Follow Dr. Tony
Follow Dr. Tony
President and Professor Peng Daiyin (彭代银 教授) presented Dr. Tony Willcox with his PhD in Acupuncture from Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in Hefei, China, in 2019 — the first Westerner to earn the degree in the university’s 60-year history.
Dr. Tony Willcox — pictured on the left — with fellow graduates at the 2019 commencement ceremony at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in Hefei, China, marking the culmination of his doctoral study in the birthplace of acupuncture.
Dr. Tony Willcox, during his service with the 2nd/4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (RAR), pictured in uniform and on field training exercises in Townsville, Australia, from 1984 to 1989.
Dr. Tony Willcox voluntarily joined the Australian Army at age 18 in 1984, completing three months of basic training at Blamey Barracks, Kapooka — the Australian Army’s Recruit Training Centre near Wagga Wagga, NSW, known as the “Home of the Soldier” — followed by three months of infantry training at the School of Infantry, Lone Pine Barracks in Singleton, NSW, where he was awarded Most Improved Soldier. He then served as an infantryman in Charlie Company, Alpha Platoon, with the 2nd/4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2/4 RAR), at Lavarack Barracks in Townsville, Queensland, and also spent time in the Mortar Platoon, Support Company. Over 4.5 years of service, he developed skills in marksmanship, small-unit tactics, and field survival, represented his battalion in military skills competitions, earned awards, and qualified for the Skill at Arms Badge as a Marksman — a distinction awarded to soldiers who meet a rigorous, formally prescribed standard of shooting proficiency, requiring annual requalification to maintain.
The battalion formed part of Australia’s Operational Deployment Force (ODF) — the nation’s designated rapid-reaction unit and first combat force to deploy in the event of conflict. Trained in close-country and conventional warfare, 2/4 RAR stood ready to deploy anywhere in the region at a moment’s notice.
Dr. Tony was selected as one of only 13 soldiers — out of roughly 800 in the battalion — to represent 2/4 RAR in the Duke of Gloucester Cup, often called the “DOG Cup” by the Australian Army and widely regarded as the Australian equivalent of the U.S. Army’s Best Ranger Competition. This grueling multi-day event pits battalion teams against every regular infantry battalion in the Army. Competitors carried packs exceeding 110 lbs over distances of more than 62 miles, tested in every facet of soldiering: marksmanship, combat tactics, endurance, first aid, and teamwork — all under conditions designed to push them to their absolute physical and mental limits. Dr. Tony’s team finished as runners-up against the best infantry the Army had to offer — an achievement that speaks to the discipline, resilience, and mental toughness he still brings to everything he does, including his practice at Acupuncture Zen today.
It was during those same years in Townsville that Dr. Tony first encountered the medicine that would one day become his life’s work.
“I first received acupuncture while serving in the Army in Townsville, Queensland. I was so taken by it — the deep relaxation, the effects, the profound and even spiritual shift in my energy. Little did I know that years later I would go on to study it in depth.”
— Dr. Tony Willcox
On October 15, 2005 — eleven months before graduating from the Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine — Dr. Tony sat for and passed all five board examinations in a single day: Acupuncture Comprehensive, Point Location, Foundations of Oriental Medicine, Chinese Herbology, and Biomedicine. At the time, these exams were administered by the NCCAOM (National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) — now known as the NCBAHM (National Certification Board for Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine) as of January 2026. Most candidates spread these exams across two or more sittings, and many don’t complete them until after graduation. Dr. Tony was the first student at his school to complete all five in one sitting.
Where it all began. Dr. Tony Willcox stands alongside Dr. Johanna Yen, president of the Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine in Fort Lauderdale — the school where he earned his summa cum laude distinction in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine. Pictured beside the institute’s traditional bronze acupuncture statue, this moment marks the foundation of a journey that would carry Dr. Tony from South Florida to doctoral study in the birthplace of the medicine, China.
