陽白 Yangbai
“White Brightness” · GB14
Foot Shaoyang · 14 of 44 · crossing-point
Where. On the forehead, straight above the pupil, one thumb-width above the eyebrow.
For. Sore, swollen eyes; drooping eyelids; headache.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.
陽白二穴，在眉上一寸，直目瞳子按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Yangbai Sits on the Forehead
The licensed record places Yangbai on the forehead, directly above the pupil, one cun above the eyebrow. Unpacked, that is a three-part address: choose the forehead; find the vertical line that rises from the centre of the pupil when the eyes gaze levelly ahead; and climb that line to a point one cun above the top edge of the eyebrow. The cun, as always in this tradition, is a proportional unit taken from the person being measured rather than from any ruler — at its simplest, the width of the person’s own thumb at its broadest serves as a fair approximation of one cun. Because foreheads come tall and short, broad and narrow, the point rides higher or lower accordingly, which is why locating by landmarks beats memorising centimetres.
Under the fingertips, this is open, readable country. The forehead presents a smooth plate of frontal bone covered by thin skin and the flat muscle that lifts the eyebrows; there are no ribs, gaps, or grooves to count here, only a clean expanse where a fingerpad can rest without obstacle. The skin carries a fine network of small vessels and nerves reaching up from the brow, so firm pressure is unnecessary and rarely rewarded — most people feel a faint dull awareness at the true spot and little at all a thumb-width away. Gentleness suits the terrain.
The neighbourhood confirms the address. The vertical line through the pupil is one of the great axes of point nomenclature: above the hairline it carries four more gallbladder stations in a ladder — Toulinqi (GB15) half a cun inside the anterior hairline, Muchuang (GB16) one-and-a-half cun above the hairline, Zhengying (GB17) at two-and-a-half, Chengling (GB18) at four. Yangbai stands at the foot of that ladder on bare forehead, and together the five stations share a single vertical axis mirrored on both sides of the head. If your fingertip has wandered off the line toward the temple corner or toward the nose bridge, you are no longer on gallbladder ground.
Finding Yangbai by Touch
Sit upright facing a mirror, shoulders easy, and let the gaze rest level. Begin at the eye itself: find the dark centre of the pupil while looking straight ahead, then trace an invisible plumb line straight up from it. Cross the eyebrow near its middle — not toward the outer tail, not toward the inner head — and continue upward until your fingertip rests about one thumb-width above the upper border of the brow. That calm stretch of forehead bone, centred over the pupil, is where the record locates Yangbai. Repeat with hands swapped so each side receives the same unhurried attention.
Two confirmations help before any pressing begins. First, touch feather-light and compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and little sensation even half a thumb-width away. Second, check the horizontal position against the mirror — the fingertip should sit squarely on the pupil line, feeling neither closer to the temple corner nor closer to the nose bridge. Let a slow breath move under your fingers; the forehead stays still here, unlike the chest, and that steadiness makes this one of the easier points in the whole collection to hold confidently.
Common slips are few but worth naming. Measuring downward from the hairline instead of upward from the eyebrow misleads, because hairlines sit at very different heights from one forehead to another — the eyebrow is the reliable anchor, the hairline is weather. Drifting outward toward the temple corner leaves gallbladder territory for the neighbouring channel’s frontier; drifting inward slides toward the midline. And pressing hard against bare bone teaches nothing and numbs the fingertip’s own report — keep contact light enough to read the surface. When in doubt, return to the pupil and climb the plumb line again.
Reading the Name: White Brightness
The name is told in two characters. Yang 陽 names the bright, active principle — sunlight, warmth, the outward-facing aspect of the body — and classical teaching holds that the head is where all the yang channels gather, meeting-place of the body’s brightest territory. Bai 白 means white, and by extension clear, luminous, unclouded; the same character names the white of the eye. Read together, Yangbai says something like white brightness of yang, or clarity shining at the body’s sunlit height. The registry records the hanzi pair 陽白, compact enough to take in at a glance.
A traditional reading ties the name to the work the record assigns this point. The indications gathered under Yangbai are dominated by the eyes — red swollen painful eyes, night blindness, eye cloudiness — and old commentaries long ago connected the character bai with the clear white of the eye regaining its lustre, brightness returning where cloudiness had settled. Whether the point was named for its place on the yang-gathering head, for the eye-clearing hopes pinned to it, or for both at once cannot be settled from here; the tradition itself reads the name both ways, and the double meaning sits comfortably in two characters.
Pinyin renders the name Yángbái. Both syllables rise: yang spoken on the second tone, the lifting inflexion of a question still opening, and bai also on the second tone, rising again. Dictionary tones matter more than they appear — read in the wrong melody a tidy name becomes another word entirely. Yangbai is the fourteenth of the forty-four stations the registry assigns to the gallbladder channel, and the dataset classes it among the crossing-points, the places tradition describes as meetings of more than one channel course — fitting company for a forehead already imagined as the gathering hall of all yang.
Traditional Uses, Explained
The recorded indications read: red swollen painful eyes, drooping eyelids, deviation of the mouth and eye, headache, dizziness, night blindness, and eye cloudiness — seven entries, most of them concerning the eyes or their immediate neighbourhood. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list reflects how classical practice mapped the face. The forehead directly above the eye was understood as shared territory between the gallbladder channel and its partner the liver system, which classical physiology described as opening into the eyes; a point planted on that territory naturally stood at the centre of discussions of redness, swelling, and pain around the eyes.
