俠溪 Xiaxi
“Clasped Stream” · GB43
Foot Shaoyang · 43 of 44 · ying-spring
Where. On top of the foot, between the fourth and fifth toes, just behind the edge of the web.
For. Headache; ringing ears; dizziness.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each foot.
俠溪者，水也。在足小指次指二歧骨間，本節前陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Xiaxi Sits on the Foot
The dataset places Xiaxi on the lateral dorsum of the foot, between the fourth and fifth toes, at the junction of the red and white skin posterior to the toe web margin. Every clause repays unpacking. The dorsum is the top of the foot, and lateral means its outer, little-toe side. The toe web margin is the fold of skin where the fourth and fifth toes merge into the foot; posterior to it means just behind that fold, back toward the ankle rather than out toward the toenails. And the junction of the red and white skin names the line where the paler, finer skin of the instep gives way to the firmer, fleshier skin that continues onto the sole — a boundary you can usually see as well as feel.
Under the fingertips the neighbourhood is forgiving ground. The space between the bases of the two toes is a shallow valley of soft tissue, padded and mobile, with no thin-walled cavity anywhere near the surface — a contrast worth remembering against the chest and rib points elsewhere in this channel. Farther back along the outer foot runs the slender tendon that lifts the little toe, a cord you can feel tighten when you spread your toes; the point itself stays clear of it, down in the cleft ahead. Nothing about the search asks for force. Spread the toes gently and the valley opens; relax them and it closes softly around whatever rests inside it.
Neighbours complete the map. Ahead — out toward the toenails — the channel’s very last address waits at the outer corner of the fourth toenail: Zuqiaoyin (GB44), the well point where the pathway formally ends. Behind — back toward the ankle, past the bony ridge where the toes root into the foot — sit Diwuhui (GB42) between the two long bones of the outer foot, and Zulinqi (GB41) beside the little toe’s tendon. The registry counts forty-four stations along this channel, and the final few crowd together in this small stretch of toe country. Learning the four together fixes the whole district in memory: web, ridge, bone gap, nail corner.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably with the searched foot resting across the opposite knee, sole angled shyly away, or cross-legged on the floor if that suits you better; a foot that hangs free shows its landmarks best. Find the cleft between the fourth and fifth toes and lay a fingertip in it. Slide gently toward the sole until you meet the fold where the two toes merge into the foot — that crease is the toe web margin. Ease the pad just behind it, back toward the ankle, and hunt with feather-light strokes for the line where the skin’s texture changes: finer above, firmer below. Where that change of country meets the middle of the cleft, you have arrived.
Two confirmations help before any pressing begins. First, compare feet with the lightest possible touch: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away, though responses vary from person to person. Second, let the toes do the talking. Flex and spread them slowly and watch the web margin fold move; the point keeps its station just behind that moving crease, so if your fingertip rides on the crease itself, slip back one small step. The right place feels like a soft hollow pinched between two small hills — the bases of the toes on either side — with the change of skin running beneath the pad.
Failed searches stumble in familiar ways. Pressing into the crease itself is the commonest error; the address is behind it, not on it. Drifting upward onto the flat of the instep lands you in Zulinqi and Diwuhui’s neighbourhood, handsome points in their own right but not the one you came for. Searching with a cold, clenched foot buries everything — warm the foot, wiggle the toes, let the web soften before trying again. And because this location needs no counting at all, resist inventing measurements: the landmarks are direct, and a single unhurried pass of one fingertip finds what seven careful reckonings would miss.
Reading the Name: Clasped Stream
The characters tell a watery story. Xi 溪 is the old word for a mountain stream — the dictionary’s own gloss — a rivulet threading through a narrow valley. Xia 俠 is read today as the knight-errant, the chivalrous hero, yet commentators have long taken it in this name through an older kinship with words meaning to clasp or hold on both sides. Read together, Xiaxi is the clasped stream: a thread of water held between close banks. The ground under the name could hardly be more literal — a narrow groove gripped between the bases of two toes, where the channel’s flow gathers in its smallest valley before the pathway runs out at the toenail.
