居髎 Juliao
“A Dwelling Hollow” · GB29
Foot Shaoyang · 29 of 44 · crossing-point
Where. On the side of the hip, halfway between the bony front tip of the hip and the knob at the top of the thigh bone.
For. Low back and hip pain; heavy, weak legs.
Press. Steady fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.
Juliao — a name tradition reads as the dwelling place of a bony hollow — sits midway along the line joining the hip’s two great landmarks: the front tip of the pelvic crest and the upper-outer shelf of the thighbone. Classical records reached for it when the low back, hip, or legs complained. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Juliao Sits on the Hip
The dataset places Juliao on the hip, at the midpoint of the line connecting the anterior superior iliac spine and the most prominent point of the greater trochanter of the femur. Each landmark earns a plain-language translation. The anterior superior iliac spine is the distinct bony knob at the very front of the hip, where the upper rim of the pelvis sweeps forward and ends — the point your fingertips hook under when you rest your hands on your hips and walk them forward. The greater trochanter is the wide, strong projection at the upper outer end of the femur, the thighbone: lay a palm flat on the side of your hip and you are almost certainly touching its territory, and if you swing the leg slowly you can feel the broad shelf turn beneath the skin.
Join the two landmarks with an imagined straight line and it runs diagonally across the side of the hip, sloping downward and outward from the front of the pelvis toward the prominence of the thighbone. Halfway along that line — the dataset says the midpoint — is the address. In most bodies that midpoint falls on the upper outer part of the hip, roughly over the roof of the hip joint itself, in the shallow muscular country between the two bony anchors rather than on either of them. That placement explains the point’s working logic in the old records: a station set directly above the junction where trunk meets leg keeps watch over everything that passes through the junction.
Because the construction is proportional — measured between a person’s own bones rather than against any ruler — it survives differences of build remarkably well. A broad-framed dancer and a slight desk-worker carry differently proportioned hips, yet each person’s own front knob and own trochanter define the same diagonal, and its halfway point lands in the same functional neighbourhood. There are two of these addresses, one per side, mirror twins facing opposite directions; learning them together, palms on both hips at once, teaches the local geography faster than studying one side alone.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Stand comfortably with the weight even on both feet, or sit tall on a firm chair. Begin with the front landmark: place your hands on your hips as people do when pausing to think, thumbs pointing backward, and slide the fingers of one hand forward along the thick upper rim of the hip bone until the rim curls down and ends in a distinct knob at the very front — hold that knob; it is the anterior superior iliac spine. Now find the second landmark with the other hand: slide it down and around to the side of the hip until the palm rests on the broad bony shelf there, then slowly turn the lifted knee of that side inward and outward a few times; the shelf that swivels under your palm is the greater trochanter.
With one fingertip resting on each landmark, imagine — or lightly trace with a third finger — the straight line between them, and come to its middle. The true site announces itself as soft tissue rather than bone: a shallow, yielding span of muscle between the two anchors, distinct from the hard roundness of the knobs themselves. Confirmations help before anything more happens. Touch feather-light and compare sides; many people notice a faint, dull awareness right at the midpoint and little sensation a thumb-width away, though responses vary from person to person. Then shift your weight slowly from foot to foot and feel the tissue under steady fingertips change tone as the hip muscles engage and release.
Failed searches stumble in familiar ways. Landing on either bony knob is the commonest error — the address lies between the anchors, not on them. Drifting upward onto the waistband leaves the diagonal altogether. Searching through a clenched buttock flattens the very softness you are hunting; unlock the hip, breathe out, and begin again. And pressing hard enough to numb the fingers erases the contrast between bone and soft tissue that the whole search depends on — lighten the touch, and the map redraws itself.
Reading the Name: A Dwelling Hollow
The characters tell a homely story. Ju 居 is the ordinary verb of dwelling: to live somewhere, to reside, to occupy — the word inside everyday compounds for residence and settlement. Liao 髎 is rarer and more technical: built on the bone radical, it names hollows in and beside bone — the seams, openings, and crevices where the skeleton makes room. Read together, as generations of commentators have read them, Juliao is the dwelling hollow: the place where, in the traditional picture, the channel’s activity takes up residence in the bony landscape of the hip. Point names in this tradition borrow constantly from architecture — gates, courtyards, storehouses, wells — and this one belongs to the homestead wing of the collection: not a gate things hurry through, but an address where something settles.
The station’s position adds a second layer. Juliao is the twenty-ninth of the forty-four points the registry assigns to the gallbladder channel, a course classical descriptions send zigzagging down the side of the head, then along the side of the trunk, before it crosses this hip ground and runs down the outside of the thigh and lower leg toward the fourth toe. The dataset classes it among the crossing-points — places where classical theory describes more than one pathway sharing the same ground. Traditions differ on precisely which neighbouring courses were counted as converging here, but the recurring idea is the hip itself as a junction: the great transfer point where the trunk’s lateral road hands its traffic to the leg.
Pinyin renders the name Jūliáo: ju holds the first tone high and flat, a level sustained note; liao rises on the second tone, the lifting inflexion of a question still opening. Dictionary melodies matter more than they appear — read in the wrong tune, a tidy name becomes another word entirely. As with many of the best point names, the meaning doubles as a small set of instructions: go where the skeleton makes room for a dwelling, at the level place between the two bones, where the road of the side changes vehicles for the journey down the leg.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: pain of the lower back and hip, atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs, hip joint pain, paralysis, hernia, and lower abdominal pain in women. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the first cluster is the point’s home ground. Low back and hip pain and hip-joint pain sit directly beneath a station built above the junction of trunk and leg; in the classical frame such complaints were understood as qi and blood moving sluggishly or stagnating along the channel’s corridor, and points along the route were the natural places practitioners consulted.
