Doctors in the west had pondered the whole concept of Acupuncture being used as a Medical adjunct for many years. In the 1940's a certain Dr Morant, the French Consulate in China, decided it would be appropriate to translate some of the Ancient Treaties of Chinese Acupuncture into French. This was the state of European understanding. The French and German doctors began practicing the art of Acupuncture for a number of very painful conditions and found a great deal of relief was experienced by each of the recipients.

Soon the news of these successes spread quickly throughout Europe. In the 1960's, Acupuncture spread to England and soon the British Academy of Western Medical Acupuncture was formed. Dr George Nieman and other practitioners decided to get together and form the earliest membership of the Academy, and the first in the North of England.

During this period, the founder had a practice in both Liverpool and North Wales, however, it was soon realised that the premises in North Wales were far too small to meet the demand for training by so many doctors and nurses. Due to it's larger size and ideal location for those travelling from all over the UK, the Liverpool practice was chosen for this purpose.
Many quite remarkable results for patients suffering from a great variety of conditions resulted from acupuncture treatment not only by the practice in the premises of the B.A.W.M.A, but also by the practitioners's who had trained there and found extremely satisfactory results in the treatment approach they had been taught during their training with the BAWMA.
From a small gathering of tutors and students at the beginning, the number of students grew dramatically. Eventually, it was found that the intake was becoming so large, that a local Hotel had to be used to provide the needs of these students.

Great interest in the use of Acupuncture began to spread rapidly throughout the country and a handful of NHS Hospitals opened pain relief departments using some of our graduates to treat their NHS patients with acupuncture. Merseyside was probably the first. When the Wirral NHS Clatterbridge Hospital Pain-relief department opened, our Founder Dr George Nieman was invited to attend as their Acupuncture practitioner until his retirement recently.

About that time two scientists, Melzack and Wall, had come up with the idea, called the 'Gate Theory', whereby pain was gated by Acupuncture at the spinal cord. Also, that Acupuncture was the precursor of the secretion of polypeptides such as endorphins and enkephalins.
Today, the mechanisms for the function of Acupuncture are more clearly understood, however, there is still a great deal to learn.

The B.A.W.M.A training involves the use of specific 'formula', or a combination of Acupuncture points for each of many treatable conditions.

Today, students admitted onto the course will have a recognised medical qualification or equivalent. Those with appropriate experience in areas such as Osteopathy, Chiropractice and Homeopathy, will be considered individually. Since 1976, many practitioners from these categories have been trained by the BAWMA.

Now we are focussing our training for those having the qualifications above and offer the opportunity for a professional Postgraduate Acupuncture Licentiate to be gained through the British Academy of Western Medical Acupuncture.