Ear Candle

Today after my At Home Group meeting, I went in for one of my beloved foot massages. My masseuse and her friend were chatting and giggling away. I decided it was a good opportunity to ask them about something that I had always wondered about: ear candling. They tried to describe it to me and the only word they could say were "relaxing" and the rest they tried to pantomime. The put their hands together and and their head to the side like they were sleeping and they put their fingers on their temples with crazy looks on ther faces. So of course, after all of this work on their part, I had to get my ear candled.

The masseuse took me upstairs and had me lay down, and she stuck a hollow candle in my ear. Then she lit the candle, pressed it deeply in my ear and massage the back of my ear and along my jaw line. This was somewhat relaxing because she was rubbing behind my ear, but also extremely not relaxing because there was a lit candle in my ear. As the candle burned down, the sizzling sound of the flame got louder and louder. At this point I still didn't understand the purpose of this and I was sort of scared...I kept thinking about how when I was little and my mom told me that if I stuck a Q-tip in my ear too far, I would go deaf. This made me a little worried about having the whole ear candling process. After it was done, the lady showed me what had come out of my ear. It looked like a bunch of lumps of dried candle wax with some ear wax mixed in. Not very pleasant...

When I got home I had a headache in my forehead, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything because I seem to get alot of headaches lately. I googled ear candling and it turns out it is not such a good thing to do...someone in the UK had hot wax drip into her ear and burn her ear drum. It bummed me out because I had hoped I had discovered a new and wonderful massage technique that I could enjoy for the rest of my time in Hong Kong! I am glad I tried it though because the massage ladies were so excited about trying to describe it to me and seemed elated when I decided to give it a try. I kept asking them if it would hurt and they would say, "No pain, no pain!" I think they thought I was hilarious because they were giggling so much. I think the maids in our building think I am hilarious too, because when they come into clean the one maid says "Jo san" (Good Morning) with a huge grin on her face.