The weakness cluster extends the same map downward. Atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs, together with the broader entry paralysis, translate an old family of complaints — legs grown thin, heavy, weak, or unwilling to answer — which classical practice customarily discussed along the yang channels of the leg, the gallbladder’s lateral highway among them. Hernia belongs to another old vocabulary: the term gathered a range of descending discomforts and swellings of the groin, and the hip crossings stood nearby on the traditional map of that district. Lower abdominal pain in women, recorded specifically, reflects classical gynecology’s habit of tying the lower belly’s affairs to the girdle of pathways circling the hips. None of these groupings is modern physiology — they are the tradition’s own coherent geography of complaint, recorded here to explain why the old books grouped what they grouped.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses 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 specific to any single point remains thin. Persistent hip, back, or leg symptoms belong with proper assessment first. Hold the tradition lightly; hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: sitting on a firm chair with both feet down, or standing with the weight spread evenly. Curl the index and middle fingers together and lay the pads — not the tips — on the midpoint. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the bone. 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 slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and repeat on the other side, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing teaches the body nothing, and driving force into a joint that carries you all day asks for trouble rather than insight. Warm cold hands before starting, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen — the practice doubles as a standing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the hip soften under still fingertips, press gently on the long exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after brushing teeth, before an evening walk — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the hip feels less guarded on the stairs, perhaps standing up after a long day of sitting feels easier, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend those minutes attending to your own body. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — harder, longer, deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to lightness or simply stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Juliao arrives with an unusually quiet record: the licensed dataset notes no specific caution for this point — none of the warning paragraphs that shadow the chest and rib-side stations, where thin coverings once made professional depth work genuinely hazardous. Quiet is not the same as careless. An absence of recorded warnings reflects the forgiving geography of a well-padded hip, not an invitation to force, and the general discipline that governs every point in this collection governs this one too.
For fingertip acupressure the rules stay simple. Keep pressure light and strictly at the surface; use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools — and never drive force down toward the joint itself. Skip the point entirely during a feverish illness and over broken, irritated, or recently injured skin at the site. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with a hip condition, carrying a hip replacement, or recovering from recent hip or back surgery or injury, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for hip pain that follows a fall, inability to bear weight on a leg, severe or worsening hip or low-back pain, fever together with swelling around the hip, a groin bulge that turns painful, firm, or irreducible, or numbness and weakness spreading down a leg. Persistent symptoms of any kind belong with a licensed practitioner, Western or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The homestead imagery is gentle company, but the safest gift Juliao offers most people is a better acquaintance with their own hips — carried attentively, touched kindly, and handed to professionals whenever the ground feels uncertain.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Juliao without knowing the anatomical names?
- Use the two bones as the whole map. Walk your fingers forward along the upper rim of your hip bone until they hook under the knob at the very front; that is the first anchor. Rest your other palm flat on the side of the hip and turn the leg slowly until you feel the broad shelf swivel beneath it; that is the second. Join the two with an imaginary line and settle at its middle — on soft tissue, not on either knob. The Latin labels simply give formal names to two places your fingers have already found.
- Is pressing Juliao myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held at the surface is generally reasonable self-care here — the dataset records no specific caution for this point, and the hip is generously padded compared with the thinly covered chest wall that earns other points their warnings. General discipline still applies: light touch, finger pads only, and immediate stopping on any sharp or electric sensation. Anyone with a hip condition, a replacement joint, or a recent injury or surgery should ask a qualified practitioner first.
- What did classical practice use Juliao for?
- The traditional record lists pain of the lower back and hip, atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs, hip joint pain, paralysis, hernia, and lower abdominal pain in women. The grouping follows the map: a station above the junction of trunk and leg overlooked the corridor the gallbladder course travels down the outer limb, and its crossing-point status made the hip a place of converging roads. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does the gallbladder channel pass through the hip at all?
- Classical channel theory sends the pathway on a long descent: zigzagging down the side of the head, then along the side of the trunk, across this hip ground, and onward down the outside of the thigh and lower leg to the fourth toe. The hip is simply where the lateral road changes level — the transfer station between trunk and leg. Juliao sits at the middle of that crossing, which is why its name imagines a dwelling and its category speaks of converging routes.
- Can acupressure at Juliao take the place of care for a real hip problem?
- No. Self-acupressure is comfort practice, not diagnosis, and the hip is exactly the kind of joint where waiting on warning signs costs the most. Pain after a fall, inability to bear weight, severe or worsening pain, fever with swelling, a groin bulge that becomes painful or cannot be pressed back, or new numbness and weakness travelling down the leg all call for prompt professional assessment. Think of daily self-care and clinical medicine as different floors of one building: downstairs is where you live gently; upstairs is where you go when something persists.
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 crossing-point category, and gallbladder-channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GB29 Juliao — location, point class, and action 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/gb29/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gb29/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gb29/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GB29",
"name": {
"en": "Juliao",
"gloss": "A Dwelling Hollow",
"zh-Hant": "居髎",
"zh-Hans": "居髎"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GB",
"order": 29,
"of": 44
},
"location": {
"text": "On the side of the hip, halfway between the bony front tip of the hip and the knob at the top of the thigh bone."
},
"for": [
"low back and hip pain",
"heavy",
"weak legs"
],
"press": {
"text": "Steady fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gb29",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}