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2023 Conference

Saturday 16 November 2024

£129.00

Out of stock

Welcome!

We would like to welcome you to this year’s fantastic AAC Conference which will take place on Saturday 16 November 2024. Our beautiful venue Mary Ward House is situated in Central London just moments away from King’s Cross train station. 

AAC members only –  Please contact us for a coupon code although students do receive a rather generous discount to attend!

AAC Conference up close…

We are delighted to invite you to the AAC conference which will be held this year on Saturday 16 November in Central London.

This year’s conference promises to be our most exciting yet, with a line up of speakers who are set to inspire, educate, and challenge us all to think differently.

Our teachers include:

Naava Carman – a pioneering force within our profession. She has been in practice since 1999 and is an experienced fertility, gynaecological and obstetric acupuncturist and herbalist.

Paul Hougham – an acupuncturist with 30 years of practical experience. He is a school teacher and educationalist wrestling with the evolving science underlying knowledge and wellbeing.

Lara McLure – a director of Evidence Based Acupuncture, research teacher at the Northern College of Acupuncture, and a clinical hypnotherapist

Robin Sunley – An acupuncturist employed by the NHS at James Cook University Hospital. He provides pre and post treatments to patients undergoing surgery and cancer treatments.

In addition, we are pleased to confirm that the AAC’s Chris Davies and Clare Ward will also lead sessions tailored to support the needs of our members.

Our conference provides a terrific way for us to connect with each other and to share ideas and enthusiasm. As acupuncturists we can often find ourselves working in isolation and this event provides a refreshing antidote to this. It is an ideal opportunity for you to make new friends and connections and to spend quality time with your peers in a joyous and supportive environment.

We consider AAC as a family and we hope that you will all feel welcomed on the day.  It is always uplifting for us to put faces to names.  We know that you will be connected by similar uplifting experiences, challenges and ambitions.  Take time to chat to those next to you and there will be time during the breaks to meet and make great connections with our partners as well as other practitioners. 

In addition to a full day brimming with fascinating lectures, this years conference will host an extensive exhibition space so you can stock up on your acupuncture supplies on the day.

We are really proud of our partnerships and are delighted that some of them can join us on the day.  It’s a great opportunity to stock up on supplies minus shipping costs and to ask your burning questions to our partners.  They are really looking forward to meeting you all.

If you would like to have a stand at our conference, please contact Kirsty Arthur.

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Scarboroughs

A delicious and nutritious lunch, teas and coffees and a wine reception are all included with your ticket price

AAC Member Standard Price £150

First 50 tickets are £125 – get them while they are hot!!

This is an event for AAC members only. 

AAC members Student price £60

Full day pass to the conference

Lunch

Refreshments

Entry to drinks reception

A glass of wine to enjoy with peers before leaving for home

Please click on speaker name for more details about the lecture and speaker

Hang up your coat, have a cup of tea and mingle with friends old and new.

Welcome
Kevin Durjun is a practitioner of Five Element Acupuncture with 20 years of experience. He has worked for several acupuncture organisations at a senior level and presented Acupuncture Point – a radio show for UK Health Radio. Kevin is a member of the AAC’s working board.

Clare Ward – AAC’s Deputy CEO
 
What does it mean to be an acupuncturist?
I feel that being an acupuncturist has got to be one of the best jobs in the world. I find it frankly thrilling to see the delight on patient’s faces as they can finally move without pain, tell us that they are sleeping through the night, or can easily get up and down the stairs again. What a joy when a fertility patient announces that they are finally pregnant after all those years! I would be lying however if I said that after a long day in the clinic that sometimes I wasn’t exhausted.
 
As acupuncturists we have the privilege of being given the tools of ancient wisdom and understand profound treatment protocols that can support our patients through tough times, helping to change the course of their daily lives from a challenging, difficult, painful days to being able to live their lives with zest and verve.  
 
Whilst it is great to be able to provide these things for others, how do we maintain the buzz long term and remain grounded ourselves over the course of our career?
 
