太陽 Taiyang
Tài Yáng · EX-HN5
Extra point · extra-point
Where. On the side of the head, in the depression approximately one finger-breadth posterior to the midpoint between the lateral end of the eyebrow and the outer canthus of the eye.
Press. Self-care at Taiyang stays strictly on the surface: finger pads only, never nails or tools, light pressure that never probes inward; skip entirely over broken or irritated skin, during feverish illness, after any blow to the head, and whenever anything about the eye feels unwell.
Taiyang, Great Yang, rests at the temple in the soft hollow just behind the midpoint between brow and eye — a recognised point outside the twelve regular meridians. Classical practice reached for it when headache, tired eyes, or facial tension crowded a day. This guide walks through finding it by touch, explains what extra-point status means, and sets gentle limits for pressing it at home.
配 · Pairs with
症 · Often paired with
Where Taiyang Sits at the Temple
The dataset places Taiyang on the side of the head, in the depression approximately one finger-breadth posterior to the midpoint between the lateral end of the eyebrow and the outer canthus — the outer corner — of the eye. Three named landmarks do all the work. The first is the outer end of the eyebrow, where the brow hair simply stops. The second is the outer corner of the eye itself. The third is the midpoint between them, an imaginary mark hanging just off the face; travel back from it by one finger-breadth, and the soft dip the fingertip settles into is the spot. A finger-breadth, like the proportional measures of channel-point description, is taken from the person rather than a ruler — the width of your own finger at its fullest.
Few addresses in the traditional repertoire are easier to find, and the terrain explains why. The hollow lies on the side of the head where the cheekbone has already fallen away below and the hairline has not yet closed in above, leaving a shallow, yielding patch between them. Once the three landmarks are named, most people locate the spot within moments — perhaps one reason gentle temple-pressing became such a familiar gesture of everyday comfort. The site does not demand surveyor precision the way points buried between muscle layers do, but the named anchors still keep the search honest: brow end, eye corner, midpoint between, then one breadth back.
What lies beneath deserves a quiet word before any pressing begins. The skin over the temple is comparatively thin, small vessels run close beneath its surface, and the bone of the skull lies nearer the covering here than it does across most of the head. None of this argues against touching the spot; it argues for touching it lightly. Everything this page suggests stays on the surface — pad against skin, warmth without force — because the region rewards gentleness and asks nothing deeper of anyone. With the three landmarks fixed in mind, the geography is settled, and the technique’s only real rule has already been stated in advance.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Settle first: sit upright on a firm chair, let the shoulders drop, and unclench the jaw, because a tight jaw tightens the very ground being searched. Rest the tip of one index finger on the outer end of the left eyebrow, where the brow hair stops. Move the same finger outward and slightly down to touch the outer corner of the left eye. Picture the midpoint floating between those two marks, then slide the fingertip straight back from that midpoint by about one finger-breadth, onto the temple. The finger should come to rest in a shallow hollow — yielding under light pressure, sitting neither on a bony ridge nor on the firm rim of the eye socket.
Two quiet confirmations help before any pressing starts. First, compare sides: search the right temple the same way and check that the two hollows sit level with each other, one fingertip resting on each. Second, let movement do the testing instead of force: open and close the mouth slowly and feel whether a broad, soft sheet of muscle stirs under the fingers — that motion belongs to the temple’s own muscle layer and confirms the placement. Barely-there contact tends to produce a faint, dull awareness right on the true spot and almost nothing a finger-width away; this point’s signature was never dramatic, and readers expecting theatre will simply miss it.
The classic slips are few and predictable. Sliding too far back lands in the hairline, where the hollow gives way to denser, hair-bearing skin; drifting downward meets the cheekbone’s firm shelf; creeping forward bumps the bony rim beside the eye. Tension blurs everything — searching while frowning or clenching makes the whole region feel uniform. The remedy is always the same: return to the two named landmarks, take the midpoint afresh, and travel back one finger-breadth slowly. Losing the way costs nothing; the landmarks are permanent residents of the face, and they will still be there for the second attempt.
A Point Outside the Twelve Regular Meridians
Most recognised points on the traditional map are stationed along the twelve regular meridians — the numbered channels running their courses through limbs and trunk — together with the midline vessels that frame them. Alongside them stands a separate family: the extra points. An extra point is simply a recognised location outside that numbered system, established by two things alone — a fixed place on the body and a settled habit of use. How each one earned its recognition lies mostly beyond what surviving records say, so this page retells no origin story, cites no founding text, and names no dates; the honest answer to where this point came from is that the record does not preserve it.
