Gua Sha has had a lot of press on social media over the last little while for cosmetic purposes and part of our nightly skin-care routine but its origin is rooted deeply in Traditional Chinese Medicine channel theory and as a physical therapy to stimulate the body’s surface for:
Releasing the exterior for the common cold so that the pathogen can escape through the cou li and wei qi space = this means regulating the immune function as well
Increasing Qi + Blood flow aka circulation -- for stagnant Qi + blood felt as pain or discomfort trapped in the body through the musculoskeletal system – (e.g. tight traps, tight calves, overworked IT bands and treat acute or chronic injuries to soft tissues).
Gua means to: scrape with a smooth-edged gua sha tool made of bian-stone, buffalo or yak horn, jade or a house-hold spoon.
Sha describes the small, raised petechiae spots – which allows for more flexibility of the fascial system.
From a Western Medicine perspective, recent research findings have also shown that this ‘gua sha’ scraping technique can increase microperfusion by 400% and upregulate heme oxygenase 1 – through a mechanism called ferro heme metabolism. Meaning ‘gua sha’ has an antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anti-proliferative effect, meaning it guards against tumor growth and has immune regulatory effects in vascular cells .
This traditional technique is very different from Graston, as graston is not using the channel theory used in Traditional Chinese Medicine.