Never press hard on the throat.
廉泉 Lianquan
“Edge Spring” · CV23
Conception Vessel · 23 of 24 · crossing-point
Where. On the front of the neck, just under the chin: the dip above the Adam’s apple, on the top edge of the hyoid bone.
For. Mouth and tongue sores, drooling, trouble swallowing.
Press. Light touch, pressing up toward the chin, about a minute.
Caution. Never press hard on the throat.
在頷下，結喉上，舌本下按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Lianquan Sits on the Front of the Neck
The dataset gives the address in one measured sentence: on the neck, on the anterior midline, above the laryngeal prominence, in the depression on the upper border of the hyoid bone. Each term unfolds into ordinary language. The laryngeal prominence is the Adam’s apple — the firm ridge at the front of the throat, more pronounced in some people than others. The anterior midline is the body’s central seam, equidistant from left and right at every height. And the hyoid bone is the small horseshoe-shaped bone at the root of the tongue, between the chin and the Adam’s apple — unusual among bones because it joins no other bone at all, being slung in place by muscles, and it rises and settles every time you swallow. The point sits in the shallow dip just above the upper rim of that bone, dead centre on the seam — high on the neck, closer to the chin than most people expect.
What lies beneath the fingertip here deserves particular gentleness, and the licensed record explains why in its own caution: the hyoid, the tongue root, and the upper airway lie close. Over most of the trunk, layers of muscle or bone stand between skin and deeper structures; here the covering is a thin span of soft tissue before the base of the tongue, the throat passage, and the airway begin. Everything in this little territory moves together — breath stirs it slightly, and each swallow raises the whole assembly and lets it settle again. That mobility is exactly what makes the landmarks findable, and it is also why the search is conducted with lightness and patience rather than pressure: a heavy hand only works against tissue that needs to move freely beneath it.
The midline here is also a ladder of recorded neighbours, which makes misidentification easy to catch. Below sits Tiantu (CV22), which the record places in the centre of the suprasternal fossa at the base of the throat; above waits Chengjiang (CV24), recorded in the central groove beneath the lower lip — the very last station of the Ren vessel. Every one of these addresses shares the same vertical line, so height alone tells them apart. And like all midline points, Lianquan is a single address worked once, with whichever hand prefers; there is no left-right pair to keep symmetrical.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and shoulders released, facing a mirror if that helps. First find the Adam’s apple: look straight ahead, and one slow swallow makes the ridge announce itself as it rises and settles. Tip your chin gently back for a moment so the structures at the front of the throat lift clear. Rest the pad of your index or middle finger on the top rim of the Adam’s apple and slide straight upward along the midline. You cross a short stretch of soft hollow, then meet a firm, narrow, transverse bar that can be nudged very slightly from side to side — that is the body of the hyoid bone. Settle the finger pad in the shallow depression directly above its upper border, on the centre line, then let your head return comfortably level. That spot is where Lianquan is recorded to sit.
A few quiet checks steady the result before any pressing begins. Confirm the centre first: the finger should sit equidistant from the left and right sides of the neck, precisely on the seam. Then run the swallow test once more with the finger resting still: the whole throat will rise and fall while the hyoid glides beneath the pad — that movement confirms you are resting on a living landmark, not an inert plate of bone. Audit what lies beneath: soft skin over a slender, mobile bar — if you feel a broad flat surface instead, you have slid back down onto cartilage. If distinct throbbing registers under the pad, you have drifted toward the vessels that travel alongside; ease back toward the centre and lighten until the pulsing disappears. None of these checks needs more than feather weight.
The classic mistakes are worth naming so they lose their sting. The first is pushing inward, backward into the throat itself — the one direction this site never rewards; the search stays on the surface, never diving into the floor of the depression. The second is hunting for minutes at a time with the head tipped far back, which stretches and displaces the very landmarks being used; tip the head only to begin, then work once level. The third is mistaking the upper rim of the Adam’s apple for the hyoid: the true bone sits higher, feels narrower, and answers a sideways nudge with a small give that cartilage does not offer. Whenever doubt creeps in, return to the Adam’s apple, swallow once, and climb the midline again, slowly, trusting the sequence to repeat itself.
