Applying Stems and Branches by Joan Duveen

REVIEW

In the Preface to this, his first book, Joan Duveen explains why his teacher Dr van Buren never wrote one himself, and why it took fifty years of clinical practice – and a global pandemic – for this one to be written. The nature of practice rooted in the heavenly stems and earthly branches – what Joan calls ‘constitutional acupuncture’ – is such, he explains, that the material is better suited to oral and experiential transmission than linear, textual exposition. Nevertheless, Joan has done the acupuncture world a huge favour by writing this book, even as it poses a challenge to the reader through the sheer density and profundity of its contents.

It begins, appropriately, with an account of traditional Chinese cosmology from which the tiengan and dizhi are derived, followed by a discussion of the clinical relevance and application of the Five Great Movements. We are then into the real meat of the book – an account of each of the stems and branches, including a description of it from the cosmological perspective, a summary of the psychological and medical profile of a person born in that year, tips on acupuncture points particularly effective in treating them, and – perhaps most usefully – case studies, drawn from Joan’s half-century in clinical practice, exemplifying the application of the principles and techniques. For those really dedicated to the intricacies of the style, the book finishes with a discussion of hidden stems, deep qi and inverted hexagrams.

There are a few questionable structural choices here – issues, perhaps, that would only bother someone with a background in publishing: some of the material doesn’t fall easily into one or other of the main sections, and must find its home where it can; there is also a certain lack of consistency in the subdivision of comparable chapters; and maybe it’s just my gaudy fire horse talking, but I’d have loved a little colour in the diagrams to match the vibrancy of the textual contents.

Overall, however, the prose is clear and ordered, the logic of the system unfolds naturally and painlessly, and the inclusion of clinical examples gives a liveliness, materiality and relevance to what might otherwise seem a daunting body of theory. Joan is also unafraid to assert his own views on life, philosophy and psychology, which form such a key part of his style of treating and teaching. If, on occasion, we feel a little bewildered by the spiralling pattern of ideas, this is testament more to the nature of the material than any flaw in its delivery.

I have written in these pages before of how important it is for our practice to be rooted in lineage, but how that inevitably confronts us with the challenge of accepting or rejecting the authenticity and effectiveness of any one particular lineage – at least until we have had the opportunity to test it for ourselves over years of practice. As a graduate myself both of ICOM and of postgraduate training with Joan, and having had the opportunity to apply constitutional acupuncture in clinic for a decade, my admiration for Dr van Buren – to whom this book is dedicated – and for Joan have only grown with time, and this book has already started to yield insights useful to my clinical practice in the time it has taken to review it.

Those with no prior exposure to the style may find it a little more challenging. The introductory material is very clear, and includes some basic outlines on how to treat that are reassuringly simple (also serving as excellent reminders for those of us, longer in the ganzhi tooth, who might have started to miss the wood for the trees in our practice!). But the depth and richness of the material here – the distillation of so many years of practice and insight – is itself best absorbed and applied over many years, and I wonder how easy a reader with no experience of the style would find it to make this necessary commitment.

If Joan has one overriding message in this book it is that the stems and branches span physical, psychological and philosophical realms, and therefore so must both learning and treating with constitutional acupuncture. So the treatment principles work best when combined with sage advice from the acupuncturist – regarding diet and lifestyle, but also the more nebulous world of meaning, life choices and relationships. And for a practitioner to feel confident in offering such advice necessarily requires a great degree of self-knowledge. Luckily, the study of constitutional acupuncture serves as an excellent structure to achieve this very purpose. In a sense, then, this is not merely a handbook in the practical application of constitutional acupuncture, but a call and a means to self-knowing – for the one is not really possible without the other.

As Joan says in his introduction: ‘This book is intended as an inspiration to freely navigate the material of stems and branches, but I hope that it also inspires you, in the spirit of my teacher’s lessons, to inner growth, in which the interconnectedness of theory, knowledge and personal perceptions and feelings turn out to be part of the indwelling self.’

Those who are willing to undertake this journey will not be disappointed by the inspiration they find.

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