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.
Suzanne Friedman, LAc
Suzanne Friedman is an acupuncturist, herbalist and doctor of medical qi gong therapy. She is chair of the Medical Qi Gong Department at the Acupuncture & Integrative Medicine College in Berkeley, Calif., where she runs the Medical Qi Gong Anmo Asian Bodywork Certification program.