About Clare Ward
Clare is deputy CEO of the AAC and is passionate about protecting and driving forward positive change for the acupuncture profession. She studied for her degree in acupuncture at the College of Traditional Acupuncture and qualified in 2006.  Since then Clare has studied intensively to develop gentle acupuncture techniques both in the UK and in Japan that are suitable for babies, children and adults alike. 
Chris Davies – AAC’s CEO
 
Magnets and their use in acupuncture and treatments 
Magnets are a great addition to your treatment skills and clinic and can enhance your treatments via a wide range of applications. Chris will discuss and demonstrate a number of simple and invaluable skills which you can take away with you to use in your clinical treatments. During the session he will explain how you can can apply the use of magnets to your acupuncture treatments  both with and without needles. 
 
All delegates will also receive some free magnets on the day to take with you and use in your clinic and apply to your treatments.
 
About Chris Davies 

About Chris Davies

Chris teaches a wide range of speciality and authentic techniques from China, Japan and direct lineages passed down for generations. He lectures in the UK and worldwide for a wide range of colleges and associations helping them standardise on procedures. He is heavily involved in increasing educational standards and procedures within acupuncture. His passion for teaching and improvement of techniques has enabled him to specialise in areas of Tendon Healing, Aesthetic and Cosmetic acupuncture procedures as well as older traditional family-based acupuncture and ancient acupuncture treatments. Chris is also a certified NHS phlebotomist and teaches hygiene procedures and blood testing.

Sarah Budd has a background as a Midwifery Sister and subsequently trained as an acupuncturist in London and China. She set up an acupuncture service in Plymouth Maternity Unit in 1988, then completed a degree in Complementary Health Studies at Exeter University. In 1991, where she won a Churchill Fellowship, and then went to China again to study acupuncture anaesthesia. She was given the first and only full time post as acupuncturist midwife in the UK

The benefits of Qigong in a therapeutic environment

John is an internationally renowned Zhineng Qigong practitioner who has gained his reputation for training qigong teachers and working in the corporate, healthcare and academic sectors. 

Having been introduced to qigong in 1997, John studied multiple systems with highly respected teachers in the UK, Australasian and China before dedicating himself to Zhineng Qigong and becoming a full time practitioner in 2010.

His recent work, training teachers and engaging with leaders in the realm of healthcare has lead to collaborations with a number UK Universities and opened doors into medical research around the use of Qigong in a Western Healthcare system.

 

Intro Video

Coffee break

Lara McClure
 
Evidence – Guidelines – Implementation!
At this year’s AAC conference I’m excited to examine with you the process that brings evidence for acupuncture’s effectiveness into published guidelines, and what happens (or doesn’t happen) next in terms of dissemination and implementation of that evidence at the coal face of clinical practice inside and outside of publicly-funded healthcare. What are the barriers and enablers to this process, and what can practitioners do to influence it? 
 
About Lara McClure
Lara is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, a Director of Evidence Based Acupuncture and a research teacher at the Northern College of Acupuncture in York.
Paul Hougham
 
Medicine and Meaning: The role of grounding, presence and intention in patient outcomes 
The role of acupuncturists in the West remains in ongoing transition. Perched for decades between the social classifications of doctors, healers and therapists, there are signs that acupuncture’s politics is beginning to move on from its concerns over regulatory and professional status and a largely unconscious cultural appropriation, towards a deeper embrace of its micro-politics of self-realisation. 
 
By bringing to attention the immediacy of our ‘first-person body presence’ (Sheets-Johnstone 1979), this presentation will trace the ‘corporeal turn’ in Western philosophy and culture over the last few decades, and the significant but largely unacknowledged debt it owes to traditional Asian Medicine. From postcolonialism and this ‘corporeal turn’, the impact for acupuncture and bodywork to be trauma-informed (van der Kolk 2014) and person-centred (Rogers 1951) will be placed in a wider context of a returning indigeneity (Wall Kimmerer 2013) and expanded neurodiversity (Chapman 2023).
 
This presentation will seek to explore acupuncture as a radical act of empowerment and embodiment, to place our capacities for grounding and presence as the foundation upon which the therapeutic framework of acupuncture’s internal body view is built, and from which our intention and interventions spring.
 
