眉衝 Meichong
“Eyebrow Surge” · BL3
Foot Taiyang · 3 of 67
Where. Straight up from the inner end of the eyebrow, half a thumb-width inside the front hairline.
For. Headache; dizziness; a blocked nose.
Press. Small circles with two fingertips, about a minute each side.
Meichong, the Eyebrow Surge, climbs straight up from the inner end of the eyebrow to a quiet patch of scalp just inside the front hairline. Classical practice reached for it when headache, dizziness, or a stuffed-up nose pressed at the upper face. This guide walks through finding it by touch, then pressing it gently and safely.
按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Meichong Sits Above the Brow
The dataset places Meichong on the head, directly above Zanzhu (BL2), half a cun inside the anterior hairline, lying between Shenting (GV24) and Qucha (BL4). Three anchors in one sentence, and they assemble neatly. Zanzhu, the point immediately below, rests in the small depression at the inner end of the eyebrow, at the supraorbital notch — run a fingertip along your brow toward the nose and you will find it where the eyebrow thickens and stops. From that depression, the line to Meichong is strictly vertical: straight up the forehead, crossing the front hairline, and continuing about half a cun further into the hair-bearing scalp. A cun, here as everywhere in point-location, is a proportional unit taken from the body being measured rather than from a ruler — about the width of a thumb joint on most adults — so half a cun beyond the hairline means roughly half a thumb-width of scalp past the hair’s edge.
What the fingertips meet there is friendly terrain. Beneath the forehead skin lies the thin, flat muscle that raises the eyebrows, and beneath the muscle a firm, tendon-like sheet binds the scalp together, with the smooth bone of the forehead under everything. Unlike the crowded country around the eyes just below — where the channel’s very first points live — this stretch above the brow keeps nothing delicate near the surface, which is part of why the licensed record raises no special warning for it. Meichong comes as a matched pair, one point on each side of the midline, mirroring each other above the two eyebrows. Working both sides keeps the practice symmetrical and doubles the quiet satisfaction of a search done twice and done well.
The neighbors complete the map. At the same half-cun depth inside the hairline, Shenting holds the midline directly above the centre of the forehead, while Qucha stands farther out, toward the corner where the forehead meets the temple. Meichong occupies the ground between them, aligned with the inner end of the eyebrow. Reading the three together explains the dataset’s phrasing: between Shenting and Qucha simply locates the shared horizontal band, and directly above Zanzhu fixes which spot on that band is yours. If the picture ever blurs mid-search, return to the eyebrow — the whole constellation hangs from that one reliable landmark.
Finding Meichong by Touch
Sit upright in a comfortable chair with shoulders released, so the forehead and scalp soften. Begin on the left side with the right hand. Place the pad of your index finger in the depression at the inner end of the left eyebrow — the spot the catalogue records as Zanzhu, BL2 — and confirm it by feel: a small hollow where the brow meets the bridge-of-the-nose territory, often faintly tender to firm prodding, which is itself a reminder to search feather-light. Now walk the finger straight upward. Not along the eyebrow’s curve, and not diagonally outward — vertically, as if climbing a plumb line from the brow to the hairline. When the hairline edge arrives under the fingertip, keep going: cross it and continue about half a thumb-width further, onto hair-bearing scalp, letting the finger settle where skin turns to hair. That settled spot is Meichong.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressing starts. Touch both sides and compare: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and little sensation a finger-width away. Check the height: slide a finger to the very centre of the hairline, step half a thumb-width up onto the scalp, and you stand level with Shenting; Meichong waits on that same horizontal level, directly above the inner end of the eyebrow. Check the width: from your found point, the temple-side neighbor Qucha should sit noticeably farther out along the same level, toward the corner where forehead meets temple. If everything agrees — above the brow’s inner end, just inside the hairline, sharing Shenting’s level — the location is sound. Swap hands and repeat on the other side.
Three classic mistakes account for most missed searches. The first is drift: following the natural arch of the eyebrow outward until the finger ends up above the middle of the brow or beyond, straying toward Qucha’s territory. The fix is mechanical — return the finger to the brow’s innermost depression and climb again, checking verticality against an imagined plumb line. The second is stopping short: the hairline edge feels like a destination, but the recorded location sits half a cun beyond it, on the hair itself; if you are still on bare forehead skin, keep climbing. The third is searching with force — hard jabbing across a tender notch teaches nothing and sours the whole exercise. Search lightly, decide slowly, and press only after the decision.
