A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Aaron Leon Kenin, LAc, MSOM
Leon Kenin is a licensed acupuncturist with a Master of Science in Oriental Medicine (MSOM) from Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, and a Doctorate in Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine (PCOM). He holds a BA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs with a second major in Latin American Studies and is fully bilingual in Spanish and English.  In his clinical practice, Leon focuses on sports and orthopedic acupuncture, and muscular pain such as sciatica-like disorders, back pain, neck, shoulder, arm and hand pain. He uses a personalized approach that combines traditional Chinese acupuncture and herbology with the specialized techniques of trigger-point and motor-point acupuncture, electro-acupuncture, cupping, moxibustion, gua sha, and tui na.