I participated in the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) Kongress hosted by the AGTCM(Arbeitsgemeinschaft fur klassische Akupunktur und traditionelle chinesische Medizin e.V.) that is held every year (this year: 5/30-6/5, 2011) in the same location, namely the small town of Rothenburg in Germany. While a substantial portion of the attendees are also physicians, this congress is mainly for non-physician practitioners using mainly acupuncture and Chinese herbal therapy. As the name already indicates, the focus here is more on the traditional aspects of oriental medicine that were dealt with during both theoretically and practically oriented presentations. The presentations, or rather study groups, were designed mostly for small groups of about 20-30 people and lasted 3hours each. This allowed extensive discussions that sometimes even took the entire presentation into an unforeseen direction. Although there were a number of presentations dealing with Japanese or Korean acupuncture, etc., naturally the majority discussed the Chinese style and characteristics of theory and practice. This practice seemed to rely, in most cases, mainly on theoretical considerations that could give the attendee the impression that examination of the unique characteristics of each patient (using palpation, etc.) so common in Japan is of rather secondary importance.
Political aspects of alternative medicine and questions pertaining to standardization, etc. played an important role and I found it very interesting that one of the leading executives mentioned that although acupuncture may have developed in China, its future (further development) will probably lie in the West.