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.
Elaine Stillerman, LMT
Elaine Stillerman, LMT, has been a New York State licensed massage therapist since 1978, and began her pioneering work in prenatal, labor support and postpartum massage therapy in 1980. She is author of MotherMassage: A Handbook for Relieving the Discomforts of Pregnancy (Bantam, 1992), The Encyclopedia of Bodywork (Facts On File, 1996) and her latest work Modalities for Massage and Bodywork (Mosby, 2009), as well as numerous articles on prenatal massage therapy. She also is the developer and instructor of the professional certification workshop "MotherMassage®: Massage During Pregnancy." Visit www.mothermassage.net for more information.