The standard reference coding reflects the arrangement plainly. Extra points carry EX codes, sorted into groups by region of the body, and the letters HN gather the head-and-neck group; within that group, Taiyang is numbered five — hence the full code EX-HN5 shown in this point’s registry entry. Standing outside the twelve meridians means having no channel address: the point appears in none of the numbered pathways, claims no station along a channel’s course, and joins no route’s sequence of colleagues. Its standing rests entirely on place and use — which is exactly how the reader meets it here.
None of that ever made the point a stranger in classical company. Traditional literature discusses extra points alongside the regular ones without ceremony, reaching for them when complaint and location suited, and household practice plainly did the same — the familiar gesture of pressing the temples never required anyone to consult a channel roster first. Nor does the status change anything practical today. A home practitioner locates Taiyang by the same named landmarks that locate every other point, presses it with the same gentle pads, and observes the same limits. Outside the channels, yes; outside ordinary care, no.
Reading the Name: Great Yang
The characters read plainly. Tai 太 carries the sense of greatest, grandest — a superlative standing at the top of its scale. Yang 陽 names the bright principle: the sunny side of a slope, warmth, light, activity — and by easy extension, the sun itself. Joined, the name says Great Yang, and many readers will have spoken the translation already: this is the sun. Everyday Chinese keeps the connection alive to this day — the common word for the temple region of the head is built from these very characters. Point name and household vocabulary meet in one place, which says something quiet about how central this small hollow became to daily life.
In pinyin the name is Tài Yáng. Tai takes the falling fourth tone — a short, decisive drop, the contour of flat refusal. Yang takes the rising second tone, the lift a question climbs. Said aloud, the name dips sharply and then recovers upward, a small arc in two syllables. The hanzi pair is short enough to memorise at a glance, and like many point names drawn from nature — seas, valleys, gates, suns — the image performs honest work: it fixes the location in the mind, bright and open and high on the side of the face, while asserting nothing anatomical that could mislead.
The tradition uses the word taiyang elsewhere, and the overlap is worth untangling. Classical theory gives greater-yang titles to two of the regular channels — the small-intestine channel of hand greater-yang and the bladder channel of foot greater-yang. This temple point belongs to neither roster: it wears the word without holding any channel membership, the sun’s name carried outside the channel system altogether. Far from muddying the picture, the coincidence sharpens this page’s theme. Here is a point whose whole identity — name, place, use — was assembled from ordinary visible things: the sun overhead, the hollow under the fingertips, the ache that gathers between them.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications form a compact trio: headache, eye strain, and facial tension. Headache leads, and the reason is not hard to see. Pressing or rubbing the temples is the near-universal gesture of a person whose head hurts — so ordinary that it needs no teacher. Classical practice folded that instinct into its formal lists, traditionally reaching for Taiyang across headache presentations of many descriptions rather than reserving it for one narrow pattern. Whatever else divided the old schools, this much of the temple’s job description stayed constant: when the head ached, the hands travelled here.
The second entry, eye strain, follows from simple adjacency. The point sits beside the outer corner of the eye, and traditional records reach for it when the eyes themselves complain — the soreness and fatigue that follow long hours of reading, fine close work, or concentration held too long without rest. The third entry, facial tension, describes the tightness many people carry across the upper face: a banding sensation around the temples, a brow held clenched, a jaw set hard through a demanding afternoon. In the traditional reading, all three complaints share a single address, and that address is the soft hollow this page locates.
It bears repeating plainly what this list does not claim. These are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding; they assert nothing about whether pressing this point improves any condition, 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 specific to any single point remains thin. Take the old trio as a window into how the tradition viewed the temple — and take the safety notes that follow just as seriously.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, set the scene for gentleness. Sit upright, shoulders heavy, jaw loose. Bring the pads of the index and middle fingers — never the nails, never the tips — onto the hollow, and begin with contact alone: a few slow breaths in which the fingers merely keep company with the spot. Then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than dragging across it. Pressure should stay in the range of comfortable dullness or mild warmth; anything sharper is a signal to ease off and begin again. The entire vocabulary of this practice fits inside one short word: light.
A rhythm of one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, suits home practice, with hands swapped so both temples receive the same attention. Matching the circles to long, unhurried exhales turns the minute into a breathing pause as much as a touch. Warm the hands first on a cold day, because chilled fingertips make poor ambassadors; choose a quiet corner over a screen; and let symmetry quietly work — the two sides of the head favour equal treatment. What this kind of self-care asks for is regularity stretched across weeks, not force packed into minutes.
