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.
Tim Baglio, MSAOM, LAc
Tim Baglio owns and operates the Bellingham Chinese Herb Pharmacy and Birchwood Acupuncture Clinic in Bellingham, WA. Tim graduated from the Seattle Institute of Oriental Medicine in 2007, and representing the Hung Kuen tradition of Foshan, has studied extensively in China and Korea.