The Influential Practitioner
Episode 3: Say the Thing You Actually Believe
Transcript
Episode number three of The Influential Practitioner. There's a version of what I believe about the body that fits neatly on a website. Acupuncture improves blood flow, supports hormone balance, helps with IVF outcomes. All true, and all easy to say. And then there's the version I built my practice on. And that's that the body is intelligent and not broken. That a woman's nervous system has more to do with her fertility than most people realize. That the heart and the uterus are connected, and I don't mean that as a metaphor. For a long time, I mostly said the first version in public and saved the second for the private treatment room. This episode is about why so many of us do that, and what changes when you stop.
INTRO
Welcome to The Influential Practitioner. I'm Michelle Oravitz, fertility acupuncturist, podcaster, and founder of The Wholesome Lotus. I built this show around one truth I had to learn the hard way: if you want to heal more people, you have to reach more people. This is where practitioners learn to market from alignment, move through doubt, and become more influential in their communities. If this is you, you're in the right place. So let's get started.
EPISODE
Welcome to The Influential Practitioner. I'm Michelle Oravitz. Most practitioners who decide to get visible hit the same wall a few months in. They start posting, and everything they post sounds like everyone else. Five tips for better sleep. Why you should eat more protein. The benefits of acupuncture for stress. Fine. True. Forgettable. They're showing up, but nobody's leaning in, and eventually they decide that content just doesn't work for them. Content works. And the reason the content is generic is almost never that you have nothing to say. It's that you're editing out the thing you would actually say, because you're worried about how it would land.
So today is about your voice. Not your tone. Not your branding. Your voice. What you believe about the body and the work that's a little different from the person down the street, and why saying it out loud is the whole work.
Let me start with what the safe version looked like for me, because I want you to recognize it if you're living in it. When I started putting myself out there, I did what I think most of us do. I looked at who was already visible in my field, and I tried to sound like them. Clinical, credible, careful. I leaned on the language that couldn't be questioned. Blood flow, hormones, studies. None of that was dishonest. I believed in the science. I read the research. But it wasn't the whole picture of what I thought.
And the part I was leaving out was the part that made the work mine. The part about the nervous system. About what I kept seeing in the treatment room, which was that the women who conceived weren't always the ones with the best labs. Often they were the ones who had found some way to feel safe in their bodies again, who'd stopped bracing, who'd let something soften. And I would say that to my patients one-on-one, but I hesitated to say it publicly. Because who was I to say it? There's no randomized controlled trial for feeling safe. And I could already hear a reproductive endocrinologist in my head saying, that's not medicine, that's just a feeling.
I know this pattern well, because imposter syndrome was loud for me at every threshold. When I had to speak every week in front of a networking group as a new practitioner, each time the pull was the same. Say the thing nobody can argue with. Stay small and correct.
There's a sentence at the center of everything I do now. My programs, my book, the way I explain fertility to every new patient. Your body won't prioritize making a baby until it believes you're safe. That's not a flaw in the design. That's intelligence. A body under threat puts its resources toward survival, not growing new life. Our work is to help the body feel safe enough to shift.
So here's what I want you to notice about that sentence. It didn't come from a course. It didn't come from a textbook. It came from years of watching real women in real treatment rooms, and from Chinese medicine, which has understood the relationship between the heart, the emotions, and the reproductive system for thousands of years. For a long time, it lived only in conversations with patients. It was the kind of thing I'd say quietly when someone asked me what was wrong with her, and I told her nothing was wrong with her.
So I started to say this out loud, and I got so many more responses from people who felt seen and heard, and who also felt that it gave them some sense of relief, to start to believe in their bodies again. What I can tell you is this: the sentence I was most hesitant to say became the reason people found me. It's the reason a patient sends her friend with a specific description, instead of “she's just a great acupuncturist.” It's the reason someone chose me over the other fertility acupuncturists in a ten-mile radius. Not because I'm better with a needle, but because I see the problem a little differently and I'm willing to say so. And the people who really resonate with that are the people who find me.
So why is it that we do this? Why do practitioners with real, specific beliefs about the body sand them down into something no one can object to? I think there are three reasons, and all of them are understandable.
The first is that we're trained to defer. Years of school teach you to cite your sources, hedge your claims, and stay inside your scope. That's good training, and it keeps people safe. But it also builds the habit of never saying anything you can't footnote. And a lot of what you know after years in practice, you can't footnote. You've seen it over and over, and you know it's real, but it's clinical experience, not a paper. So you keep it to yourself.
The second is that we're afraid of the people we admire. For me, it was the doctors. I wanted the REs to respect me. I wanted to be the acupuncturist they referred to. So I leaned toward the language they'd approve of. What took me a while to see was that the doctors were never my audience. The woman crying in her car after another negative was. She didn't need me to sound like her doctor. She already had a doctor. She needed me to say the thing her doctor wasn't saying.
The third is the one we don't like to admit. Saying what you believe means you can be wrong in public. If you only say safe things, nobody can ever tell you you're wrong, because you never said anything. Generic content is armor. It's boring, but it's safe. The trouble with armor is that it protects you from almost nothing, because almost nothing is attacking. It just keeps you invisible.
