I woke up this morning to another article about an athlete’s career ending because they got a pneumothorax (lung puncture) after receiving dry needling from a physical therapist. This upsets me because 1) this injury is happening way too often, 2) gives all of us in the needling professions a bad look, and 3) is completely avoidable with proper education.

I have seen this all over social media, on bumper stickers, and coffee mugs and I cringe every time. While I 100% believe “you reap what you sow,” and “what you project you attract,” I cannot buy into the notion of “good vibes only” for the sole reason that it does not allow space for us to feel the full range of our humanness. It is a completely unnatural message in our world; even physics tells us every object or energy has an equal and opposite, and Traditional East Asian Medicine is based on the principles of yin and yang, opposites which cannot be separated.