Not in pregnancy, or if you could be pregnant.
上髎 Shangliao
“Upper Bone-Hollow” · BL31
Foot Taiyang · 31 of 67
Where. In the first small hollow on the sacrum, between the low-back dimple and the centre line of the spine.
For. Irregular periods; low back ache; difficult urination.
Press. Reach behind and press with the fingertips, about a minute.
Caution. Not in pregnancy, or if you could be pregnant.
上窌，在第一空腰髁下一寸，俠脊陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Shangliao Sits on the Sacrum
The recorded location reads: on the sacrum, between the posterior superior iliac spine and the posterior midline, exactly over the first posterior sacral foramen. Each noun repays unpacking. The sacrum is the triangular wedge of bone at the back of the pelvis — below the lumbar spine, gripped between the two hip bones — formed from five vertebrae that fuse into a single plate in adulthood. Its rear face carries four pairs of small openings, the posterior sacral foramina, through which the sacral nerves pass outward from their canal. The first of these pairs is the uppermost, and Shangliao sits precisely over its outer mouth. The posterior superior iliac spine, meanwhile, is the rear tip of the pelvic crest — a knuckle-sized prominence many people can see as a small dimple above the buttock.
Finding that prominence gives you the coordinate origin. From the bump, glide inward toward the midline: the stretch between is a broad, gently curved plateau of bone, and somewhere on its upper portion lies the target. The foramina themselves are shallow. Fingertips rarely meet a hole; they meet a whisper of extra softness, a faint settling compared with the surrounding plate. The four pairs step downward toward the tailbone, each sitting a little lower than the last and drifting slightly closer to the midline as it goes. Muscle and fat pad vary this picture from body to body — a slim frame may show every contour, a well-padded one may hide nearly all of it — which is exactly why the search returns again and again to bone, the one landmark that never moves.
Shangliao has company. Directly below it, over the second opening, sits Ciliao (BL32); two further paired points continue the ladder down to the fourth. The wider setting belongs to the bladder channel, the longest channel in the classical body: texts describe it beginning at the inner corner of the eye, sweeping over the head, descending the back alongside the spine, crossing the sacral plateau, and running on down the leg to end at the little toe. The corridor the liao occupy — between the midline and the pelvic rim — lies squarely on that descent, which is why this small patch of bone gathered so many classical stations onto itself.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down, or stand comfortably, and let the low back soften. Bring your hands to your waist as if resting them on a belt. Leave the thumbs behind and walk them backward along the upper rim of the pelvis, following the crest of bone until it ends. At its rear terminus each thumb meets a rounded, knuckle-like prominence — often sheltering beneath a small dimple in the skin. That is the posterior superior iliac spine. Pause there and memorise the sensation: everything else keys off it. From the prominence, slide each thumb inward onto the smooth, wide plateau of the sacrum.
Now search lightly. With feather pressure, explore the upper portion of that plateau for the faintest change under the skin — a hint of softness, a subtle give where the bone opens. Compare sides as you go: most people notice a faint, dull awareness near the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away. Then confirm with the ladder. Sweep the fingertips slowly down the sacrum from top to bottom and try to trace the sequence of shallow depressions stepping toward the tailbone. Count from the top: the first of the ladder, highest on the bone, is the one this page describes. Two or three unhurried passes usually settle it.
Three slips account for most misses. The first is landing too low — on the second or third rung of the ladder, which belong to the neighboring points below. The second is drifting outward off the plateau and onto the gluteal muscle, where landmarks dissolve. The third is hunting for an obvious hole; the openings are far too discreet for that, announcing themselves only as a change of texture. If your own padding hides the texture entirely, take heart: for purely surface contact, close approximation guided by the dimples serves perfectly well. Whenever the search tangles, return to the waist-level prominences and begin again, slowly.
Reading the Name: Upper Bone-Hollow
Take the two characters in turn. Shang 上 means above or upper, and it is among the oldest kinds of Chinese character — an indicator, drawn in early script as a short stroke set above a long baseline. The line marks the ground; the tick marks position relative to it; the idea of above becomes visible geometry. In modern Mandarin shang carries the fourth tone, a clean fall from high pitch to low. Liao 髎 wears the bone radical on its left, and dictionaries of the tradition gloss it as the hollow places of bone — openings, gaps, the quiet architecture inside a skeleton. One character gives direction, the other terrain. Together, Shangliao reads as the upper bone-hollow: a name that is simultaneously a map coordinate and an anatomy lesson.
