Field NOtes Blog
Posts from Michael McMahon
Field Notes is the place where our clinical interests meet genuine curiosity about how bodies work, heal, and change.
Teaching as Freedom: Pedagogy, Debt, and the Acupuncture Profession (podcast)
In this conversation, Michael and Bex talk about what it actually means to teach this medicine, flipped learning, backwards design, why safety and fun belong in every anatomy syllabus, and why the institutional status quo is often standing in the way of best educational practices. They also get into the financial realities of running a small business as a bodyworker, including debt, retirement, SEP IRAs, raising your rates every year, and what it means to be scared about your future in a profession that never teaches you to plan for it.
Collagen is Like Chicken Wire??? On the NYT Interstitium Article
When a recent NYT article framed the interstitium as a new scientific discovery, it overlooked what East Asian medicine has mapped and practiced for thousands of years. The piece also leans on flawed metaphors and an outdated mechanical model of the body that obscures more than it reveals. Western science is one way of knowing among many, and the body will always exceed the models built around it.