頭臨泣 Toulinqi
“Head Overlooking Tears” · GB15
Foot Shaoyang · 15 of 44 · crossing-point
Where. Straight above the pupil, half a thumb-width inside the front hairline.
For. Headache; sore eyes; a blocked nose.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.
臨泣二穴，在目上直入髮際五分陷中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Toulinqi Sits on the Forehead
The dataset places Toulinqi on the head, directly above the pupil, half a cun inside the anterior hairline, midway between Shenting (GV24) and Touwei (ST8). Unpacked: look straight ahead in a mirror and let your attention rest on the centre of one pupil; the point hides somewhere along the vertical line that rises from it up the forehead. Half a cun inside the hairline means just past the frontier where forehead skin gives way to hair-covered scalp — a cun being the traditional proportional measure taken from the person’s own body, roughly one thumb’s breadth, so the step inward amounts to about half a thumb-width. The third coordinate sets the point halfway between two named neighbours, one sitting nearer the middle of the forehead, the other out toward the corner of the temple.
Beneath the fingertip the terrain is friendly by head-point standards. The forehead presents a broad plate of flat bone dressed in thin forehead muscle and scalp, with no rib-like gaps and nothing delicate lying immediately beneath, unlike sites over the chest or abdomen. Pressure here meets solid ground almost at once — which is exactly why gentleness still matters: the tissue is thin, the bone is honest, and hard work buys soreness rather than insight. Notice, too, how much of the locating depends on cooperation from your own eyes. The pupil line only holds while the gaze stays level; glancing aside, tilting the chin, or screwing up the brow shifts the reference. Set the mirror at eye height, settle the gaze, and only then let the fingers travel.
A second landmark reinforces the first. The catalogue places Yangbai (GB14) on the forehead directly above the pupil, one cun above the eyebrow — meaning the same vertical line runs unbroken from brow to hairline. Walk it upward in imagination: eyebrow, open forehead, then the hairline, and half a thumb-width past that frontier sits Toulinqi. Hairlines being individual things, this chain matters more than any single hair. A high or receding hairline changes where the fringe of scalp begins, but it cannot move the pupil line, and the midpoint rule between the two named neighbours holds regardless. Searchers who distrust their hairline should lean on the line and the neighbours, treating the hair itself as scenery rather than evidence.
Finding Toulinqi by Touch
Sit facing a mirror with the gaze level and the forehead relaxed. Trace an imaginary line straight upward from the centre of one pupil, following it until your fingertips feel the change of country where smooth forehead skin gives way to scalp and hair — that border is the anterior hairline. Now bring your finger half a thumb-width back from the border, into hair-covered territory, and let the pad settle there. Finish with the sideways check: the fingertip should rest roughly midway between the neighbour nearer the middle of the forehead, Shenting (GV24), and the neighbour out toward the temple corner, Touwei (ST8). Repeat the whole search on the other side along the other pupil’s line, so the two findings corroborate each other.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare sides; most people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and little sensation a finger-width away. The scalp should slide slightly over the bone beneath a patient pad — a small mobility the fixed tissues lower on the face rarely offer. If a receding or uneven hairline makes the frontier doubtful, rebuild the position from below instead: locate Yangbai (GB14) one cun above the eyebrow on the pupil line, then walk upward until you have crossed the hairline by half a thumb-width. Between the vertical line and the midpoint between neighbours, at least two independent checks will usually agree — and agreement is the goal, because certainty here comes from convergence, not from pressing harder.
The classic slips are predictable. Some searchers stop short and finish on bare forehead below the hairline; others, chasing a hairline that has retreated over the years, wander too deep into the scalp. Both errors answer to the same anchors: the pupil line and the midpoint rule. Another slip is lateral drift — sliding outward toward the temple or crowding toward the middle of the forehead — which the neighbour check catches immediately. And because no groove or hollow here catches a fingertip the way hollows do at many body points, beginners sometimes press harder hunting for a signal that is naturally subtle. Resist that escalation. The point announces itself softly or not at all, and a lost search should always end the same way: back to the mirror, gaze level, begin again slowly.
