膽俞 Danshu
“The Gallbladder’s Transport” · BL19
Foot Taiyang · 19 of 67 · back-shu of the gallbladder
Where. Three bumps below the shoulder-blade tips (below the tenth bump from C7), two finger-widths to each side.
For. A bitter taste in the mouth; aching under the ribs.
Press. Ask a partner to press with a thumb, or lean on a soft ball against a wall, a minute.
膽俞，在第十椎下，兩傍各一寸五分按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Danshu Sits on the Upper Back
Danshu occupies the mid-back, just below the lowest tips of the shoulder blades for most bodies. The dataset locates it on the back, below the spinous process of the tenth thoracic vertebra, 1.5 cun lateral to the posterior midline — in plainer terms, in the soft valley just under the tenth bony knob of the spine counted from the top, then roughly two finger-widths out toward the flank side. A cun, as elsewhere on this site, is the traditional proportional measure taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler: on most adults, one and a half cun works out close to the combined width of the index and middle fingers laid together. The point arrives as a bilateral pair, one on each side of the spinal ridge, and the two sides are located and tended identically.
Classical geography gives the Bladder meridian — the long channel the tradition traces from the inner corner of the eye, over the head, and down the whole back to the little toe, calling it the longest meridian in the body — a double track along the torso. Two lines descend on either side of the spine, an outer and an inner, and it is the inner line, running about one and a half cun beside the midline, that hosts one of the tradition’s most quietly useful arrangements: the back-shu series. Classical teaching assigns every organ of the trunk a gathering window along this row, a place where that organ’s activity was understood to pool closest to the surface at the back. Danshu is the gallbladder’s window. Its neighbours follow the same logic step by step up and down the spine, each vertebral level lending itself to a different office.
The territory under the fingertips here is sturdier than it looks. Beneath the skin at this height lie the long muscles standing guard beside the spine, then the ribs angling down toward the flank and, deeper still, the cavity of the upper abdomen. The licensed record carries a caution about exactly this geography, noting that instruments driven too deep here could injure the liver — a reminder that even solid-looking mid-back terrain is working country, not empty ground. For fingertip self-care the practical conclusion is simple: everything worthwhile about this point happens at the surface, in skin and superficial muscle, and nothing about it invites force. The valley between spine and muscle announces itself readily to patient fingers; there is no need to press hard to find it.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Settle the body first: sit upright on a firm chair with the shoulders heavy, or lie face down with the forehead resting on folded hands, whichever lets the back soften. To reach the mid-back, slide one hand up from behind the waist until the fingertips rest against the spine — most people manage this without strain. Begin by finding the lowest tip of the shoulder blade, the sharp point of bone at its bottom corner, and let your fingers walk inward from there toward the spine. Classical location practice places that tip level with the seventh thoracic vertebra in most bodies, so the knob directly inward from it is number seven of the series you are about to count. Walk downward along the knobs — eight, nine, ten — until your finger settles beneath the third one down: that prominence belongs to the tenth thoracic vertebra, and the slight hollow just under it is the level Danshu calls home.
With the level found, measure outward. Rest the pads of the index and middle fingers together against the spine at that hollow and slide them sideways off the bony ridge into the groove beside it: the tender-feeling valley between the spine and the long muscles is where Danshu lives, about one and a half cun out. Confirm before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light on both sides and compare — many people notice a faint dull awareness or mild ache at the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away. Let a slow breath move under your fingers; the back rises slightly on the inhale and settles again on the exhale, and a well-chosen spot rides that movement. If what you feel is bare bone, ease outward half a finger-width; if you have landed on the taut belly of the muscle itself, drift back toward the ridge.
Miscounting is the classic error, and backs vary: some people carry unusually prominent lower knobs, and a stiff neck can hide the very top of the series. When doubt creeps in, start again from the shoulder-blade tip and count slowly once more rather than persuading yourself the first tally was right. The second common slip is wandering too far from the midline, arriving near the outer line of the Bladder meridian that runs a further cun and a half out; if your search crosses the muscle bulk toward the flank, return to the spinal ridge and begin again. None of these slips endangers gentle fingertip exploration — the stakes concern precision, not safety — but an accurately found point makes the quiet sensations described above far easier to notice.
