I'm in a unique position. I teach at a school of Chinese medicine , but I'm also a student at the school.

I'm trained as a medical anthropologist, while gathering thesis material I lived in China for a year and studied Faqi/Qigong healing. At the college I teach Qigong/Taijiquan, medical history and ethics.

I have already studied acupuncture, with Roger Langrick (d. 2000), who was the first liscenced acupunturist in North America, but I wanted to study the whole medical program. My reason for doing so is to improve my martial arts.

As for the quality of schools, it really depends on where it is and what local laws govern private education. Here in BC, Canada, the legislation is moving fast ahead to not just liscence acupuncture, but all of Chinese medicine. This promises to raise the standard here.

The school I'm at is the Academy of Classical Oriental Sciences www.acos.org . One of the things I like about our approach is the language requirement. We feel that the more of the medicine you can access in the language of origin (Mandarin in this case) the greater the clarity of understanding.

"The heart of the study of boxing is to have natural instinct resemble the dragon" Wang Xiangzai