Reading the Name: A Spring at the Edge
Two characters carry the image. Quan 泉 means springwater — water welling up out of the ground, one of the oldest and most beloved images in the naming vocabulary of the channels, shared with wells, valleys, and gorges scattered along their lengths. Lian 廉 reads today most often as upright, incorruptible, honest — the character standing behind words for a clean official — while older layers of the language also used it for the edge or corner of a thing, a sense whose shadow survives in the old compound lianyu 廉隅. Read through that older spatial sense, the name becomes Edge Spring or Corner Spring; read through the moral one, it keeps its spring and gains a quiet dignity. Point names gathered layers across centuries, and both readings are interpretations offered for reflection rather than decrees.
Why raise a spring here? Traditional commentary connected the spot with the fluids of the mouth: saliva gathering like well-water at the border where chin meets throat, just above the tongue’s root. The recorded indications lend the picture its coherence in traditional reasoning — among them drooling, and swelling beneath the tongue, entries in which moisture and its movement are exactly the subject. Others prefer to leave the character in its everyday register and simply enjoy the pairing: an honest little spring at the edge of things. However the name is taken, it does the work names like this always do — it marks the spot as a place where something gathers, not a way-station things merely pass through.
The pinyin spelling Liánquán records the sounds precisely, and it holds a small symmetry: both syllables ride the second tone, the rising tone, so the spoken name lifts twice in succession — a doubled rising cadence, like something climbing steadily upward. The hanzi pair 廉泉 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. As with so many points, the name is itself a small set of instructions: come to the edge, and see what pools there.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: stomatitis, glossitis, mouth and tongue sores, speech impairment after stroke, vocal cord paralysis, swelling and pain under the tongue, stiff tongue with inability to speak, drooling, and difficulty swallowing. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list groups naturally. Stomatitis and glossitis are the clinical words for inflamed states of the mouth and of the tongue respectively; the old records gathered such irritated, sore conditions under sores and burning heat of the mouth and tongue. Swelling and pain under the tongue, and a stiff tongue that locks speech, describe the tongue itself as troubled ground — thickened, painful, unwilling to move. In the traditional frame all of these belonged to one neighbourhood: the mouth and tongue, whose fluids and movements were thought to gather at this spring.
The remaining entries concern speech, voice, swallowing, and drooling, and the classical reasoning behind them runs mostly on proximity. The point overlooks the tongue root and the throat, and tradition treats nearby addresses for nearby complaints, so loss of clarity in speech, a weakened voice, troublesome swallowing, and saliva spilling past a tongue that cannot hold it all fell within this station’s customary reach. The catalogue also records Lianquan among the crossing-points — addresses understood as meeting-grounds where more than one pathway converges; which lines exactly take part, the older literature discusses in its own idiom, and the licensed record simply preserves the category. One entry asks for particular care in modern reading: speech impairment after stroke. Classical texts preserved their era’s experience of such losses, but stroke today belongs first to emergency medicine, and nothing written here changes that.
It bears saying plainly: these are traditional uses, recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature and offered here for cultural and historical understanding — not claims that pressing this point treats any condition, and no substitute for assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle into position: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy, mirror at hand if useful. Use the pad of a single index or middle finger — never the tip, never a tool — and rest it on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add very small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath. Pressure should register as faint dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness, and the intention stays strictly on the surface: nothing presses backward into the throat. Sessions stay brief — seconds up to a minute or two, once or twice daily — and end early at the first sign of discomfort. Swallowing naturally during contact is fine; there is no need to freeze.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing causes harm and teaches the body nothing. Warm your hands first if they run cold, choose a quiet corner over a screen, and treat the pause as a breathing break as much as a pressure routine: inhale through the nose, soften, and touch lightly on a long exhale. Because Lianquan is a single midline address there is no second side to balance — one careful placement is the whole practice. And one boundary deserves a sentence of its own: this is not a technique to perform on young children’s throats; concerns about drooling or speech development in a child belong with a qualified practitioner instead.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the throat feels less tense, perhaps swallowing feels smoother while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend a quiet minute attending to a part of the body rarely thanked. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or simply stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point earns more respect than most, and the reason stands written in the licensed record’s own caution — summed up, it says to approach with great care, never deeply, and never direct anything deep toward the pharynx, where the hyoid, tongue root, and upper airway lie close. The full wording of that warning is carried verbatim on this page’s record block, exactly as the dataset preserves it; it speaks of professional technique, but its geography instructs everyone equally. Here there is no bony armour between skin and the airway’s upper reaches — only a thin span of soft tissue — so professional training manages the risk with exact method, while home self-care manages it differently and far more simply: by never leaving the surface at all.