Reading the Name: Eyebrow Surge
The two characters sketch the point in motion. Mei 眉 is the eyebrow itself — a character whose traditional written form arranges its strokes like a brow resting above an eye, which is how a face is arranged too. Chong 衝 sets 重 inside 行, the sign of a crossroads: movement forcing its way along a thoroughfare — a surge, a rush upward. Together, Meichong reads as the surge that mounts the brow, the image of something arriving at the eyebrow and pushing on past it into the hairline. Among the classical points, names built on architecture — gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses — abound; names built on a verb of movement are rare, and this is one.
The name earns its keep by describing the channel. Classical teaching draws the bladder channel setting out from the inner corner of the eye, climbing over the forehead and the crown of the head, then running down the back all the way to the little toe — the longest channel course in the body. Meichong sits at the moment that climb leaves the eyebrow behind: the face’s last landmark before the channel commits to the scalp. A handful of other points across the system share the character chong in their names, and it carries the same sense in each — qi surging, pouring, rushing through. Read together, name and location tell one story: this is where the tide that rose at the inner eye crests the brow.
Pinyin writes the name Méichōng. The syllable méi rises through the second tone — the voice lifts as though asking a question — while chōng holds a high, steady first tone, flat as a horizon. Say them in sequence and the name performs its own meaning: a rise, then a sustained push. The hanzi 眉衝 are simple enough to recognise at a glance, and like many point names the pair compresses a whole understanding into two syllables — where the spot sits, and what the tradition believed moved through it. Learning to see those two characters is a small, durable dividend of practising at this point.
Traditional Uses, Explained
The licensed dataset records four traditional indications for Meichong: headache, dizziness, nasal congestion, and nosebleed. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the headache in those lists was understood especially as the frontal kind — weight and ache seated above the brows or gripping the band of the forehead, precisely the territory this point overlooks. Dizziness in classical records covers the family of light-headed, swaying, room-tilting sensations rather than any single modern diagnosis. Nasal congestion meant the blocked, pressured nose of a cold snap or an allergic stretch. Nosebleed — spontaneous bleeding from the nostrils — belonged to the same upper-face conversation. Four entries, one neighborhood: everything the tradition filed under this point happens at or near the top of the face.
Why a forehead point should appear beside nose complaints is a fair question, and the classical answer is cartographic rather than chemical. The bladder channel sets out at the inner corner of the eye — directly above the root of the nose — and crosses the forehead on its way over the head. Points along that opening stretch were therefore grouped, in channel logic, with the structures beneath and beside their course: the eye points below with the eyes, and the brow-and-hairline points with the head’s aches and the nose’s traffic. Meichong, standing where the channel crests the brow, took its place in that scheme. This is traditional reasoning about pathways and neighborhoods, recorded here to help read the lists — not a claim about physiology, and not a prediction that pressing the point will relieve anything.
It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not statements that self-applied pressure treats disease, and nothing on this page replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied acupressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence gathered at any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition the way you would hold an old map — admiring its craft, learning its geography, and never mistaking it for the road itself. Hold the safety rules, by contrast, firmly and without exception.
Gentle Self-Care Practice at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, jaw loose. Rest the pads of two fingertips — index and middle curled together — on the spot. Start with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then begin small circles, letting the skin travel gently over the firm tissue beneath rather than scrubbing across it. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness, faint warmth, or a mild spreading awareness across the forehead — never sharpness, never throbbing. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed to unhurried exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Finish one side, swap hands, and give the other side its equal minute. Two mirrored searches, two mirrored sessions: symmetry is half the craft.
Quality outranks duration by a wide margin. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact is the whole wellness register this page practises; force buys nothing and can leave the scalp sore for a day. Warm your hands first if they run cold — chilled fingertips make people flinch and press harder to compensate, which is backwards. Choose a quiet corner rather than a screen, and treat the session as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, notice the forehead broaden faintly under still fingers, and press on the long exhale. Readers who keep routines succeed by anchoring them — after the morning wash, before the afternoon slump — because self-care traditions ask for regularity, not intensity. Three calm minutes on most days outweigh twenty heroic minutes once a month.