The name also carries a rank. The sacrum offers four pairs of openings, and the tradition set one paired point over each, naming them from the top down: Upper, Second, Middle, Lower — Shangliao, Ciliao, Zhongliao, Xiaoliao, codes BL31 through BL34. Collectively they are the eight liao, and Shangliao stands at the head of the ladder. Point names along the channels favour the vocabulary of landscape and building — gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses — but liao writes the physical fact directly into the label. Before any finger arrives, the name has already testified: what waits beneath is a hollow in bone, the highest of eight.
Classical texts describe the group as stations where the bladder channel meets the sacral openings, gathered around the concerns of the pelvic basin — a summary attribution, offered here without quotation. What matters for practice is how much work the name quietly performs. It tells you where to look (high on the sacrum, between the midline and the pelvic rim), what you will feel (a hollow rather than a knob), and even how the point relates to its neighbors (as the first rung of a ladder). Few anatomical terms manage so much instruction in two syllables.
One Pair Among Eight: The Liao Family
It helps to meet the whole household before dwelling on one member. The eight liao are eight points, four on each side, stacked like the rungs of a single ladder laid against the sacrum. Upper over the first pair of openings, Second over the next, Middle below that, Lowest nearest the tailbone — each pair anchored to one pair of foramina, the whole family descending from just below the lumbar junction toward the coccyx. They share the surname liao the way siblings share a family name, and the shared character marks a shared office: all four pairs were appointed to look after the same stretch of the body.
Why group them so deliberately? In the traditional picture, the sacral region is the root where several great affairs of the lower trunk converge — the passages of water, the gates of the bowels, and the realm of reproduction. Records discuss the eight liao together because classical practice approached them together, weighing which rung of the ladder suited which complaint. Thinking in families and stations rather than isolated dots runs throughout the tradition, and this is one of its clearest examples: a matched set of eight appointments carved, quite literally, into the architecture of one bone.
This page keeps its focus on the first member of the family, but everything said about care and gentleness travels unchanged down the ladder. Knowing the household also improves the search: if your fingers can trace the ladder at all, the topmost rung identifies itself by position, and the awareness that Ciliao waits one level below steadies the vertical sense. And the family explains the fame. A single point attracts attention; a coordinated suite of eight, arranged by rank along one bone and devoted to one region, reads as something closer to a small institution — which is, in effect, what the classical imagination built here.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, uterine prolapse, infertility, nocturnal emission, impotence, difficult urination and bowel movement, and lumbosacral pain. Read as one portfolio, it is almost entirely the pelvic basin speaking. Menstrual rhythm and discharge concern the tides of the female body as tradition understood them; uterine prolapse was read classically as a sinking — the lifting, holding power of the body weakening so that what should stay gathered begins to descend; infertility belongs to the gate of conception; nocturnal emission and impotence concern male reproductive function, which tradition filed alongside the water system of the kidney and bladder; difficult urination and bowel movement speak of gates that fail to open smoothly; and lumbosacral pain is the plain local ache where spine meets pelvis.
Why would one small station host such varied guests? The traditional answer is geographic. In the classical map of the body, the sacral region anchors the lower trunk — the place where the water passages, the bowel gates, and the reproductive realm all converge before reaching the surface — and the eight liao stand at that crossroads, one pair of doors for each floor of the bone. A crossroads serves every traveler who passes; a station at the confluence gathers the business of the whole valley. Discharge was framed as tide gone awry, emission and impotence as the water-realm flagging, obstructed water and stool as doors sticking in their frames. These are explanatory images, coherent within the old physiology, and they explain the list without promising anything about outcomes.
Plainly repeated: all of the above are traditional uses as recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Cycles that shift persistently, continence that falters, fertility that stays elusive — these belong with professional care, not with a pressure routine.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, arrange the scene: a warm, private room, a firm chair or kneeling seat, the low back allowed to soften. Warm the hands first — chilled fingers start a conversation the muscle does not want — then rest the pad of a thumb or finger, never the tip, on the upper plateau where the search settled. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths. Add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the bone beneath. Pressure should read as pleasant dullness or mild warmth. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, each circle riding a long exhale out; then swap sides and keep the two sessions symmetrical.
Quality outranks intensity, as everywhere in this practice. Thanks to its muscular padding the sacrum tolerates somewhat fuller contact than a bare ribcage does, but fuller never means harder — no jabbing, no grinding, no pressing through pain to make something happen. Anchor the minute or two to an existing habit, the evening wind-down or the end of a shower, and treat it as a ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session: ninety seconds in which the day quiets and your own back receives notice. Honest expectations fit the register — comfort, warmth, a body that feels acknowledged — not the erasure of symptoms on a schedule.