Reading the Name: Head Overlooking Tears
The name is a small scene. 頭 (tou) means head. 臨 (lin) means to overlook — to stand above something and look down upon it — and by extension to arrive at or preside over. 泣 (qi) means tears, or weeping. Read together, Toulinqi pictures the head standing above the tears: a station raised over the eyes from which their waters are surveyed. Traditional commentary delighted in the image of a lookout post on the brow, keeping watch over the territory where fatigue, grief, or irritation tends to show first. Whatever the ancients intended in every particular, the geometry agrees with the poetry — this point really does sit directly over the organs that weep.
Why should a forehead point keep such company with the eyes? The channel map answers. Classical descriptions draw the gallbladder pathway beginning near the outer corner of the eye, winding across the side of the head in its characteristic zigzag, and eventually descending the body toward the fourth toe. Early in its head course it passes straight through this address. Points along a channel were traditionally understood to converse with the regions and organs their route touches, so a vantage raised above the eyes became a natural gathering place in the old records for complaints of the eye and brow. The dataset adds one further credential: it records Toulinqi as a crossing point — a place where, in traditional teaching, more than one pathway is described as meeting — and crossings were always granted a wider reputation than ordinary stations.
Pinyin renders the name Tóulínqì: tou carries the rising second tone, lin rises in the second tone as well, and qi falls away in the fourth. The hanzi trio 頭臨泣 is compact enough to hold in a single glance. Nor is the poetic naming unusual company on this stretch of channel: the neighbour behind it, Muchuang (GB16), pairs the characters for eye and window — an Eye Window set into the same ridge of the skull. Gates, windows, valleys, watchtowers: the gallbladder head-points read like the map of a hill town, and the metaphors do real work, telling you how each station was meant to serve the ones below it.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: headache, eye pain, eye cloudiness, nasal congestion, dizziness, epilepsy, and infantile convulsions. Take the head-and-face cluster first, in traditional framing. Headache needs little introduction; classical practice reached for points along the gallbladder’s head course whenever the brow and temple weighed heavy. Eye pain and eye cloudiness belong to the point’s eye-side vantage — cloudiness being a distinct traditional notion, a sense of vision dulled or misted as though a thin veil had been drawn across the sight. Nasal congestion sits less obviously until the facial geography is recalled: the nose lies directly below this stretch of forehead, and the old casebooks grouped facial complaints generously together. Dizziness, in the same records, described swaying, tipping, unsteady sensation — a head symptom once more, gathered naturally at a head point.
The final pair demands plain honesty. Epilepsy and infantile convulsions — seizures, in adults and in small children — appear in the historical record because classical casebooks catalogued every manner of crisis under the points of their system. They are entries in an archive, not invitations. Nothing about self-applied pressure belongs anywhere near a seizure disorder: a convulsion in progress is a medical emergency, recurrent episodes belong with specialists, and any first seizure sends a person straight to urgent care. The honest way to read these lines of the record is as a window onto how thoroughly the old literature mapped the body — and as a reminder that tradition’s table of uses is not a menu for home practice.
It bears repeating: 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 in this guide replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on context, 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 found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine easy, shoulders released. Join the pads of index and middle fingers and rest them — pads, never nails — on the two spots. Begin with simple contact for a few slow breaths, letting the fingertips learn the terrain, then add small, unhurried circles, allowing the scalp to glide over the bone beneath rather than dragging the skin across it. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to long exhales so that each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands, repeat on the other side, and keep the two sessions symmetrical.
Quality outranks duration. Many people know the feeling of a brow that quietly knots during long hours of reading, driving, or screen work — the forehead does the mind’s concentrating along with it. A minute of gentle pressure at this vantage works well as a pause that reminds the brow it is allowed to soften; whatever else tradition claims for the spot, the pause itself is real and costs nothing. Warm cold hands before beginning, since chilled fingers make everyone hurry. Prefer a quiet corner to a screen, and let the practice double as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the forehead release under still fingers, press gently on the long exhale. People who keep steady routines often anchor the minute to something already habitual — washing the face, an afternoon stretch — because self-care traditions ask for regularity, not intensity.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice honestly what changes: perhaps the brow learns to release more readily, perhaps breathing steadies while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent a minute attending to yourself. 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
The licensed dataset records no cautions against this point, and it is worth saying plainly what that means and what it does not. It means no special warning travels with Toulinqi in the record — no neighbouring point’s gravity, no prohibition carried down through the classical literature. It does not mean force becomes welcome. The forehead’s skin is thin over honest bone, the scalp keeps sensitivities of its own, and the universal rules of surface-only, pad-only, comfort-level contact apply here exactly as everywhere else. An unmarked trail is not an invitation to run; it simply asks for no special equipment — only the same good manners as always.
