| Gua sha | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Chinese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 刮痧 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | "scraping sha-bruises" | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Vietnamese name | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Vietnamese alphabet | cạo gió | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chữ Nôm | 𠜯䬔 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | to scrape wind | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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Gua sha, or kerokan (in Indonesia), is a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practice in which a tool is used to scrape people's skin in order to produce light petechiae. Practitioners believe that gua sha releases unhealthy bodily matter from blood stasis within sore, tired, stiff, or injured muscle areas to stimulate new oxygenated blood flow to the areas, thus promoting healing and recovery.
Gua sha is sometimes referred to as "scraping", "spooning" or "coining" by English speakers. The treatment has also been known by the French name, tribo-effleurage.[1]
Gua sha is a pseudoscience, has no known health benefits and can have adverse effects, some of them potentially serious.[2]
- ^ Huard & Wong (1977), p.126. Also cited is a French romanization for the same set of two Chinese characters: koua sha.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
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