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.
Clayton Shiu, PhD, MSTOM
Dr. Clayton Shiu earned a Bachelor of Science in Human Physiology from Boston University and a Master of Science in Traditional Oriental Medicine from Pacific College of Oriental Medicine. He received his PhD in Acupuncture and Moxibustion from the Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and completed his residency at the First Teaching Hospital of Tianjin, a highly regarded teaching facility and the largest stroke rehabilitation acupuncture and moxibustion center in China. He founded The Shiu Clinic in 2019 in New York City, where he currently practices TCM and nanopuncture. He holds faculty positions at the Academy of Chinese Culture and Health Sciences and the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, teaching stroke rehabilitation courses for their doctoral programs.