My old friend Peter Fitzgerald of Caerphilly did just that, and reports his own acupuncture affair...

Roger, Happy birthday!

Acupuncture - why not?

My experience of it was when I shared a house with other students, one of whom (inevitably, a female) was a practising acupuncturist.  Being a willing guinea pig, I let her practise the art of tunification, and various other techniques, upon me.  Her room was full of body charts depicting the energy flows around the body.   Her books read more like car manuals (in the days when you could fix your own car).   

The curious thing is - it works. The difficulty for Western medicine is to answer the question:  Why does it work?

I think it works because it is an art practised for well over a thousand years by trial and error. The system is pragmatic. Practitioners have retained a cause and effect link if perceived to have an affect on the subject.  The explanation for all this is very metaphoric/figurative, in contrast to the discourse of Western medicine.  However, a considerable amount of what passes as “scientific” medical explanation has its own metaphors and rhetorical tropes (more on that another time).  

As you know, acupuncturists adopt a holistic approach to their art — beware for some unusual questions! - It knocks spots off psychoanalysis.  One of the techniques I do remember is the massaging of the area between thumb and index finger to relief headaches.  If somebody now says it doesn't, that will make for an interesting philosophical discussion as to what's happening.  I'll have to put it down to distraction therapy.

The main thing is this: it will not do you any harm, and
you'll probably enjoy it.

Cheers, Peter