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.
Tianhao Liu, LAc, MB, Dipl. OM
Prof. Tianhao Liu's family has four generations of history in this field, and he was also a private student of multiple practitioners; some of them have more than 300 years of family practice histories. He acquired his medical bachelor's degree in China, majoring in TCM integrated with Western medicine. Later, he acquired his Master of Science in Oriental Medicine degree in the U.S. Currently, he is a professor and clinical supervisor at Virginia University of Integrative Medicine and an LAc in Virginia.