Learn
按蹻
Acupressure is steady pressure applied with your own thumb to a named point on your own body. No needles, ever: needling is a licensed clinical act and nothing on this site involves one. You find the point by measuring in cun against your own hand, press for thirty to sixty seconds into a dull ache, breathe out as you press, and stop if the feeling turns sharp.
The three
Pressure, not needles
Acupuncture and acupressure share their map and share nothing else. The same points, the same channels, the same two thousand years of location literature — and then one of them puts a fine needle through the skin and the other does not. Needling is a regulated clinical act nearly everywhere you are reading this. It requires a licence issued where you live, hands that have been supervised, and a room. We are licensed in China and we are not in the room, so we will never write you anything that involves a needle.
What is left is not a consolation prize. Self-applied pressure is its own tradition and an older one in written terms. The 黄帝内经 Huangdi Neijing, compiled around 200 BCE, lists it among the methods of the central region in chapter 12 of the 素问 Suwen — 导引按蹻 dǎo yǐn àn qiāo, guiding and pulling, pressing and lifting. It is the part of this medicine that has always been done by ordinary people to themselves, at home, for nothing.
That is also why it fits what we sell. A reading names a point or two beside a pattern, tells you where the point is on your own body and how long to hold it, and then you do it or you do not. Nothing arrives in the post. Nothing is applied to you. There is no way for us to get the strength wrong from eight thousand kilometres away, because the only hand involved is yours.
From the central region come guiding and pulling, pressing and lifting.
Finding a point
Classical point locations are never given in centimetres. They are given in 寸 cun, and the cun is proportional: it is measured on the body being pressed, using that body’s own fingers. This is why a set of instructions written under the Han dynasty still lands correctly on a reader who is six foot four. Use your own hand, not a ruler and not somebody else’s hand.
| Measure | On your own hand | Where it is used here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cun | The width of your own thumb across the widest part of the knuckle. | Small offsets — a thumb-width out from the shinbone at Zusanli. |
| 1.5 cun | Index and middle finger held together, measured across at the knuckles. | Points a finger or two either side of the midline. |
| 2 cun | Index, middle and ring finger held together, measured at the level of the first crease of the middle finger. | Neiguan sits two cun above the wrist crease. |
| 3 cun | All four fingers held together, measured across at the level of the first crease of the index finger. | Zusanli sits three cun below the lower edge of the kneecap. |
Measurement gets you to the neighbourhood; the tissue tells you the address. A point is distinctly more tender than everything a centimetre around it, and pressing it correctly gives a dull ache that spreads rather than a sharp one that stays put. The classical name for that sensation is 得气 dé qì, obtaining the qi, and finding it is the only confirmation anyone has ever had.
How to press
Force is not the active part, and hard pressing only bruises. The version of this that people manage daily for months is a modest one, and the daily part is what matters.
Expect the spot to stay a little tender for an hour or two the first few times. If you cannot hold a normal conversation while you press, you are pressing too hard.
Side by side
Which point a reading names depends on the pattern rather than the complaint. The five patterns
| Point | Where it is | Classically associated with | Cautions and hold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hegu, Large Intestine 4 | The web between thumb and index finger, on the back of the hand. | Face and head; the classical line is “for the face and mouth, gather at Hegu”. | Avoided in pregnancy. Otherwise 30–60 seconds, both hands. |
| Neiguan, Pericardium 6 | Inside of the forearm, three finger-widths above the wrist crease, between two tendons. | The chest, the heart and the stomach; restlessness, queasiness, a mind that will not settle. | The safe default in pregnancy. 30–60 seconds, both arms. |
| Zusanli, Stomach 36 | Outside of the shin, four finger-widths below the kneecap, a thumb-width off the bone. | Digestion, fatigue and general steadiness; “for the belly and abdomen, keep to Sanli”. | Avoid over varicose veins or a painful swollen calf. 30–60 seconds, both legs. |
Questions
The point locations are the same and nothing else is. Acupuncture puts a fine needle through the skin, is a licensed clinical act in most countries, and has to be done by someone trained and regulated where you live. Acupressure is steady pressure applied through unbroken skin with a thumb. We write about the second and never the first.
Thirty to sixty seconds a side, once to three times a day. Build the pressure over about three seconds rather than jabbing, breathe out as you press in, and aim for a dull spreading ache. If the sensation is sharp, electric or shooting, you are on a nerve rather than a point: stop.
A point is more tender than the tissue a centimetre in any direction, and the feeling is dull and spreading rather than sharp. The classical name for that sensation is 得气 dé qì, obtaining the qi. If everything within an inch feels the same, move a little and press again before pressing harder.
Some points are traditionally avoided in pregnancy, and the caution is old and consistent: Hegu on the hand, Sanyinjiao on the inner lower leg, and points on the lower abdomen and lower back. Neiguan on the wrist carries no such restriction. Tell the midwife or clinician looking after you what you are doing either way.
We make no claim of that kind. What we can say is what the classical literature associates each point with, how a point is located, and how people in China have used them daily for centuries. Anything on this site that reads like a promise of an outcome is written badly and we would like to know about it.
The reading
This page is written for everybody, so it names all three and commits to none. A reading names the point beside the pattern it belongs to, after thirty questions and one photograph of your tongue, written in English by a physician licensed in China and sent within 48 hours.