The practical rules: finger pads only — no nails, knuckles, or tools; skip the point over broken, inflamed, or freshly treated skin, and leave a generous margin around healing wounds or recent procedures on the forehead or scalp; stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with a neurological condition or subject to recurring headaches, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. With children, keep the touch lighter and the session shorter, and always supervise — remembering that a convulsion in a child is never a self-care matter at all, but an immediate journey to professional care.
And the widest rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care — not diagnosis, not therapy. Seek prompt medical attention rather than continued pressing for a sudden severe headache, a headache accompanied by fever or a stiff neck, any disturbance of vision, fainting, any seizure, or symptoms that worsen or persist well beyond a few days. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, Western or East Asian as suits the complaint. The watchtower imagery is charming, but the safest thing Toulinqi offers most people is a small daily appointment with their own brow — kept briefly, kept gently, and interrupted without regret whenever a professional opinion is the better companion.
Toulinqi, the Head Overlooking Tears, stands on the forehead directly above the pupil, half a cun inside the front hairline. Classical practice gathered head-and-eye complaints here — headache, eye pain, eye cloudiness, dizziness — while older records set sterner entries beside them. This guide covers finding it by touch, reading its name, and pressing it gently.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Toulinqi without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the mirror and the pupil. Sit with a level gaze, trace straight upward from the centre of the pupil to the front hairline, then step half a thumb-width back into the hair-covered scalp, checking that you rest about midway between the neighbour nearer the middle of the forehead, Shenting (GV24), and the temple-corner neighbour, Touwei (ST8). The cun system simply writes the same landmark walk in proportional language.
- Is pressing a point on the forehead and scalp actually safe?
- Gentle pad pressure held to the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults: beneath this point lies flat bone with nothing delicate immediately underneath, unlike sites over the chest or abdomen. Thin skin still deserves manners. Respect the stop signals — sharpness, electric sensation, anything spreading — avoid broken skin, and keep sessions short enough that comfort never has to be argued with.
- What did classical practice use Toulinqi for?
- The traditional record lists headache, eye pain, eye cloudiness, nasal congestion, dizziness, epilepsy, and infantile convulsions. The head-and-eye emphasis follows the gallbladder channel’s course across the brow, and the dataset notes the point’s status as a crossing point. Treat the list as a cultural document: the crisis entries especially belong to medical care, never to home practice.
- Why would a point be named for tears?
- From the characters themselves: lin means to overlook from above, and qi means weeping. Raised over the eyes, the point was pictured as a watchtower surveying the tear-country below. Its neighbours continue the mood — Muchuang (GB16) beside it reads as Eye Window — because the gallbladder head-points were named like landmarks of a hill town, each title hinting at the job the station was thought to do.
- Can pressing Toulinqi replace seeing someone about my headaches?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Recurring, escalating, or unusually severe headaches deserve professional assessment, and headaches with fever, neck stiffness, visual change, fainting, or any seizure call for prompt medical care outright. Think of gentle brow pressure as a small domestic kindness that lives alongside proper care — never instead of it.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GB15 Toulinqi — location, point class, and 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-course 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/gb15/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gb15/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gb15/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GB15",
"name": {
"en": "Toulinqi",
"gloss": "Head Overlooking Tears",
"zh-Hant": "頭臨泣",
"zh-Hans": "头临泣"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GB",
"order": 15,
"of": 44
},
"location": {
"text": "Straight above the pupil, half a thumb-width inside the front hairline."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"sore eyes",
"a blocked nose"
],
"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/gb15",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}