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.
Jacob Godwin, LAc, MAOM
Jacob Godwin graduated from the Academy of Oriental Medicine at Austin and is currently in private practice in Austin, Texas. He has studied Daoism since age 17, and enjoys sharing the wealth of wisdom in Oriental medicine with his community and the world through his practice, his writing and his lectures.