Becoming a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine is often underestimated. From the outside, it can look simple: fine needles, herbal formulas, a quiet treatment room. But what sits beneath that is years of study, clinical training, and ongoing practice that most people never see.
In Australia, Chinese medicine is not an informal or loosely governed modality. It is a nationally regulated healthcare profession, which means every practitioner has completed university-level education, extensive supervised clinical hours, and continues to meet professional standards each year.
At The Dao Health, we practise as AHPRA-registered Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners, acupuncturists, and herbalists. This is something we’re intentional about clarifying, as we are often grouped under the same umbrella as naturopathy, when in reality, the training and medical framework are very different.
A Regulated Profession
Chinese medicine has been nationally regulated in Australia since 2012, under AHPRA and the Chinese Medicine Board of Australia.
Before this, regulation only existed in Victoria. Now, there is a unified standard across the country, meaning that wherever you receive treatment, your practitioner is held to the same level of education, safety, and accountability.
There are also different divisions within registration – acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and herbal dispensing. These aren’t interchangeable titles, but specific scopes of practice that require their own training. Some practitioners only have registration in acupuncture alone, and not in Chinese herbal medicine. We are also not ‘Dry Needlers’, and you can read the distinct difference of the modalities in Liz’s Dao Does Journal Entry.
The Study of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Our pathway into practice began with a four-year university degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine at UTS.
The training is both theoretical and practical, and at times, deeply immersive. We studied the foundations of Chinese medicine – Qi, Blood, Yin and Yang, the meridian system, pulse and tongue diagnosis, herbal medicine, and pharmacology alongside biomedical sciences.
One of the things I value most about this training is that it teaches you to think in two ways at once. To understand the body through a traditional lens, while also being able to engage with modern medical understanding.
Clinical training is a significant part of the degree. By the time we graduated, we had completed over 1,000 hours in a supervised clinic, working with real patients, refining diagnoses, and learning how to treat with both acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Since then, our studies have continued. Between us, we’ve undertaken further postgraduate training in women’s health for myself & Liz, and reproductive medicine for Clarice, deepening how we support patients across both Eastern and Western frameworks.
Registration Process
To practise, we are required to meet national registration standards, this includes qualifications, insurance, and ongoing compliance with professional guidelines.
Each year, we also complete continuing professional development. This keeps us learning, refining, and evolving in our practice. Because Chinese medicine isn’t static. It grows through experience, through study, and through every patient we see.
No two people are treated the same. Even when two patients come in with the same diagnosis, like endometriosis, the way we understand and treat them can be completely different. That’s the nature of this medicine.
Not the Same as Naturopathy
Chinese medicine is often grouped into ‘alternative health,’ but it operates through its own system. It’s also common for it to be confused with naturopathy. While there can be overlap in values, the way each system understands and treats the body is different.
Chinese medicine is based on Qi and Blood, Yin & Yang, and pattern differentiation. We use tools like pulse and tongue diagnosis to understand what’s happening internally, and treatment is guided by the individual as a whole.
Naturopathy tends to follow a more Western framework, focusing on nutrition, supplementation, testing, and lifestyle medicine.
Both can be valuable, and they can work well alongside each other, but they are not the same.
Why It Matters
We always encourage patients to ensure they are seeing an AHPRA-registered Chinese medicine practitioner, which you can find through their page.
Chinese medicine can feel gentle, intuitive, and deeply personalised when you receive it. But that experience is built on structure, training, and years of clinical practice. It’s a medicine that asks you to pay attention to patterns, to subtle changes, to the individual in front of you. And that takes time to develop. We discuss more on this in the inaugural episode of the Delve Podcast.
For me, this work has never just been about learning techniques. It’s about continuing to refine how I see, how I listen, and how I treat. Because in this medicine, you keep learning – through your patients, through the seasons, and through the practice itself.