About Paul Hougham
Paul Hougham is an acupuncturist, schoolteacher and educationalist wrestling with the evolving science underlying knowledge, autonomy and wellbeing, how we regulate and integrate ourselves, and shape our participation in the world. He has been in practice for 30 years and served as Principal of The College of Traditional Acupuncture and as President of the British Acupuncture Council, and is the author of several books and publications including The Atlas of Mind Body and Spirit and Dialogues of Destiny, but perhaps most notably in this context, a contributor to the TCM Kongress in Rothenburg of 2009, with Alchemical Acupuncture and the Imagination of Dragons.
 
  • There will be a bento box for lunch (vegetarians/vegans and GF catered for)
  • Drinks
  • Shopping
Naava Carman
 
Breaking Down, Planning and Managing Complex Cases
In this interactive session Naava will teach you her method for breaking down complex cases so as to make even the most complex presentation immediately manageable. We will then work on how to plan a treatment journey lasting anything from a few weeks to a few months, and work on managing client expectations, compliance and closure.
 
About Naava Carman
Naava Carman has been in practice since 1999 and is an experienced fertility, gynaecological and obstetric acupuncturist and Herbalist specialising in complex autoimmune disorders such as unexplained infertility, recurrent miscarriage, hypermobility in pregnancy, PCOS, endometriosis and other inflammatory conditions. She particularly likes to work with people over 40 who have been told there’s no real explanation for their fertility problems other than their age, who have had multiple IVF failures, who are sick of being in charge of all aspects of their journey without an experienced person to hold them through it.
 
She has undertaken further specialist training in the area of female pelvic and sexual pain including vulvodynia, dyspareunia and Lichen Planus/Sclerosus. She is a fully qualified NLP, Micro-Immunotherapy and Lymphatic/Glymphatic Mojo Practitioner. All too frequently, she works with complex underlying health issues including EBV, Lyme disease, mould toxicity and heavy metal poisoning. Naava also works with complex male fertility issues such as day 3 embryo arrest, hormonal imbalance, varicocele, silent infection, the effects on sperm of altered gut microbiome, and poor sperm quality and DNA fragmentation.
 
As an Educator, Naava runs several communities to support fertility practitioners including her free community, The Growth Partnership (www.fertilitysupport.training/growth-partnership). This has a large bodies of free CPD from her monthly live talks. She also houses the Advanced Level Diploma in Fertility Acupuncture on her platform, along with other pay-as-you-wish courses on Fat Positive Fertility and TCM and Cultural Competency in TCM Practice
Robin Sunley
 
Delivering Acupuncture for Cancer Patients & Cardio Thoracic Surgical Services in the NHS
 
In this session Robin will drawn on his personal extensive experience to explore best practice in delivering a safe, effective and efficient service within the NHS. 
 
Topics covered will include:
  • Common side effects of cancer treatments and how acupuncture can be successfully administered 
  • Design and implementation of acupuncture as part of the cardio thoracic surgical pathway 
 
About Robin Sunley 
Robin Sunley is an Acupuncturist employed by the NHS at James Cook University Hospital. 
His dual role includes Cancer Services and the Thoracic Surgery team, providing pre and post treatments to patients undergoing surgery and cancer treatments. 
 
Robin gained a BsC from the Northern College of Acupuncture in 2007 and ran two private practices in the North East before joining the NHS in 2015

Mycology

Chris Davies-AAC’s CEO

Where do we go from here?

Choices and decisions moving to the next stage for acupuncture.

A chance to chill after a busy day, talk to the AAC team and each other whilst having a glass of bubbly!

Welcome
Kevin Durjun is a practitioner of Five Element Acupuncture with 20 years of experience. He has worked for several acupuncture organisations at a senior level and presented Acupuncture Point – a radio show for UK Health Radio. Kevin is a member of the AAC’s working board.

Clare Ward – AAC’s Deputy CEO
 
What does it mean to be an acupuncturist?
I feel that being an acupuncturist has got to be one of the best jobs in the world. I find it frankly thrilling to see the delight on patient’s faces as they can finally move without pain, tell us that they are sleeping through the night, or can easily get up and down the stairs again. What a joy when a fertility patient announces that they are finally pregnant after all those years! I would be lying however if I said that after a long day in the clinic that sometimes I wasn’t exhausted.
 
