A beating? A weird skin condition? Had she been mugged by an octopus?

Nope.

She'd been "cupped," and lots of other folks are walking around with similar marks on their bodies.

Cupping is an ancient Chinese procedure performed by acupuncturists to treat everything from lower-back pain and arthritis to lung congestion, even infertility. Think of it as an intense, vigorous massage — with a whole lot of suction action.

During a cupping procedure, heated cups are placed over the skin and left there for anywhere from a few minutes to as long as 30. As the air inside the cup cools, the skin and underlying tissue is "sucked" up into the cup — thus the marks — increasing blood circulation to the area.

Like Paltrow, 69-year-old Hal Cowan of Overland Park, Kan., is a cupping devotee. He's had the procedure done on and off for five years now to alleviate the pain of a persistent shoulder problem. The procedure doesn't hurt, he says, and the pain relief is immediate.

"People will say 'What is this, mysticism?' " says Cowan, a retiree and busy volunteer at Church of the Resurrection. "No, it isn't. This has been done in China for thousands of years."

The other day, acupuncturist Mary Zhang demonstrated flash-fire cupping, a common version, on a willing co-worker, Christie Yerby, medical director of Robin Chiropractic and Acupuncture Center in Overland Park.

Zhang learned acupuncture in China more than 10 years ago and has taught classes on Chinese medicine at several local hospitals and colleges. Most of her cupping clients have some type of chronic pain, though she also pairs the procedure with acupuncture on women who are having trouble conceiving.

Yerby lay face down on a massage table, stripped to the waist. Zhang picked up a cotton ball with a surgical clamp, dipped the cotton in alcohol and set it afire with a lighter. Next she picked up a small glass cup shaped like a tiny fish bowl.

Zhang pushed the cotton-ball torch inside the cup, pulled it out and swiftly plopped the bowl onto an acupuncture point on Yerby's back.

Because the heat depressurized the air inside the cup, creating a vacuum, the cup stuck tightly to Yerby's back. Within seconds, the skin underneath the cup began to slightly darken as blood rushed to the spot.

Cupping doesn't always involve fire. Another method of suction involves cups with valves. A small, hand-operated pump attached to the cup's valve is used to suck the air out.

People who've been cupped say that it doesn't hurt, that it feels like a gentle squeezing, or tightening, of the skin.

"What I've experienced with it, you don't even feel it," Cowan says. "You just lay there after the cups go on. You begin to get relief pretty immediately."

Kansas City, Mo., acupuncturist Kathleen Coleton finds that cupping is most beneficial for people with muscle aches, especially on the back and shoulders. She likens the suction treatment to grabbing onto a muscle and not letting go of it until it relaxes and releases its tension.

"I don't think cupping is appropriate for every part of the body," says Coleton, a member of the Missouri Acupuncturist Advisory Committee, which licenses and regulates all acupuncturists in the state. "It's very limited in terms of what it's good for."

For instance, cupping wouldn't work on something like Parkinson's disease, because "it doesn't affect the neurological system" Coleton says. And someone with fibromyalgia, who may be physically weak and especially achy, "a lot of times can't take a real aggressive treatment" of cupping, she says.

"And at certain points of the body there's not enough muscle. You probably wouldn't, but could, do it on the face. And you probably wouldn't want to do it on the front of the neck ... but on the back of the neck where people get tension headaches."

Depending on how many cups are applied, a procedure can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. A standard fee for a one-hour treatment in Kansas City is about $60.