I want to get precise about what I mean by voice, because “find your voice” gets said a lot, and it usually means nothing. Your voice is not your writing style. It's not whether you use emojis or how you format a caption. Those are surface. Your voice is the specific set of things you believe about your work that not everyone in your field believes. The places where you'd push back if a colleague said the opposite. The things you find yourself saying to patients again and again that you didn't learn in school, that came from paying attention.
So let me give you mine, so you can see what I mean. I believe the body is intelligent, and that most of what we call dysfunction is protection. I believe the nervous system is upstream of the hormones, and that you can't fix the downstream by pushing harder on it. I believe fertility is a state of being, not a checklist, and that how a woman is matters more than what she does. I believe the heart and the uterus are connected through what Chinese medicine calls the Bao Mai, and that grief, fear, and the sense of not being safe show up in the reproductive system in ways Western medicine doesn't have a name for yet. I believe creativity and fertility come from the same place, and that a woman who's cut off from one is often cut off from the other.
Some of those are mainstream in my world. Some make people uncomfortable. A few of them sound strange if you've never sat in a treatment room. That's fine. That's the point. Your list will be different, but it will be yours. And I promise you, you have your own list. You've just been treating it as private.
So how do you actually find it? Because some of you might be thinking, I don't have five beliefs like that, I just do my work. You definitely have them, but it may take a little digging to figure it out. So here are four ways to dig.
One: notice what you say in the room that you've never put in a post. For a week, pay attention to the moments in a session where you go a little off script. Think about the things you say when a patient is frustrated, or scared, or asks, “But why is this happening to me?” Those are the moments where your real beliefs live, when you're making that connection with your patients. Write them down as close to word for word as you can. Don't clean them up.
Two: when you scroll through content in your field, what makes you roll your eyes? What makes you think, well, that's not the whole picture? Disagreement is also a compass that can point you toward what you believe. If every “just take this supplement” post irritates you because the nervous system is being ignored, that irritation is your voice trying to get out.
Three: ask what your best patients came for. Not the ones who came for a deal. The ones who found you, stayed, and sent their friends. What did they say when they first reached out? And what did they thank you for? It's almost never “you were very professional.” It's “you were the first person who explained it in a way that made sense,” or “you saw the whole picture,” or “you didn't make me feel crazy.” Those phrases are your voice, reflected back by the people it reached.
Four: look at the parts of yourself you've been keeping out of your work. This one is personal for me, because art was my first language as a kid. I was told it was too risky, so I went into architecture and spent years feeling like a bird in a cage before I finally found my way to Chinese medicine. I still paint. And for a long time, I kept that completely separate from my practice, because what does painting have to do with fertility? Then I started paying attention, and I realized: everything. The same block that keeps a woman from creating on a canvas can keep her from creating in her body. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be a canvas, but it can be the creative act of allowing yourself to get into an abstract, feminine state, allowing things to come in, which releases that need for perfectionism.
When I let that into my work, it didn't make me less credible. It actually made me more specific. It made me the only one saying it. Whatever your version of that is, the yoga, the faith, the science background, the years as a nurse before you became a coach, it belongs in your voice. It's not a distraction from your expertise. It's the lens that makes your expertise yours.
So when I talk to practitioners about this, I hear one objection more than any other. Some version of, “I'm not a rebel. I don't have hot takes. I just do the work well.” Good. You don't need to be a rebel to have a voice. Think about the last patient who made you angry on her behalf. The woman who felt dismissed, who was told her labs were normal, that it was all in her head. The one who was handed a prescription and no explanation. Notice what you wanted to say to the person who dismissed her. Notice the heat in it. That heat is a point of view.
It's not rebellion. It's a careful, kind, thorough clinician who has watched a system fail the people in front of her and has drawn a conclusion. You've earned the right to say that conclusion out loud, and you say it with a clarity nobody else has, because you've seen it a hundred times. It doesn't have to be original. Plenty of people have said the body is intelligent. What makes it yours is that you've watched it be true in your room, with your patients. That's not a private opinion. That's the reason someone should choose you.
I want to spend a minute on the fear underneath all of this, because I don't want to pretend it isn't there. When you say what you actually believe, you can be wrong, and someone can disagree. Someone with more letters after their name can say you're overstepping. And in health work, that fear has real weight. We're talking about people's bodies. Nobody wants to be the practitioner who said something irresponsible.
So let me draw a line, because this fear gets used to justify saying nothing at all. There's a difference between saying, “I believe the nervous system is upstream of the hormones, and here's what I've seen,” and saying, “Acupuncture cures infertility.” One is a perspective, offered with your reasoning, that people can weigh for themselves. The other is a promise you cannot back up. So you definitely want to be responsible with your voice. You don't need to make promises to have a point of view.
And there's a difference between being wrong and being different. Most of the time, when I've worried a belief was too much, it was that I was different. And different feels like wrong when you're not used to expressing it. So different is not necessarily wrong. Different is the whole reason someone would choose you over someone else.
