I tried acupuncture last week, for the very first time in Canada.

There were a number of practitioners listed in the Yellow pages, a surprise considering that most people I talk to have never tried acupuncture, or any kind of Chinese medicine. I understand why they might not want to endure a treatment that isn’t proven by Western methods. But the Eastern approach to healing makes sense to me, so if faith is required, there shouldn’t be a problem.

I chose the first Chinese name, hoping to find someone who’d been trained in China. Dr. Ke, an MD from Beijing, is an acupuncture specialist who’s been practicing for twenty-eight years. In Canada, acupuncture is considered a paramedical specialty. You don’t actually need a medical degree to practice.

The session started with a medical history and physical exam. Dr. Ke explored the range of motion of my hips and asked me what result I was hoping for. After she finished her assessment, she decided acupuncture should help.

She took a bucket of needles off her supply shelf. One by one, she tore off their plastic wrapping and stuck them into the alcohol-swabbed skin at the small of my back. It didn’t hurt.

She inserted them at wide intervals along both sides of my spine, working up toward the middle of my back, down toward the tailbone, and out to the sides of my hips. She used extra needles on the left hip and hamstring. I knew from experience not to turn around to look.

The idea behind acupuncture is that when the needles are placed at precise points, they stimulate nerve endings just below the skin. This increases electrical activity through nerve conduction. Placed in succession, acupuncture needles increase energy flow in the body.

After the needles were in place, Dr. Ke brought out a small electrical unit. She explained that the unit would send an electric impulse to the tip of each needle. I would feel a “zing” from the current, but it wouldn’t hurt. Then she connected the electrodes to the needles and turned the power on.

“We’ll start on this side, in the sciatic area” she said. “You’ll feel a shock.”

The shocks felt like tiny rubber bands snapping. I felt them only on a few needles each wave, which was pulsing at about the same rate as a heartbeat.

She set a timer, turned off the lights, and left the room. About ten minutes later she came back in, wheeled a heat lamp over to the bed, and turned it on. I could feel the warmth in my back as the needles grew hotter. After a few more minutes the power unit turned off and a bell sounded. Dr. Ke removed the sun lamp, the electrodes, and the needles.

“I want to try something else” she said. “It won’t hurt, but it will leave a mark. It’s like a little cup. It helps circulation.”

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve seen those cups in the night markets. I know what the marks look like.”

“You’ve been to China?” she asked, surprised.

“Taiwan. That’s where I tried acupuncture. I lived there.”

We started a new conversation with the giddy energy people have when they discover common ground. Dr. Ku placed the little plastic cups along my spine and around my hips, suctioning the air out of each one as she went.

The cups were tight and pinched my skin. I had always wondered, when I saw the treatment in the night markets, what the purpose was and if it was a superstitious or medical practice. I’d guess now that it’s similar to K-tape, which pulls on the skin to create negative pressure underneath. Suction cups are more uncomfortable than K-tape or even acupuncture needles.

“You should come back again,” Dr. Ke told me as I was leaving. “It might take a few tries to find out if it’s working.”

I made an appointment for the following week. I was feeling great already, though, as if I’d just done an hour of yoga.

It wasn’t until later in the day that I learned how the suction cups really work.

“They have fire inside,” my friend told me as we were dining together. She had grown up in Shanghai, so she knew about Chinese medicine. “It makes heat on your body to relax the sore parts.”

“Fire?” I asked. “I didn’t notice any fire. Is there always fire? I mean, is there sometimes fire and sometimes not?”

“I don’t know. I’m not so familiar with this treatment.”

Apparently, “cupping” can be done with fire (“traditional fire cupping”) where the inside of the cup is set aflame before it’s turned over on the skin, or without, in which case the air is suctioned out of the cup with a pump.

The cups create a space for energy flow within the body, but that’s not their only therapeutic benefit.  They’re supposed to draw impurities, like toxins and old lymph, out of the body through the skin by their suction effect. The marks left by the suction cups are said to be darkest in areas of injury or disrupted circulation.

I checked for marks when I got home that night: two large red circles on the lower left side of my back, above my left hip. If all I have to go on is the placebo effect, at least that’s something.