His path to that achievement began in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where in 2005 he received the school’s award for academic excellence, summa cum laude, in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine from the Atlantic Institute of Oriental Medicine — recognition that, in part, reflected his becoming the first student at the school to pass all five board exams in a single sitting. He graduated the following year, in 2006. The Institute’s founder and president, Dr. Johanna Yen, later sat down for an interview at Acupuncture Zen, reflecting on Dr. Tony’s training and the medicine they both practice.
In 2016, he earned a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (D.A.O.M.), the highest doctoral degree in Acupuncture offered in the United States. He was also awarded a prestigious Chinese Government Scholarship to pursue his PhD in Acupuncture at the Anhui University of Chinese Medicine.
Professor Yang Jun, one of the most renowned acupuncture physicians in China, mentored Dr. Tony during his PhD studies at Anhui University. Beyond his academic training, Dr. Tony gained extensive hands-on clinical experience treating hundreds of patients in busy hospital settings across both major cities and rural areas of China. Under his guidance, Dr. Willcox treated a wide variety of conditions, with a particular focus on neurological disorders — hands-on clinical experience that significantly strengthened his skills and sharpened his approach to patient care. Completed between 2016 and 2019, his doctoral training in the birthplace of acupuncture proved well worth the rigorous effort it demanded.
Professor Yang Jun’s own credentials help explain the caliber of that mentorship. A chief physician and professor who has since become director of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, he holds provincial and national recognition as a discipline leader in acupuncture, serves on the clinical leadership of the China Acupuncture and Moxibustion Society, and is a member of the China Association of Chinese Medicine. His own clinical focus mirrors the conditions Dr. Willcox trained to treat under him — stroke recovery, the aftereffects of traumatic brain injury, sensorineural hearing loss, and neurological pain. That relationship carried through beyond the classroom: Professor Yang is pictured at far left in the photo below, having traveled to celebrate the milestone with Dr. Willcox in person.
Dr. Willcox is the first Westerner to earn a PhD in Acupuncture from the Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in Hefei, China — a distinction unmatched in the university’s 60-year history.
That university traces its own roots to 1959, drawing on two of China’s oldest medical lineages — the Xin’an school of southern Anhui and the tradition associated with Hua Tuo, the second-century physician credited as one of the earliest surgeons in Chinese medical history. It opened its doors to international students in 1996, yet more than two decades passed before that door led anyone from the West all the way through the PhD program — a gap that says as much about the program’s rigor as it does about the achievement itself.
Dr. Johanna Yen (Founder & President ATOM) & Dr. Tony Willcox
Dr. Yang, Dr. Zhang, Dr. Marshall, Dr. Yen, Tony Willcox & Marcelene Dyer, Dr. Fu Di and Dr. Allyson Wilson
The original grounds of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine — where centuries of the Xin’an medical tradition meet the school Dr. Willcox chose for his doctoral training.
Dr. Tony Willcox’s official doctoral degree certificate — a PhD in Chinese Medicine conferred by Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in Hefei, China, in 2019, marking the completion of his doctoral study at the source of the tradition itself.
Acupuncture Zen has proudly served the South Florida community — including Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Deerfield Beach, Boynton Beach, and West Palm Beach — for over 20 years, bridging the wisdom of Traditional Chinese Medicine with the most advanced integrative therapies in modern clinical practice.
Dr. Tony Willcox opened his first acupuncture clinic in South Florida in 2006, building a loyal patient community over five years in Deerfield Beach before relocating to Delray Beach in 2011 — voted “Most Fun Small Town in America” by Rand McNally and USA Today — where Acupuncture Zen has grown into one of the region’s most trusted destinations for acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, sports medicine, laser therapy, NovoTHOR® red light therapy, and holistic healing.
