Anatomical Atlas of

Acupuncture

Authors:

Dr. Linda Rapson is Chair of the Complementary Medicine Section of the Ontario Medical Association and President of the Ontario Society of Physicians for Complementary Medicine, the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Complementary Medical Association. She is Executive President of both the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada (AFC), a charitable organization incorporated in 1974 whose mandate is the promotion of research in the field of acupuncture, and the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada Institute (AFCI), a not-for-profit association that provides acupuncture education for health care professionals. The AFCI curriculum is accredited through the Continuing Medical Education Office of the University of Toronto.

Dr. Rapson is a Senior Lecturer and Examiner for the AFCI and Lecturer in the “Medical Acupuncture for Physicians” program offered by the UCLA Office of Continuing Medical Education, Santa Monica, California. She lectures to health care professionals across Canada and internationally on acupuncture and its integration into western medicine and physiotherapy. Dr. Rapson has published articles in family medicine, palliative care, spinal cord medicine and physical medicine/rehabilitation journals on acupuncture and related subjects.

She is consultant to the Acupuncture Clinic at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Lyndhurst Centre and has 30 years' experience in the integration of acupuncture into a western medical practice.

Irene Biemann Allan graduated from Queen's University School of Rehabilitation as a physiotherapist in 1984. Later that year she began working at Lyndhurst Hospital, a spinal cord injury rehabilitation centre in Toronto. Here she developed an interest in pain management and alternative therapies. She began studying acupuncture in 1989 and has since gone on to complete the curriculum of the Acupuncture Foundation of Canada Institute (AFCI). She is currently a demonstrator and examiner with the AFCI.

In 1992 she and Dr. Rapson created the Acupuncture Clinic at Lyndhurst Spinal Cord Centre, the first of it's kind in North America. She has been a member of AFCI's education committee for many years and as such, has been heavily involved in the redevelopment of the AFCI curriculum and teaching materials. Irene's interest and skill in computer graphics and photography enabled her to create and adapt the illustrations currently used in the AFCI's teaching materials. During this time, she and Dr. Rapson realized the need for an entire atlas illustrating acupuncture points in this method, not only for AFCI students but also for anyone practicing acupuncture.

At the present time, Irene is working part-time with Dr. Rapson at the Rapson Pain and Acupuncture Clinic, continues her work with the AFCI and is a happily married mother of two young children.