The element a patient lives by — and the one they avoid

Stems and Branches — Volume 2: The Great Movements

The Great Movement is the first level you can actually read off a birth date, and the one that changes the most in how you talk to a patient.

Each element gets its active and its passive face, the solar year is explained without shortcuts, and the life challenge is described as something the patient experiences rather than something you announce to them.

The five long descriptions end the way the clinic ends: with what I say to that person on the couch, in words a patient accepts.

What this system does in your treatment room

1. It shows you how the meridians lean on each other.

Take the liver. Through the heavenly stems it is paired with the large intestine. Through the earthly branches, with the small intestine. In jue yin, with the pericardium. I know no other system that lays these connections out as clearly. With your fingers on the pulse you can tell which of these levels the imbalance sits on, and you treat on that level. That is what makes a treatment personal in the literal sense, and in my clinic it is where the better results come from, though not in every patient. Working on that level from the pulse is what the 2-Point Acupuncture course teaches.

2. It tells you which points of a combination belong to this patient.

A date of birth shows a person's tendencies, and those tendencies show up as meridians that run toward excess and meridians that run toward deficiency. When a textbook gives you points on four meridians, you keep the ones on the meridians that match this person. In my clinic the great majority of patients fall ill along their own meridian tendencies, so that is most likely where the illness began. The chart stays a hypothesis: if it does not agree with the pulse, the pulse wins.

3. It gives the patient something to take home.

You can tell the patient, in plain words, which level is involved and which meridian is struggling, and give them one thing to practice every day. That way they keep using, in their ordinary life, the energy the needles just strengthened.

What this volume adds: Points 2 and 3 at the first level: the element a person lives by, the one they avoid, and what to give them for home.

Everything that is in the book

All 21 chapters, in order, plus the one-page cheat sheet that closes the volume.

PART I. Where the great movement comes from

1. Five planets and one year

2. The year begins on 20 January

3. Ten movements, five elements, two signs

PART II. The life challenge

4. The active one changes what it controls. The passive one — what controls it

5. Six dates

6. Plus and minus are not “more” and “less”

PART III. Revenge

7. When two elements cannot come to terms

8. The patient who is all wood

9. The most common pathology I see

PART IV. What you can hear on the pulse

10. Physiology: first the challenge, then your own movement

11. The clinic: who comes to the first visit

12. People from outside the table

13. “Am I not making patients dependent on me?”

PART V. The five elements: what it looks for, what it finds, what helps

14. Earth

15. Metal

16. Water

17. Wood

18. Fire

PART VI. The conversation, questions, cheat sheet

19. How I talk about this to the patient

20. Questions from the course

21. Appendix: count your own great movement

What this volume does not contain

Where this volume sits

Stems and Branches is six volumes. Each one assumes only the one before it, and each one works on its own. Volume 2 is the second.

Questions people ask

Do I need the earlier volumes first?

Each volume assumes only the one before it, and each stands on its own for what it covers. If you are starting from zero with this system, Volume 1 is the place to begin; if you already work with it, you can pick up the level you need.

Is a birth chart not just astrology?

It would be, if it decided anything. Here it decides nothing — it narrows down where to look, and the pulse settles it. Every chart in these books is read with that caveat stated out loud, and the volumes say repeatedly that a chart which does not match the pulse is wrong.

Who wrote this?

Michal Richter, MD — a physician and acupuncturist in Poland, twenty-five years of exclusive acupuncture practice and twenty to thirty patients a day. I learned this system from Joan Duveen, a student of Dr J.D. van Buren, and then spent five or six years testing what actually survives contact with a clinic. This series is what survived.

What format do I get?

PDF and EPUB, both included in the price, delivered by e-mail the moment the payment goes through. The PDF is laid out for a desk and for print; the EPUB reflows on a phone between patients.