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Disclosure
There’s been lots about ear candling in the press over the past few months. It involves the tapered unlit end of a lit candle being placed in the ear to draw out impurities. It supposedly pulls earwax and toxins out of the ear, removing them via the ear canal due to a pressure vacuum created by the flame. Ear candling also apparently helps the sinuses. The candle is not a conventional one. It’s about a foot long and made from linen, covered in wax. Follow DOSE contributor Charlotte, as she finds out what it’s really like…
How does it feel?
I went along to Tara’s Beauty Salon, a clean, no-frills beauty salon in the heart of London’s Victoria.
The 30-minute treatment is more relaxing than it sounds, as it starts with a lovely ear massage.
I lie on one side. My ear feels blocked but not unpleasantly so, as the narrow part of the candle is inserted and held there for ten minutes, before switching to the other side.
The candle burns down on each ear until it’s just a few inches long, and it’s neither hot nor painful.
Tara tells me that when the flame burns quickly, it means there are few toxins. When it burns so slowly it almost dies, there are lots of impurities to be drawn out. Mine is speedy, I’m pleased to find.
At the end of the treatment, Tara unwraps the candle to show me the internal linen layer. I peer at what has been collected. The thin, hard bits, she tells me, are ear wax. I have much more on the right ear, for some reason.
And whether or not it’s a placebo effect, knowing that it has all been released is incredibly liberating.
Hopi ear candle, £34
Image by Shuttershock