Keep expectations honest, and the practice stays worth keeping. What gentle surface work here may offer is comfort, a moment of gathered attention, the loosening of a furrowed brow that had gone unnoticed — perhaps nothing more dramatic than a few unhurried minutes spent caring for a neglected corner of the body, and that outcome too belongs to the honest scope of the exercise. What does not belong is escalation: pressing harder, longer, or inward to force a result the practice never promised. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or close the session for the day and let the temples rest.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The temple’s own geography writes the safety rules. Comparatively thin skin, small vessels running close beneath it, skull bone nearer the surface than almost anywhere else on the head — the region asks that contact remain strictly superficial. Finger pads only, never nails, elbows, knuckles, or tools; pressure light enough that the fingers never try to get past skin; nothing sharp, nothing probing, nothing sustained against one tender point. The dataset records no special caution against this point, and its registry entry marks it safe in pregnancy — both facts worth knowing — but an absence of warnings is not an invitation to force. Gentleness here is not the garnish on the technique; it is the technique.
Some situations suspend the practice entirely: broken or irritated skin at the site, infection or inflammation around the eye, feverish illness, and the days following any blow to the head. And some headaches belong to a doctor rather than to a fingertip routine — headache that erupts suddenly and severely, headache after a head injury, headache accompanied by fever with a stiff neck, disturbed vision, weakness, numbness, or confusion; these call for prompt medical care. For pregnant readers the dataset is encouraging: Taiyang is commonly used in pregnancy for headache, pressed gently with the pad of a finger rather than a nail for thirty to sixty seconds per side — worth mentioning at a routine appointment before adding any new point practice.
Above these particulars stands one wider rule. This page is educational, and acupressure is self-care — comfort and attention for a body, never diagnosis or therapy. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint. The sun imagery turns out to contain the method as well as the name: warmth, steadiness, brightness without burning. Practised that way, temple care asks nothing the body cannot give freely, and offers nothing it should not gladly receive.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- Can I find Taiyang without measuring anything?
- Yes — the two landmarks are the whole map. Touch the outer end of the eyebrow, then the outer corner of the eye, picture the midpoint between them, and slide a fingertip straight back about one finger-breadth onto the soft hollow of the temple. If anything feels uncertain, locate both sides and check that the two hollows sit level; agreement between the temples is the best confirmation available at home.
- Is it safe to press the temple yourself?
- For healthy adults, gentle pad contact held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care. The temple’s thin covering and its near-surface vessels ask for a lighter hand than most places, not for none at all: use pads rather than nails, keep the pressure comfortable, and never probe inward. Sharp pain, dizziness, or discomfort that worsens means stopping immediately, and anything unusual afterwards belongs with a professional rather than with a second attempt.
- What did classical practice use Taiyang for?
- The traditional record centres on three complaints: headache, eye strain, and facial tension. The temple has been the instinctive address for an aching head for as long as comfort has been written about, and the formal lists simply kept faith with the habit. Those entries document how the tradition reasoned — they are not claims that pressing this point treats any condition.
- Why is Taiyang called an extra point?
- Because it stands outside the twelve regular meridians — the numbered channel system that organises most classical points. Extra points earn recognition through fixed position and settled use rather than channel membership; standard reference coding files them under EX codes grouped by region, and this one is numbered five within the head-and-neck group, giving EX-HN5. For home practice the distinction changes nothing: the same landmarks locate it, and the same gentle rules govern it.
- Is Taiyang safe during pregnancy?
- The dataset answers yes: Taiyang is commonly used in pregnancy for headache, pressed gently with the pad of a finger rather than a sharp nail, for thirty to sixty seconds per side. Light is the operative word. As with any new point practice, mentioning it at a routine appointment first is a sensible kindness to yourself — a qualified practitioner can confirm it suits your circumstances.
Sources
- 01WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008), World Health Organization — extra-point nomenclature, the EX-HN head-and-neck group, and the recorded Taiyang location.
- 02A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition and the place of extra points beside the regular channels.
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/ex-hn5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ex-hn5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ex-hn5/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "EX-HN5",
"name": {
"en": "Taiyang",
"zh-Hant": "太陽",
"zh-Hans": "太阳"
},
"channel": {
"id": "extraordinary"
},
"location": {
"text": "On the side of the head, in the depression approximately one finger-breadth posterior to the midpoint between the lateral end of the eyebrow and the outer canthus of the eye."
},
"for": [],
"cautions": [],
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ex-hn5",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-26"
}