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.
Aidan Keeva, DACM, LAc
Dr. Aidan Keeva is a doctor of Chinese medicine, writer and teacher whose clinical practice orients around classical methods. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Resonant Body: Anatomy, Perception, and the Phenomenology of Chinese Medicine; and co-founder of the Green Mountain Institute of Chinese Medicine, a center for classical medicine and spiritual self-cultivation based in southern Vermont. Learn more at AidanKeeva.com and GMICM.org.