Scraping Addendum

Adding to the scraping post of the other day, I want to make clear that while scraping marks are sometimes very dramatic and potentially alarming visually (as in the picture in the last post), when done correctly, scraping is not painful.  It can feel excellent (like an itch being scratched) and it can feel uncomfortable; something that you have to breathe through a little bit; but if it is painful then the practitioner needs to lighten their touch.  The sensation of being scraped should never come close to what the marks make it look like it would feel like. 

Also, scraping should never be done on extremely depleted weak people as it is inherently a depleting therapy (as are all detoxifying therapies.  They are removing things from the body as opposed to nourishing therapies such as heat, application of oils, and nurturing touch).  Everything has its place.

Scraping

Awhile back I came across this article that is mostly about what western type scientific studies have learned about scraping (Khoodt in Thai).  I wrote most of the following for my ongoing online apprentices, and thought I'd copy it over here to share more widely.  It was all phrased as gua sha since western medicine mostly knows about scraping through Chinese medicine, but I'm just gonna use the word scraping because they are just talking about the mechanical effects really, of the main motion of it that is found in all systems of medicine that use it.

Here is the article

And here is my condensation, simplified bullet points of what I got out of the article

•  Scraping produces temporary therapeutic petachiae (pronounced peh-ti-ki-ee, I know!). Petachiae is a western term for the red dotty/bumpy markings. It generally refers to mild vascular hemorrage, but in this case it is considered beneficial

•  Studies showed that scraping produced a 400% increase in superficial blood circulation (that’s a lot!) that stayed that way for about 7 minutes, and took 2 days to fully return to normal.  Think about this - in an area that has had blockage or is in any way dead/numb/depleted, scraping is going to bring an immediate huge flush of circulation, thereby removing toxins, and delivering nutrients to an area.

•  Every subject in the study experienced decreased or resolved pain and reported a greater sense of well being.

•  Scraping has provable anti-inflammatory and immune boosting effects - Yes, traditional medicine has known this forever and day.  Read on to see the western perspective of why.

• It can reduce a fever and alter the course of an acute infectious illness, as well as reduce inflammatory symptoms in chronic illness.  Again, traditional medicine already knew this.

• Okay, here is where we get to the oh so interesting why.  Cruel studies on a mouse showed that scraping upregulates (meaning increases) gene expression for an enzyme that is an anti-oxidant and cytoprotectant (meaning a thing that protects the cells from harm), heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1), was present at multiple internal organ sites immediately after treatment and over a period of days following gua sha treatment.
(what that just said up there is that it causes an increase in an enzyme that protects cells, and this was found around many organs.)

•  Also, this enzyme is anti-inflammatory and antioxidive - it can reduce allergic inflammation, AND it boosts immune response AND it relieves symptoms of Hepatitis B and C, AND it might heal internal organs AND it helps with all kinds of other nasty things like asthma, organ transplant rejection, inflammatory bowel disease and experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis.  No, I'm not saying that scraping is the new/ancient cure all.  But it has been used for a lot more than muscle aches over the centuries.

• This is all in addition to all the stuff we already knew that scraping can do - Here is a nice list I made that combines things this article said, with stuff I already had on it from Thai medicine.

Releasing excess heat
Treating colds, flus and fevers
Treating many forms of headache including tension affected migraines
Dispersing stagnation
Releasing fascial restriction
Breaking down scar tissue
Reducing inflammation
Treating heatstroke
Relaxing bound muscles
Releasing adhesions
Releasing accumulated waste
Increasing circulation (400% increase in surface circulation of blood)
Releasing stuck wind
Reducing inflammatory symptoms in chronic illness

Scraping is done throughout southeast Asia and in northern Thailand you can find traditional doctors who specialize in it, complete with ceremony and incantations to boost the effect and protect the recipient.  But scraping is also kitchen medicine.  It's done by mothers to the children, and friends to friends.

Knowing Thai medical theory takes it from the realm of folk healing into more advanced therapy, and it is an amazing addition to any Thai bodywork practice.  Personally it's a technique that I have a particular affinity for.  Mostly I use porcelain soup spoons to do scraping, but you can see part of my collection of traditional tools in the photo below.  
 

What my teacher said

I'm organizing my notes from when my teacher was here earlier this month and thought I would share some direct quotes.

"listening to the body means we work on a place, listen to what is happening in the body, and adjust our treatment to meet the needs of the body"

"if you don’t go layer by layer, it’s like an assault on the body"

“Many techniques are not necessary - do the same technique over rather than switching it up a bunch.  It's better for sensing if you stick with one technique as you can get feedback from the body easier.  If you keep switching, the body is trying to settle and adjust, and then you switch it up, and the body has to settle and adjust again.  Sometimes it’s good, but not always."

"Medicine and bodywork is no different from any other art form.  Anyone who is really good at music, dance etc., has practiced for a long time.  In medicine the body of knowledge is the same, the techniques are the same, but how it’s expressed is individual to the doctors - but just like piano, they have to first study deeply the proper way."