Reading the Name: The Gallbladder’s Shu
The name is short and does its work efficiently. Dan 膽 is the character for the gallbladder — pronounced dan with the dipping third tone, and borrowed by everyday speech for courage and gumption, the way English says a bold person has guts. Shu 俞, rendered with a flat, high first tone in the dataset’s romanization, belongs to a small family of related characters — shu 腧, the transporting points of classical theory, and shu 輸, to convey or transport — and the tradition uses it for the stations where an organ’s qi was understood to travel outward and gather at the back. Joined together, Danshu reads plainly as the gallbladder’s shu: the gallbladder’s own window in the back-shu series.
Classical texts give the gallbladder a dual portfolio. It stores bile — the clear, bitter fluid the ancients connected with digestion and with bitterness rising into the mouth — and it is spoken of as the seat of judgment and decisiveness, the counsellor consulted, in the old imagery, whenever a person must make up their mind. Boldness, resolve, and the capacity to choose are the qualities tradition files under this small organ. That is why classical discussions of gallbladder points range beyond purely physical complaints into states of timidity, restless sleep, and hesitation: the framework treats a person as one fabric, not a collection of separate departments. Read alongside that teaching, the name explains why a point labelled for the gallbladder keeps appearing in conversations that sound, at first hearing, psychological.
The shu-window arrangement also answers a question newcomers often ask: why should a point belonging to the gallbladder sit nowhere near the gallbladder? The tradition’s answer is cartographic rather than surgical. It pictures the back as a switchboard where each organ keeps a dedicated line, ordered neatly along the spine like offices along a corridor, and the bladder channel’s inner track provides the corridor itself. The naming customs of the network — halls, doors, courtyards, transports, windows — recur everywhere, and Danshu fits the pattern precisely: a modest name for a specific address. Once the map is grasped, the location stops looking arbitrary and starts looking inevitable.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: jaundice, bitter taste in the mouth, hypochondriac pain, consumptive lung disease, tidal fever, pleurisy, and hypertension. Take the first three in the classical key. Jaundice — the yellowing of skin and of the whites of the eyes — was read by the old physicians as a damp-heat pattern involving the bile, and Danshu, as the gallbladder’s own window, stood naturally at the centre of that discussion. Bitter taste in the mouth belonged to the same story: bile flavour climbing upward, in the traditional account, whenever its flow failed to run smoothly. Hypochondriac pain refers to the flanks — the strips of trunk below the armpits and alongside the lower ribs — territory the gallbladder channel crosses on its zigzag path down the body, and therefore natural ground for gallbladder-centred reasoning.
The middle entries belong to older registers of description. Consumptive lung disease and tidal fever preserve the wasting patterns the classics described in their own vocabulary: deep fatigue, afternoon heat felt rising like a tide, night sweats, a slow dwindling of reserves — pictures of depletion in which practitioners reached for the shu windows along the back. Pleurisy in the record reflects later clinical vocabulary layered onto older complaints of chest-side stitch and oppression, material the classical discussion would have filed under the flank-pain heading above. Hypertension is a plainly modern addition, entered into recent-era records as the tradition met contemporary diagnostic categories; it sits oddly beside jaundice and tidal fever, and readers should take it as a record of historical usage rather than an endorsement.
It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses, documented in a licensed dataset and classical literature for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats jaundice, lowers blood pressure, or resolves anything else, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician — least of all for jaundice itself, which modern medicine rightly regards as a sign demanding prompt investigation. Where research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on context, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition warmly and hold the safety rules firmly; the two are not rivals.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, settle into a sustainable position: seated with the spine tall but unforced, or lying face down with a cushion beneath the chest, whichever lets the back muscles soften. Reaching your own mid-back is easiest with the same-side hand slid up from behind the waist; a partner can help, or simply resting the fingertips in place works just as well. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small circles, letting the skin glide over the muscle beneath rather than grinding against the ribs. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or gentle warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales; then swap hands and give the other side equal time.
Quality outranks duration, as with every practice on this site. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact suits the wellness register this page practises; jabbing or grinding teaches the body nothing and risks bruising besides. Warm cold hands before starting, because chilled muscle guards itself. Choose a quiet corner over a screen, and let the session double as a pause in the day: five unhurried breaths with attention resting between the shoulder blades already delivers most of what self-care traditions actually promise. People who keep such habits alive tend to anchor them to something existing — after morning washing, before the commute, at the evening wind-down — because regularity, not intensity, is what the practice asks for.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention. Across weeks you may notice the area feeling less guarded, the breath settling sooner when the fingers arrive, or simply the pleasure of having spent two minutes attending to your own back. Every one of those outcomes sits inside the honest scope of self-acupressure. Escalation does not: pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result betrays the method and courts soreness at minimum. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, shorten the session, or stop for the day. The point will still be there tomorrow.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Danshu earns its respect through a caution written into the licensed record itself: do not needle deeply here, because going too far beneath the skin at this site may injure the liver. The geography explains it. At this height of the trunk the wall separating skin from upper abdominal contents is crossed only by muscle and membrane, and the liver rides close beneath the lower ribs on the body’s right side. Professional training manages that risk with precise instrument technique; home self-care manages it differently and far more simply — by never leaving the surface at all. Fingertip pressure confined to skin and superficial muscle operates in a different world from deep needling, which is why healthy adults can practise it comfortably within sensible bounds.
