Licensing rules and regulations for acupuncturists vary from state to state, but the national exam proctored by the NCCAOM is a common requirement. Almost all applicants will sit for the acupuncture board, an exam bifurcated into a practicum on point location and a written test covering the knowledge of Chinese medicine, biomedicine and sciences, Clean [...]

In the United States schooling in Chinese medicine is approximately three to four years of intensive instruction. The vast majority of students have undergraduate degrees, many in scientific or healthcare fields. The established larger schools of Chinese medicine have student bodies made up of students with widely diverse backgrounds. Most of those enrolled in [...]

Acupuncture is the most common Chinese medicine modality worldwide. This enigmatic method of treatment has, in fact, tantalized the Western imagination for centuries. When President Richard Nixon began to travel to mainland China in the early years of the 1970’s, reports of Chinese practitioners’ use of thin needles to treat disease began to surface in [...]

Accustomed to the Western model of using concentrated therapeutic agents alone or in very simple combinations, many Americans are unfamiliar with the basic concept of designing and assembling Chinese formulas. From start to finish, the architecture of a Chinese herbal formula involves a unique methodology refined over the last two millenia. We outline the process [...]

A dozen or more eager men and women suddenly surge into the tiny room. From her central position at a small table, the practitioner looks up for a moment, pausing from her meditative task of reading a young girl’s right-side pulse. She politely but firmly asks the anxious patients to wait their turns in the [...]