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.
Analisa Baker, LAc
Analisa Baker, a 2016 graduate of Five Branches University's Master of Traditional Chinese Medicine program, is a practitioner of integrative health including traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, Chi Nei Tsang and qi gong. She also has more than 15 years of writing experience crafting byline articles, press releases and case studies.