As acupuncturists we have the privilege of being given the tools of ancient wisdom and understand profound treatment protocols that can support our patients through tough times, helping to change the course of their daily lives from a challenging, difficult, painful days to being able to live their lives with zest and verve.  
 
Whilst it is great to be able to provide these things for others, how do we maintain the buzz long term and remain grounded ourselves over the course of our career?
 
About Clare Ward
Clare is deputy CEO of the AAC and is passionate about protecting and driving forward positive change for the acupuncture profession. She studied for her degree in acupuncture at the College of Traditional Acupuncture and qualified in 2006.  Since then Clare has studied intensively to develop gentle acupuncture techniques both in the UK and in Japan that are suitable for babies, children and adults alike. 
Chris Davies – AAC’s CEO
 
Magnets and their use in acupuncture and treatments 
Magnets are a great addition to your treatment skills and clinic and can enhance your treatments via a wide range of applications. Chris will discuss and demonstrate a number of simple and invaluable skills which you can take away with you to use in your clinical treatments. During the session he will explain how you can can apply the use of magnets to your acupuncture treatments  both with and without needles. 
 
All delegates will also receive some free magnets on the day to take with you and use in your clinic and apply to your treatments.
 
About Chris Davies 
Chris brings together a wide experience of associations and federations to the British Acupuncture Federation and is on the board of a number of other counselling and therapy associations including being the UK envoy for Kokusai Budoin, Japan run by Yasuhisa Tokugawa, the great, great grandson of the last emperor of Japan. He is the senior lecturer UK course director for Yanagi Healing Arts and Clinics in Japan and lectures all over the world on specialist subjects and techniques. His passion for teaching and improvement of techniques has enabled him to specialise in areas of Tendon Healing, Aesthetic and Cosmetic acupuncture procedures as well as older traditional family based acupuncture and ancient acupuncture treatments. Chris is also a certified NHS phlebotomist.
Lara McClure
 
Evidence – Guidelines – Implementation!
At this year’s AAC conference I’m excited to examine with you the process that brings evidence for acupuncture’s effectiveness into published guidelines, and what happens (or doesn’t happen) next in terms of dissemination and implementation of that evidence at the coal face of clinical practice inside and outside of publicly-funded healthcare. What are the barriers and enablers to this process, and what can practitioners do to influence it? 
 
About Lara McClure
Lara is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, a Director of Evidence Based Acupuncture and a research teacher at the Northern College of Acupuncture in York.
Paul Hougham
 
Medicine and Meaning: The role of grounding, presence and intention in patient outcomes 
The role of acupuncturists in the West remains in ongoing transition. Perched for decades between the social classifications of doctors, healers and therapists, there are signs that acupuncture’s politics is beginning to move on from its concerns over regulatory and professional status and a largely unconscious cultural appropriation, towards a deeper embrace of its micro-politics of self-realisation. 
 
By bringing to attention the immediacy of our ‘first-person body presence’ (Sheets-Johnstone 1979), this presentation will trace the ‘corporeal turn’ in Western philosophy and culture over the last few decades, and the significant but largely unacknowledged debt it owes to traditional Asian Medicine. From postcolonialism and this ‘corporeal turn’, the impact for acupuncture and bodywork to be trauma-informed (van der Kolk 2014) and person-centred (Rogers 1951) will be placed in a wider context of a returning indigeneity (Wall Kimmerer 2013) and expanded neurodiversity (Chapman 2023).
 
This presentation will seek to explore acupuncture as a radical act of empowerment and embodiment, to place our capacities for grounding and presence as the foundation upon which the therapeutic framework of acupuncture’s internal body view is built, and from which our intention and interventions spring.
 
About Paul Hougham
Paul Hougham is an acupuncturist, schoolteacher and educationalist wrestling with the evolving science underlying knowledge, autonomy and wellbeing, how we regulate and integrate ourselves, and shape our participation in the world. He has been in practice for 30 years and served as Principal of The College of Traditional Acupuncture and as President of the British Acupuncture Council, and is the author of several books and publications including The Atlas of Mind Body and Spirit and Dialogues of Destiny, but perhaps most notably in this context, a contributor to the TCM Kongress in Rothenburg of 2009, with Alchemical Acupuncture and the Imagination of Dragons.
 