Above all, treat the exercise as a few minutes of deliberate attention rather than a treatment appointment. Across weeks of practice, notice what actually changes: perhaps the forehead feels less set, perhaps the pause itself becomes the valued part of the day, perhaps nothing shifts except that you now know this small territory of your own head intimately. Every one of those outcomes sits honestly inside the scope of self-acupressure. What sits outside is escalation — pressing harder, lingering longer, hunting a bigger sensation to justify the time. When curiosity pulls that way, ease back to gentleness, or close the practice for the day and return tomorrow. The point has waited centuries; it can wait until morning.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Begin with what the record says — and does not say. The licensed dataset registers no special cautions for Meichong: no warnings attach to this entry, and this module echoes that empty record faithfully. The absence suits the geography. High on the forehead, above the brow and inside the hairline, gentle surface pressure engages skin, a thin superficial muscle, and the firm sheet of the scalp — comfortably distant from the eyes below and from anything delicate deeper in. Forgiving terrain is not, however, a license for force; the universal rules of home acupressure apply here exactly as everywhere else, and the paragraphs below spell them out so no reader has to reconstruct them from memory.
Practical rules first. Skip the point entirely over broken skin, healing wounds, active irritated or broken-out patches on the scalp, and anywhere near a recent cut or surgical site on the head or face — wait until skin is whole or a clinician clears ordinary activity. After any blow to the head, set pressure work aside altogether until a professional has assessed the injury. Use finger pads only — never knuckles, elbows, or tools — keep the pressure light, and never press through pain or while clenching the jaw or holding the breath. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not resume that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone managing recurring severe headaches or a neurological diagnosis, should ask a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice to the week.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, acupressure is self-care, and certain headaches belong with medicine, not massage. Seek prompt medical attention — urgently, without pausing to try pressure first — for a headache that arrives suddenly and is worse than any before it; headache with fever and a stiff neck; headache after a fall or blow to the head; headache joined by blurred vision, weakness, numbness, slurred speech, or confusion; or a headache pattern that steadily worsens over days or weeks. Persistent ordinary headaches likewise deserve a professional’s assessment rather than a routine’s patience. Within its honest limits, though, Meichong offers most readers something real: a precise, harmless acquaintance with the topography of their own forehead, approached with curiosity and a light hand.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Meichong without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the eyebrow as the whole map. Settle a fingertip into the depression at the inner end of the brow — that is Zanzhu, BL2 — then climb straight up the forehead, cross the front hairline, and continue about half a thumb-width further onto the hair-bearing scalp. The spot where you settle — directly above the brow’s inner end, just inside the hairline — is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode that same landmark chain in proportional language, and the landmarks work whether or not you ever convert them.
- Is pressing a point this close to my forehead and hairline actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care here. The licensed record attaches no special caution to this entry, and the structures under the skin at this spot tolerate light surface work well. The usual boundaries still apply: nothing over broken or irritated skin or recent injury, pads instead of tools, and an immediate stop on sharp or electric sensation. Anyone who is pregnant, or who manages recurring severe headaches, should check with a qualified practitioner before beginning.
- What did classical practice use Meichong for?
- The traditional record lists headache, dizziness, nasal congestion, and nosebleed — the upper-face portfolio of a channel that sets out beside the root of the nose and crests the forehead at this point. Classical texts group the brow and hairline points together for exactly these complaints. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed claims that pressing the point relieves them.
- Why does a forehead point show up in discussions of the nose?
- Because of where the channel travels, in classical thinking. The bladder channel is drawn setting out from the inner corner of the eye, immediately above the root of the nose, and crossing the forehead on its way over the head. Points along that route were traditionally discussed alongside the structures their pathway passed — hence nose complaints listed beside head complaints at the brow and hairline points. It is pathway logic from a pre-modern map of the body, offered as context rather than as physiology.
- Can pressing Meichong replace seeing a doctor about my headaches?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and headaches carrying warning signs — sudden severity unlike any before, fever with a stiff neck, onset after a head injury, changes in vision or speech, or a pattern that keeps worsening — need professional assessment promptly. Picture the two as different rooms in one house: daily self-care lives in the kitchen, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room down the hall for when symptoms persist or escalate. Neither replaces the other, and the consulting room door should open far more easily than pride allows.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL3 Meichong — location, actions, and the traditional indication record.
- 02WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008), World Health Organization — nomenclature conventions.
- 03A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition and channel context.
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/bl3/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl3/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl3/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL3",
"name": {
"en": "Meichong",
"gloss": "Eyebrow Surge",
"zh-Hant": "眉衝",
"zh-Hans": "眉冲"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 3,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "Straight up from the inner end of the eyebrow, half a thumb-width inside the front hairline."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"dizziness",
"a blocked nose"
],
"press": {
"text": "Small circles with two fingertips, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/bl3",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}