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.
Honora Lee Wolfe, Dipl. Ac.
Honora Lee Wolfe has been involved in professional health care education since 1976. She helped found the Boulder School of Massage Therapy in Colorado, serving as the school's director for the first five years of its existence. She then went on to study tui na at the Shanghai College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, completing her acupuncture training in 1988.
Ms. Wolfe has taught at numerous national and regional acupuncture colleges throughout North America and Europe, and has authored or co-authored more than a half-dozen books related to acupuncture and Chinese medicine. She currently maintains a busy practice in Boulder, Colorado which specializes in musculoskeletal and nervous system pain and sports medicine.
Ms. Wolfe currently lives in Boulder, Colo., and is the author of Points for Profit: The Essential Guide to Practice Success for Acupuncturists.