I'm still receiving inquiries about my acupuncture course so I'm providing an update here.
I suspended my course at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, as soon as I realised that this was a dangerous virus. The situation today is better, thanks largely to the effrectiveness of vaccination, but contrary to what some people seem to believe the pandemic is not over. This means that it would still not be safe to hold a course of this kind, involving as it does close-quarter contact for instruction in needling techniques.
As it happened, the outbreak of the pandemic occurred when my course had been running for forty years,, and I was already thinking about retiring. I've now decided that the time for this has come.
I wouldn't have gone on teaching the course for so long if I hadn't enjoyed it—and if my wife hadn't been willing to undertake the organisation, administration, and most of the driving. Thanks to the course we have made many new friends and visited parts of Britain which we would not have seen otherwise. It has also taken us abroad: several times to the Irish Republic, which I already knew from my student days in Dublin, and to Greece and Iceland.
I've gained a lot from meeting many different health professionals. I've been struck by how much common ground there is between acupuncture and manual therapies such as physiotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic. As a result I now see acupuncture as one form of peripheral sensory stimulation that modulates pain perception.
Although I shall no longer be teaching directly, information about the approach to acuupuncture I favour will still be available in print. I have published numerous articals, mostly in the journal Acupuncture in Medicine., My acupuncture textbook, All You Need to Know About Acupuncture, is available both as a paperback and as an e-book.
This is the third acupuncture textbook I've written. The first two were published by mainstream publishes but this one is self-published so it will be available indefinitely. It is different from the others in being less a textbook and more like a practical manual, with illustrations. It is also closely related to my acupuncture course and in fact contains pretty much all the material that was in the course in its latest incarnation.
Finally, I'm still available to answer questions on acupuncture from former course participants or anyone else. Please email me at ac%acampbell.uk (replace % with @).