Here's something I've come to trust. If you try, you have a fifty percent chance. If you don't, you have zero. And that applies to saying what you believe in public. The discomfort is usually where the gold is. You're going to be wrong sometimes, so admit it when it does happen, adjust, and keep going. But just make sure that your statements are responsible, and that you're not promising something you shouldn't be promising. Being occasionally wrong in public is a small price, but being permanently invisible is a big one.
Now here's the thing. There's a trap on the other side of this, and I want to name it so that you don't fall into it. When practitioners finally decide to have a voice, some of them overcorrect. They think a voice means being contrarian. Hot takes, picking fights with the medical establishment, saying things like “everything your doctor told you is wrong.” I understand the appeal. It gets attention. It feels bold. But it's not a voice. It's a costume.
Your voice isn't about being against things. It's about being for something, specifically and consistently. I'm not against reproductive endocrinologists. I work alongside them. I refer patients to them. I'm for the nervous system being part of the conversation, and I'll say that in every room, including the rooms with doctors in them, which was not the case before I found my voice. The test is simple. Would you say it the same way to a patient's face, to a colleague you respect, and on a stage? If yes, it's your voice. If you'd say it louder online than you would to a person, it's performance. You don't need to be louder. You need to be clearer. And clarity is what people lean toward. Nobody saves a hot take. They save the thing that finally made sense.
One more thing before the practical part, because it trips people up. Some of you are holding back because you're not sure yet, and you think, what if I say I believe something, and then later I believe something else? Won't I look inconsistent? My own thinking has moved. I trained in Ayurveda before Chinese medicine, and I added hypnotherapy. The way I explain fertility today puts the nervous system and safety in the body at the foundation, in a way I wouldn't have articulated as clearly in the first years of my practice. And that's not a contradiction. That's a practitioner paying attention over time.
A voice that evolves is a sign that you're still learning. A voice that never moves is a sign that you're stagnant. So say what you believe now. Say it with the confidence of someone who has seen it and the openness of someone who's still watching. “Here's what I've noticed” is a complete sentence. You don't need to be finished to be worth listening to. And if you do change your mind, say that too. “I used to think this, and here's what I've seen since.” That's one of the most trustworthy things a practitioner can say, because it proves you're paying attention to your patients instead of your brand. And ultimately, this is about getting more awareness, and really taking what you've learned and serving others too.
Let me tell you what I've seen change from saying what I actually believe. The audience changes shape. The people who find you are the right people. They come in already understanding how you see things, because you told them. First sessions get easier. You're not convincing anyone. You're meeting people who already chose you for the way you think.
Referrals get easier. When a patient sends a friend, she sends her with a sentence. “You have to see her. She's the one who talks about the nervous system and fertility.” That sentence is your voice doing the referring for you. Stay generic, and the sentence becomes “she's a great acupuncturist,” which describes a thousand people.
Doors open with people you admire. The podcast was the turning point for me, hands down. It forced me past the fear of speaking, it forced me to keep researching and stay current, and it put me in conversation with experts I'd looked up to for years. Being around greatness awakens your own. And when I eventually asked some of those guests to endorse my work, they said yes. Not because I sounded like everyone else, but because I had a clear point of view they could stand behind.
And the work itself gets better. This is the one people don't expect. When you say what you believe in public, you have to understand it well enough to explain it. You get sharper. You read more. You think harder about why the things you've noticed are actually true. You may even find scientific research to back it. Saying it makes you better at it. None of that comes from a new strategy. It comes from letting out the thing you already know.
So, three things to do this week before I let you go. One: write down five things you believe about your work that not everyone in your field would say. Not tips. Beliefs. “I believe that.” Five sentences. They can be rough. Nobody sees the list but you.
Two: pick the one that scares you most, but make sure it's a responsible belief to share and you're not promising anything, and say it once this week, somewhere in public. A post, a video, an email, a talk. Say it the way you'd say it to a patient. Don't argue or defend it. Just say it and let it sit.
Three: watch what happens. Not the numbers. The messages, the replies, and the one person who says, “I've never heard it put that way before,” or “You know, I always felt like that, but I never knew how to put it into words.” That's the signal. That's the sound of your voice reaching the person it was meant for.
Write the five beliefs today if you can. Open a note on your phone and finish the sentence “I believe” five times. It's twenty minutes, and it might be the most useful twenty minutes you spend on your business this month. And if you're still working on getting the seen part, I shared the moves I made after walking into an office with zero appointments in a free guide called You Built It. They Didn't Come. Eight steps, in order, with a thirty-day checklist, and you can find the link in the show notes. So thank you so much for being here, and I will see you next time.
OUTRO
Thank you so much for spending this time with me on The Influential Practitioner. You've built something meaningful. Now it's time to let the right people find it, because when you reach more people, you get to help more people. For free resources and courses to grow your visibility, visit theinfluentialpractitioner.com. And if this episode helped you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a practitioner friend. Until next time, keep showing up and sharing your gift.