  • There will be a bento box for lunch (vegetarians/vegans and GF catered for)
  • Drinks
  • Shopping
Naava Carman
 
Breaking Down, Planning and Managing Complex Cases
In this interactive session Naava will teach you her method for breaking down complex cases so as to make even the most complex presentation immediately manageable. We will then work on how to plan a treatment journey lasting anything from a few weeks to a few months, and work on managing client expectations, compliance and closure.
 
About Naava Carman
Naava Carman has been in practice since 1999 and is an experienced fertility, gynaecological and obstetric acupuncturist and Herbalist specialising in complex autoimmune disorders such as unexplained infertility, recurrent miscarriage, hypermobility in pregnancy, PCOS, endometriosis and other inflammatory conditions. She particularly likes to work with people over 40 who have been told there’s no real explanation for their fertility problems other than their age, who have had multiple IVF failures, who are sick of being in charge of all aspects of their journey without an experienced person to hold them through it.
 
She has undertaken further specialist training in the area of female pelvic and sexual pain including vulvodynia, dyspareunia and Lichen Planus/Sclerosus. She is a fully qualified NLP, Micro-Immunotherapy and Lymphatic/Glymphatic Mojo Practitioner. All too frequently, she works with complex underlying health issues including EBV, Lyme disease, mould toxicity and heavy metal poisoning. Naava also works with complex male fertility issues such as day 3 embryo arrest, hormonal imbalance, varicocele, silent infection, the effects on sperm of altered gut microbiome, and poor sperm quality and DNA fragmentation.
 
As an Educator, Naava runs several communities to support fertility practitioners including her free community, The Growth Partnership (www.fertilitysupport.training/growth-partnership). This has a large bodies of free CPD from her monthly live talks. She also houses the Advanced Level Diploma in Fertility Acupuncture on her platform, along with other pay-as-you-wish courses on Fat Positive Fertility and TCM and Cultural Competency in TCM Practice
Robin Sunley
 
Delivering Acupuncture for Cancer Patients & Cardio Thoracic Surgical Services in the NHS
 
In this session Robin will drawn on his personal extensive experience to explore best practice in delivering a safe, effective and efficient service within the NHS. 
 
Topics covered will include:
  • Common side effects of cancer treatments and how acupuncture can be successfully administered 
  • Design and implementation of acupuncture as part of the cardio thoracic surgical pathway 
 
About Robin Sunley 
Robin Sunley is an Acupuncturist employed by the NHS at James Cook University Hospital. 
His dual role includes Cancer Services and the Thoracic Surgery team, providing pre and post treatments to patients undergoing surgery and cancer treatments. 
 
Robin gained a BsC from the Northern College of Acupuncture in 2007 and ran two private practices in the North East before joining the NHS in 2015

“Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the conference yesterday! Was extremely informative and lovely and social, it was great connecting with people.  If I’m being honest I was a bit nervous and unsure how the day was going to be, as I am member of many associations for the different skill sets I have, and they do nothing for you other than a newsletter! However, I was blown away by how much the AAC are providing for us, the support system is amazing, the plan for the future is amazing, and I feel so excited and inspired to be part of this! I literally came away feeling inspired.”

“I just wanted to email to say a huge thank you for organising the conference and for a great day.

The venue was easy to find and close to mainline rail stations. The setting at the Mary Ward House was excellent. It was so good to see familiar faces and friends, as well as having the opportunity to meet and make new friends. I thoroughly enjoyed the day and came away re-energised and enthusiastic about starting my own practice now that I have finished my degree, paediatric diploma, phlebotomy training and level 5 Sports Massage Therapy Course. Lunch and refreshment breaks gave me chance to network and visit the stands. I thought the Master of Ceremonies was so upbeat, positive and enthusiastic; a great choice!”

Reserve your spot today!

Join us at the AAC Conference on Saturday, November 16, 2024, at Mary Ward House in Central London, near King’s Cross. Open to AAC members only.

Out of stock

The Old Workshop,
12b Kennerleys Lane,

Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5EQ

Email: admin@aac-org.uk
Tel: 0843 507 0123

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