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.
Nicole Keane, MS, LMT
Nicole Keane is an artist, teacher and manual therapist who has practiced advanced myofascial, visceral and neural manual therapy since 2002. She recently released a curriculum (http://www.elementaladvancedmt.com/courses) that blends science-based knowledge and clinical observation she has gathered within her career, together with an evolved look at the transformational processes of nature, observed throughout the five elements. Information regarding five-element nutrition, trauma-informed manual therapy, as well as her 2021 book, The Tao of the Polyvagal Theory: A Five Element Perspective for a Future of Healing the Spirit and Balancing the Autonomic Nervous System, can be found at: https://elementaladvanced.com/the-tao-of-the-polyvagal-theory/.