For fingertip self-care the practical rules follow from that picture. Keep every touch strictly superficial: the intention lives in skin and outermost layer, never driving backward toward the airway. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, massage tools, or devices — and never press while holding the breath or through pain. Skip the point entirely during an acute sore-throat flare, a feverish illness, any acute difficulty breathing, or over broken or irritated skin; set the practice aside after any neck injury, surgery, or medical procedure in the region until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with swallowing disorders, airway conditions, or thyroid disease, should speak with a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice here.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Some symptoms outrank any self-care routine outright. Sudden slurred speech, facial droop, weakness in an arm or leg, or a sudden severe headache call for emergency services immediately — not a pressure practice. Seek prompt medical care too for hoarseness lasting beyond a couple of weeks, ongoing difficulty swallowing, mouth or tongue sores that refuse to heal, or a new lump in the neck. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, physician or East Asian medicine provider as suits the complaint. The image of an honest spring at the body’s threshold is lovely, but the safest gift Lianquan offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own throat — met kindly, touched lightly, and left unharmed.
Lianquan, the spring at the edge, rests on the front midline of the neck just above the Adam’s apple, in the shallow depression along the upper border of the hyoid bone. Classical practice reached for it when mouth, tongue, or speech troubles weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch — gently, because the tongue root and upper airway lie close beneath.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Needle cautiously and shallowly, and do not drive the needle deep toward the throat — the hyoid bone, tongue root, and upper airway are close.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Lianquan without knowing anything about the hyoid bone?
- Use the Adam’s apple as the whole map. Find the firm ridge at the front of your throat with one slow swallow, then slide a fingertip straight up the centre line: you cross a soft hollow, meet a narrow bar that gives slightly to a sideways nudge — the hyoid — and settle just above its top edge, dead centre. A mirror makes the vertical line easy to hold, and lightness does the rest.
- Is pressing this part of my own throat actually safe?
- Gentle, brief, surface-level fingertip contact is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and the outermost layer far short of the structures behind. The recorded danger concerns deep professional techniques directed toward the pharynx — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, a coughing fit, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Lianquan for?
- The traditional record lists mouth and tongue sores together with inflamed states of the mouth and tongue, swelling and pain under the tongue, a stiff tongue that blocked speech, impaired speech after stroke, weak voice, drooling, and difficulty swallowing. Classical texts framed nearly all of it around this station’s post overlooking the tongue root and throat. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does the Ren vessel climb all the way up the neck?
- Follow the catalogue’s ladder: the Ren vessel’s twenty-four recorded stations ascend the front midline from the pelvic floor, over the abdomen and chest, up through the throat, to finish beneath the lower lip. Lianquan occupies the second-highest step. Classical teaching has the vessel uniting the yin channels along that ascent, and the throat stations stood close to discussions of voice, swallowing, and the tongue in the old records — geography and function travelling together.
- Can pressing Lianquan restore speech after a stroke, or fix a weak voice?
- No such promise is available, and none should be implied. Rehabilitation after stroke belongs with medical and therapy teams, and a lasting change in the voice deserves an ear-nose-throat examination first. What self-acupressure offers, at most, is a calm, respectful minute of self-care — meaningful as ritual, modest as practice. And if speech ever fails suddenly, especially alongside facial droop or limb weakness, that is an emergency: call for help immediately.
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 and ren-vessel channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for CV23 Lianquan — 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/cv23/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv23/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv23/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV23",
"name": {
"en": "Lianquan",
"gloss": "Edge Spring",
"zh-Hant": "廉泉",
"zh-Hans": "廉泉"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 23,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the front of the neck, just under the chin: the dip above the Adam’s apple, on the top edge of the hyoid bone."
},
"for": [
"mouth and tongue sores",
"drooling",
"trouble swallowing"
],
"press": {
"text": "Light touch, pressing up toward the chin, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Never press hard on the throat."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv23",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-25"
}