk toyou, Tom.
Thank you, Jeremy. This is great man, I really
enjoyed it.
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