What sets Dr. Tony apart is the extraordinary depth behind every treatment. His path to this practice is unlike that of any other acupuncturist in South Florida — from elite infantry soldier in the Australian Army, to a D.A.O.M. earned in the United States under the direct instruction of visiting Chinese practitioners, to advanced clinical training at Shanghai’s renowned Yueyang and Shuguang Hospitals, to a PhD in Acupuncture earned at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine. Every patient receives the full benefit of that journey: a personalized, integrative treatment plan built on decades of real-world clinical experience and world-class academic training.
Professor Yang Jun 杨骏教授 introduces Dr. Tony Willcox to an audience of over 300 medical doctors specializing in acupuncture and Chinese medicine at a lecture held at Jin Zhai County Hospital, Anhui, China.
The best practitioners never stop learning — and for Dr. Tony Willcox, that has meant going further than almost any acupuncturist practicing in the United States today.
In 2012, he traveled to Shanghai for advanced clinical training at two of China’s most prestigious TCM institutions — Yueyang Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine and Shuguang Hospital — studying directly alongside the country’s leading physicians and specialists. In hospitals where acupuncture is practiced as mainstream medicine, the depth of clinical exposure is something a Western classroom simply cannot replicate.
That experience set the foundation for what came next. Between 2016 and 2019, Dr. Tony traveled back and forth to China to complete a PhD in Acupuncture in Anhui Province — living and training there two months at a time, and at points closing his Florida practice twice in a single year to make it happen. Earning his doctorate meant fully immersing himself in the very culture and clinical environment where this medicine was born and refined over 2,500 years — an undertaking few Western practitioners would attempt, let alone see through to completion.
When a new clinical doctorate was established in the United States — the D.A.O.M., Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine — Dr. Tony was among the first to pursue it. The rigorous two-year program brought him into direct collaboration with acupuncture physicians and professors actively practicing in China, with a different practicing acupuncturist from China visiting each month to teach and lecture. Each brought a different clinical specialty, giving Dr. Tony an unusually broad depth of firsthand insight into clinical practice as it’s actually used in China — not just theory taught secondhand. At his final thesis defense, faculty from the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine sat on the review board — a measure of the program’s academic credibility and international reach. After successfully defending his thesis, Dr. Tony was one of only two people in his class awarded the prestigious Chinese Government Scholarship — one placed at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, the other in Beijing — with Dr. Tony pursuing his PhD in Acupuncture at Anhui, the beginning of the most transformative chapter of his clinical career.
The bustling acupuncture department hallway at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, where Dr. Tony trained daily alongside China’s leading TCM physicians.
At the heart of Dr. Tony’s training in China was a rare opportunity: direct mentorship under Professor Yang Jun, a renowned TCM expert and PhD advisor at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine in Hefei. The professor sees 100–150 patients daily, applying refined acupuncture techniques to some of the most complex cases in Chinese medicine — neurological conditions, facial paralysis, chronic pain, and tinnitus.
Training under his supervision in that high-volume environment, Dr. Tony immersed himself in his mentor’s diagnostic approach — integrating disease and syndrome differentiation with meridian analysis and modern clinical insight. He refined his needling precision, point-selection strategy, and use of cupping and herbal support in ways no Western program could teach.
That mentorship translates directly into the care delivered at Acupuncture Zen. Patients dealing with migraines, neuropathy, Bell’s palsy, or chronic stress-related pain may benefit from the same diagnostic approach and clinical philosophy behind the professor’s work in difficult cases.
What made the mentorship truly transformative was the philosophy behind every treatment. A master who has spent decades refining his craft, Professor Yang Jun approaches each patient as a unique clinical puzzle, drawing on the full depth of classical Chinese medicine theory to approach each case with fresh eyes. Training inside that mindset — watching it applied 100 times a day, then practicing it firsthand — reshaped the way Dr. Tony thinks, diagnoses, and treats. That shift in clinical thinking can’t be learned from a textbook or a weekend seminar; it’s carried forward in every treatment at Acupuncture Zen, for every patient still searching for answers.