Some days the practice politely declines. Skip it entirely during a feverish illness, over broken or irritated skin, or whenever anything sharp announces itself. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice — doubly so here, given the point’s traditional associations with the womb. Anyone recently operated on in the pelvis or low back, or living with diagnosed bladder or bowel conditions, should ask a clinician before beginning. And honour the stop signals at all times: sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, including tingling traveling down either leg, means finish immediately and try again another day, more gently or not at all.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Unlike the chest points, whose licensed records carry stern warnings about deep structures, the entry for this point records no special caution at all. The reason is visible geography: beneath the skin here lies a single, thick plate of sacral bone, and gentle fingertip contact stays on its surface, far removed from anything delicate. An empty warning column is not, however, an empty rulebook. The universal disciplines of home acupressure apply here exactly as everywhere else, and the habits that keep practice safe are the ones worth rehearsing until they become reflex.
The rules, then, stated once more in full. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools. Keep pressure in the register of dull warmth, never letting it sharpen. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, including any tingling that travels down a leg, and do not retry that day. Avoid broken or irritated skin, pause during feverish illness, and skip the session entirely when the body signals distress. Pregnancy defers to a practitioner’s guidance before any new point joins the routine; recent pelvic or lumbar surgery, and diagnosed bladder or bowel conditions, call for a clinician’s clearance first. None of these lines is decoration; each exists because someone, somewhere, ignored it.
Above everything stands the larger rule. This page is educational, and acupressure is self-care — not diagnosis, not therapy. Seek prompt medical attention, not a pressure routine, for low-back pain after a significant fall, new loss of bladder or bowel control, numbness spreading into the groin or inner thighs, blood in the urine or stool, or fever accompanying escalating back pain. Persistent symptoms of any kind belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The eight liao have watched the pelvic basin for two millennia of theory; for anything urgent, let modern medicine watch it for you.
Shangliao — the Upper Bone-Hollow — stands at the head of the eight liao, the paired points set over the openings of the sacrum. Classical practice reached for this quiet station when cycles faltered or the base of the back ached. This guide walks the landmarks, reads the name, and sets gentle rules for home acupressure.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shangliao without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the dimples as your whole map. Rest your thumbs at the waistband, walk them backward along the pelvic rim until each settles into the bony knuckle beneath a skin dimple, then glide inward onto the flat sacral plateau. Search the upper part of that plateau for the faintest soft spot, and confirm by tracing the ladder of shallow depressions that steps down toward the tailbone — the topmost rung is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Shangliao myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip contact on the sacral plateau is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults: thick bone lies directly beneath the skin here, so light pressure remains far from the structures passing deeper. The ordinary disciplines still govern — pads rather than tips or tools, pressure that never sharpens, immediate stopping on any electric or radiating feeling. Pregnancy, recent pelvic or lumbar surgery, and diagnosed bladder or bowel conditions are situations to clear with a practitioner first.
- What did classical practice use Shangliao for?
- The traditional record lists irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, uterine prolapse, infertility, nocturnal emission, impotence, difficult urination and bowel movement, and lumbosacral pain — a portfolio centred almost entirely on the pelvic basin. Classical texts describe the eight liao as stations where the bladder channel meets the sacral openings, which is why this one patch of bone hosted so many concerns. Those are traditional frameworks, documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why are there eight liao points?
- Because the sacrum presents four pairs of small openings, and the tradition appointed one paired point over each. Their names stack like rungs — Upper, Second, Middle, Lower — descending from just below the lumbar junction toward the tailbone. Reading the family together makes each member easier to locate, and it shows how classical medicine thought in organised stations rather than isolated dots: eight related offices housed in the architecture of a single bone.
- Can acupressure at Shangliao replace seeing a doctor about an irregular cycle or ongoing back pain?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice without diagnostic power. A cycle that shifts persistently, continence that wavers, bowel habits that change, or low-back pain lasting beyond a couple of weeks deserves professional assessment promptly — and certain signs, such as new loss of bladder or bowel control or numbness spreading toward the groin, call for urgent care rather than any self-care routine. Let daily acupressure live downstairs; keep the consulting room upstairs for whenever symptoms persist or frighten you.
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, the eight-liao grouping, and sacral anatomy context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL31 Shangliao — location, indications, and point-class 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/bl31/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl31/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl31/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL31",
"name": {
"en": "Shangliao",
"gloss": "Upper Bone-Hollow",
"zh-Hant": "上髎",
"zh-Hans": "上髎"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 31,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "In the first small hollow on the sacrum, between the low-back dimple and the centre line of the spine."
},
"for": [
"irregular periods",
"low back ache",
"difficult urination"
],
"press": {
"text": "Reach behind and press with the fingertips, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not in pregnancy, or if you could be pregnant."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/bl31",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-25"
}