Cupping got a lot of attention during the summer Olympics when swimmer Michael Phelps was spotted with some odd looking round bruises on his shoulders and upper back. Needless to say, we were fielding questions left and right about what cupping is, what we use it for, whether it's painful, and if it actually works. What is cupping? Cupping is what we call a decompression myofascial release technique. What all those fancy words really mean is that it creates space in the tissu