The remaining entries extend the same map. Drooping eyelids and deviation of the mouth and eye describe changes in the face’s appearance and movement; classical practice reasoned along channels rather than muscles, and points along the courses crossing the face and forehead were gathered into such discussions. Headache and dizziness fit the geography plainly: the gallbladder course winds back and forth across the side of the head before descending the body, and a station on the upper forehead stood within reach of complaints felt across the front and crown. Night blindness and eye cloudiness belonged to the eye-brightening conversations the name itself echoes.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician — least of all for sudden facial drooping or sudden changes in vision, which call for urgent medical care, not acupressure. 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 in: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the nails — on the spot, whether through a sparse fringe of hair or on bare forehead as the case allows. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the bone beneath. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to two minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out.
Quality matters more than duration. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards; choose a quiet corner over a screen, since the practice doubles as a pause of attention. Keep the two sides symmetrical — press left and right for the same time, with the same lightness — because the point exists in a mirrored pair. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit such as morning washing or an afternoon break, since consistency rather than intensity is what self-care traditions actually ask for. If the forehead feels unusually tender that day, lighten further or simply rest the practice.
Keep expectations honestly modest. Perhaps the brow feels less guarded afterwards; perhaps the eyes feel rested after a long screen-bound day; perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent a couple of unhurried minutes attending to your own face. 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. The forehead rewards patience and discourages force; when curiosity pulls toward escalation, return to gentleness or stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed dataset records no cautions specific to this point, and the verbatim caution list this page echoes therefore stands empty — a faithful transcription, not a licence for carelessness. Absence of a recorded warning is not absence of need for care: the forehead’s skin lies thin over bone and carries a rich supply of small vessels and nerves, and the eyes sit close beneath the brow. Professional acupuncture is a separate trained discipline with its own protocols; home self-care operates on simpler terms and never leaves the surface of the skin.
For fingertip practice the rules are short. Use fingerpads only — no nails, knuckles, or tools — and keep pressure light and superficial. Pause the practice over broken, irritated, or erupting skin anywhere on the face, during acute eye irritation, and during feverish illness. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation and do not retry that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with chronic conditions, do well to consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. And treat certain signs as medical, not manual: sudden drooping of an eyelid or corner of the mouth, sudden blurred or lost vision, severe eye pain, or a sudden worst-ever headache all belong in professional hands immediately.
Above everything stands the wider rule: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care rather than a pressure routine for persistent symptoms — an eye complaint that does not settle within days, headaches that steadily worsen, dizziness that recurs — and for anything that frightens you. Persistent problems belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The name promises brightness; the practice offers only quiet attention. Keep the promise modest and the attention gentle, and the point gives what a forehead point can honestly give.
Yangbai — White Brightness — sits high on the forehead, directly above the pupil, one cun above the eyebrow. A crossing-point on the gallbladder channel, classical practice traditionally reached for it when eyes ran red and swollen, when eyelids drooped, or when headache and dizziness crowded the brow. This guide covers finding it by touch, reading its name, and pressing it safely at home.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- Can I find Yangbai without knowing anything about cun?
- Yes — the pupil is the whole map. Look straight ahead, find the dark centre of the eye, and follow an invisible line straight up. Cross the eyebrow near its middle and stop about one thumb-width above the top of the brow. Proportional measurement simply encodes the same landmark walk in traditional language; the thumb-width approximation gets you to the same calm patch of forehead bone.
- Is pressing Yangbai myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip contact held on the forehead surface is generally reasonable self-care, and the licensed record lists no cautions particular to this point. The standing rules still apply: light pressure, fingerpads only, nothing over broken or irritated skin, and an immediate stop on sharp sensation. Anyone pregnant or managing a chronic condition clears new practices with a qualified practitioner first.
- What did classical practice use Yangbai for?
- The traditional record lists red swollen painful eyes, drooping eyelids, deviation of the mouth and eye, headache, dizziness, night blindness, and eye cloudiness. As a crossing-point on the forehead above the eye, it sat where classical discussions of the eyes, the face, and the front of the head overlapped. These are documented traditional frameworks for understanding the body — context, not treatment claims.
- Why do so many gallbladder points share one vertical line?
- Classical maps draw the gallbladder course winding repeatedly across the side of the head, so stations gather densely there. Above each eye, the line through the pupil carries five of them in a ladder: Yangbai just above the brow, then Toulinqi, Muchuang, Zhengying, and Chengling climbing the same axis beyond the hairline at the heights the record measures. Sharing one axis keeps the ladder easy to remember — find the pupil line once and every station on it follows.
- When should eye or face symptoms mean a doctor instead of acupressure?
- Promptly — urgently, for sudden drooping of an eyelid or the corner of the mouth, sudden loss or blurring of vision, severe eye pain, or a sudden worst-ever headache; these signs need professional assessment without delay, not self-care. For slower complaints, an eye irritation that will not settle within days, headaches that keep worsening, or dizziness that recurs all deserve proper evaluation. Daily self-care lives downstairs; clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs, and persistent symptoms mean it is time to climb the stairs.
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 channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GB14 Yangbai — 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/gb14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gb14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gb14/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GB14",
"name": {
"en": "Yangbai",
"gloss": "White Brightness",
"zh-Hant": "陽白",
"zh-Hans": "阳白"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GB",
"order": 14,
"of": 44
},
"location": {
"text": "On the forehead, straight above the pupil, one thumb-width above the eyebrow."
},
"for": [
"sore",
"swollen eyes",
"drooping eyelids",
"headache"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Tongren Shuxue Zhenjiu Tujing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gb14",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}