The practical rules gather easily. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial; use finger pads, never knuckles, elbows, or tools. Skip the point during any feverish or acute illness, over broken, irritated, or inflamed skin, and while exhausted to the point of shakiness. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Readers who are pregnant, or living with liver, gallbladder, or spinal conditions, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone recovering from back injury or surgery should wait until ordinary movement has been cleared.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for yellowing of the skin or eyes, dark urine, persistent pain beneath the right ribs, fever alongside any of these, or symptoms that persist beyond a few weeks or simply frighten you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, whether medical or East Asian medical as suits the situation. The safest gift Danshu offers most households is a calmer acquaintance with their own back, treated kindly and kept in proportion.
Danshu, the Gallbladder’s Shu, waits on the upper back below the tenth thoracic vertebra, a thumb-and-a-half out from the midline. Classical practice opened this window when jaundice, a bitter mouth, or pain along the ribs weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow; going too deep can damage the liver.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Danshu without knowing anything about cun?
- Let the shoulder blades do the surveying. Find the sharp lowest tip of one shoulder blade, walk your fingers inward to the spine, and count three bony knobs down from that level; the hollow just under the third knob sits at the tenth thoracic vertebra. Slide two finger-widths sideways off the ridge into the soft valley beside it, and you have arrived. Cun measurements encode exactly this sequence in proportional language — the landmarks matter more than the arithmetic.
- Is pressing Danshu myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held at the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and superficial muscle far short of the deeper structures the dataset’s caution addresses. The recorded risk concerns instruments driven too deep — a category home acupressure never enters. Honour the stop signals: sharp or radiating sensation, worsening discomfort, or anything that feels wrong all mean finish immediately, and skip the point entirely during fever or over broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Danshu for?
- The traditional record lists jaundice-pattern complaints, bitter taste in the mouth, hypochondriac or flank pain, wasting patterns accompanied by tidal fever, and chest-side discomfort, with hypertension added in more recent eras. Classical theory describes it as the back-shu window where the gallbladder’s qi gathers on the back, which is why bile-flavoured and flank-region complaints dominate its historic portfolio. These are traditional frames for understanding the body — documented for context, not offered as treatment claims.
- Why does a gallbladder point sit on the bladder meridian?
- Because the back-shu system borrows the real estate rather than the ownership. Classical maps give the bladder channel two long descending lines on either side of the spine, and the inner line serves as a corridor where every organ keeps a gathering window at its own vertebral level. Danshu is simply the gallbladder’s address on that corridor. The arrangement runs unbroken up and down the trunk, each organ holding its own station at its own level.
- Can acupressure at Danshu replace medical care for jaundice or a bitter mouth?
- No, and the gap matters most exactly here. Visible yellowing of the skin or eyes is a signal modern medicine investigates urgently, and a persistent bitter taste or flank pain deserves proper assessment rather than patient pressing. Think of the two as different floors of one building: daily self-care lives downstairs and keeps you well acquainted with your own body, while the consulting room upstairs receives the symptoms that persist or alarm. Neither floor substitutes for the other.
Sources
- 01WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008), World Health Organization — nomenclature conventions.
- 02A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition, back-shu theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL19 Danshu — location, point class, actions, and caution record.
Last reviewed
牌記This leaf, for machines
Old books ended with a colophon saying who printed them. Every leaf here carries the same facts as structured data for agents and search, with no layout in the way.
- GET /en/points/bl19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl19/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL19",
"name": {
"en": "Danshu",
"gloss": "The Gallbladder’s Transport",
"zh-Hant": "膽俞",
"zh-Hans": "胆俞"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 19,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "Three bumps below the shoulder-blade tips (below the tenth bump from C7), two finger-widths to each side."
},
"for": [
"A bitter taste in the mouth",
"aching under the ribs"
],
"press": {
"text": "Ask a partner to press with a thumb, or lean on a soft ball against a wall, a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/bl19",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}