Professor Yang Jun, one of China’s most respected TCM physicians, is mentoring Dr. Tony Willcox during his doctoral clinical training in Hefei, China.
Dr. Tony’s training extended well beyond the university hospital. Traveling throughout Anhui Province — home to more than 60 million people — he treated patients across multiple hospitals and rural clinics, encountering the full breadth of conditions Chinese medicine is called upon to address. That kind of hands-on exposure — treating patients across both major city hospitals and rural clinics in a province of 61.2 million people — gave him a breadth of real-world clinical experience most Western-trained practitioners never encounter, and it was the culmination of this immersive journey that led to his successful dissertation defense and the conferral of his PhD in Acupuncture.
Dr. Tony Willcox at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine is one of China’s leading centers of Traditional Chinese Medicine scholarship and practice.
Professor Yang Jun and doctoral students — including Dr. Tony Willcox — are treating a patient with complex neurological disorders. Cases of this severity are routine at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine.
With nine years of acupuncture and TCM training — comparable in length to a physician’s medical education and specialty training — Dr. Tony brings a depth of clinical expertise that is genuinely rare in South Florida. His foundation combines extensive hospital-based training in China, direct mentorship under Professor Yang Jun at the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, and hands-on treatment of complex cases in neurology, chronic pain, facial paralysis, and internal medicine. He pairs that with a firm belief in integrative healthcare — that conventional medicine and evidence-informed natural therapies each have their place, and that the best outcomes come from knowing when and how to use both.
That career hasn’t gone unnoticed. Dr. Tony Willcox is the only acupuncturist named to Newsmax Health’s Top 100 Physicians Who Embrace Integrative Medicine — listed alongside figures like Dr. Mehmet Oz, Dr. Deepak Chopra, and Dr. Andrew Weil. For a practitioner whose path began in an army barracks and led to a doctorate in the birthplace of this medicine, it’s a fitting recognition of a rare and hard-earned standard of care.
For over 20 years, Dr. Tony has delivered personalized, compassionate care to patients across Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Boynton Beach, and the greater South Florida area — treating the full spectrum of conditions, from chronic pain and migraines to anxiety, neuropathy, and sports injuries. Every patient receives care shaped by decades of real-world clinical experience, world-class academic training, and an unwavering commitment to healing.
In practice, that means no generic protocol and no one-size-fits-all treatment. You receive the accumulated wisdom of a practitioner who has trained on three continents, studied under masters, treated thousands of patients, and never stopped pushing to know more. That is a rare thing — and at Acupuncture Zen, it’s available to you.
Ready to experience the difference? Call 561-633-3537 to schedule your appointment
Peace and Blessings, Dr. Tony Willcox, PhD, D.A.O.M.
Dr. Tony Willcox stands beside the public notice of his dissertation defense at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine — posted openly for faculty and students, as tradition dictates, naming his examining committee and the hour of his examination. His presence as a doctoral candidate from the United States marked a rare distinction: with this defense, Dr. Willcox became the first Western graduate in the university’s 60-year history — the culmination of years of advanced clinical training and research under the mentorship of Professor Yang Jun.
Dr. Tony Willcox with his dissertation defense committee — including his advisor, Professor Yang Jun — following the successful defense of his PhD at Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, the culmination of years of advanced clinical training and research.
Seated (L to R): Aihong Yuan (袁爱红), Qingping Zhang (张庆萍), Guoming Shen (申国明), Huayuan Yang (杨华元), Zhishun Liu (刘志顺), Jing Wang (王茎). Standing (L to R): Bingxiang Zha (查必祥), Wenping Ang (昂文平), Jun Yang (杨骏), Tony Willcox (吴尔夫).
Dr. Tony Willcox (red gown, center, third from left) at graduation — Anhui University of Chinese Medicine, China. Red gowns signify doctoral graduates; a distinction shared by very few Western practitioners.