The point’s office lets the water imagery flow twice over. Classical teaching sorts each channel’s points below the elbow and knee into five antique categories named for the behaviour of flowing water, and Xiaxi belongs to the spring tier — the stage where qi, imagined entering the channel at the well by the toenail, is pictured beginning to pool and gather strength, the way water wells where a stream is born. Five-phase commentary, layering element upon element, assigns water itself to this spring of the wood-element gallbladder channel, a nurturing pairing in that old arithmetic. The same classical teaching groups spring points with presentations of heat, a habit of thought sitting comfortably beside the record’s own entry for febrile disease.
Pinyin renders the name Xiáxī: xia climbs on the second tone, a rising inflection, while xi holds the first tone — high, level, sustained. Checked character by character against the dictionary readings, the catalogue writes it with its tone marks, Xiáxī, and the two hanzi 俠溪 are compact enough to memorise at a glance. Foot points love their water vocabulary — streams, ravines, valleys, gullies — and this one wears it most plainly of all. As with gates and courtyards elsewhere on the map, the metaphor does real work: it tells you the shape of the ground before you kneel to look, and the ground obliges.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: headache, eye pain, tinnitus, deafness, dizziness, fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, swelling and pain of the foot, febrile disease, and mastitis. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the opening cluster travels together naturally. The gallbladder channel, in classical description, zigzags down the side of the head and body toward the fourth toe, so the side of the head is its home territory; aching that wraps the temples, eyes that smart, ears that ring or dim, and the swaying unsteadiness the old texts called dizziness were all approached along the route — and on a long channel, distant foot points made favourite addresses in classical strategy, small handles at the far end of a long rope.
The remaining entries stay closer to the record’s own geography. Fullness of the chest and hypochondrium describes a subjective weight and bloated tightness across the rib-side — flank country the channel crosses on its way down. Swelling and pain of the foot needs little explanation: the point lives in the neighbourhood, and classical practice always kept local addresses handy for local complaints. Mastitis — inflammation of breast tissue — joins a pattern visible in the neighbouring entries themselves: Zulinqi (GB41) records distending breast pain, insufficient lactation, and breast abscess among its uses, so the channel’s association with the breast runs through this stretch of the catalogue. Febrile disease, finally, echoes the spring-points-and-heat teaching noted above.
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. Headaches that change character, ears that suddenly fall silent, eyes that hurt — these belong with professional care first. Hold the tradition lightly; hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, the searched foot resting across the opposite knee or propped on a low stool. Curl index and middle fingers together and lay the pads — never the tips — into the cleft behind the web margin. 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 small bones. 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. Swap hands and repeat on the other foot, 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 only teaches the toes to flinch. Warm cold hands before starting, and warm cold feet too — a brief walk or a rinse in comfortable water loosens the web wonderfully. Choose a quiet corner over a screen, since the practice doubles as a pause: breath moving through the nose, gentle pressure riding each long exhale out. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after morning washing, beside an evening stretch — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. A foot point travels well: a chair, a hand, and a few minutes suffice.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the feet feel less tired at day’s end, perhaps the shoulders loosen while you press, 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 gentleness or simply stop for the day. The stream imagery earns its keep here: water advances by patience, not by force.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Xiaxi’s licensed record carries no special caution entry. Unlike the thinly covered points of the chest wall, whose dataset files warn professionals explicitly about depth, this entry records no specific warning alongside its location and actions. That absence deserves a careful reading rather than a careless one. It reflects what the compiled records chose to note, not an invitation to force; professional judgement at any point belongs to trained hands; and home self-care keeps the same surface-only discipline here that it keeps everywhere. Happily, the ground itself cooperates: the toe web is padded, mobile tissue laid over small sturdy bones — about as forgiving a landscape as the foot offers.
For fingertip acupressure the rules are the familiar ones. Keep pressure light and superficial; use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, pen handles, or massage tools. Skip the point during any feverish illness, over broken, irritated, or visibly changed skin, and over any recent injury to the toes or foot until healing has settled. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone living with diabetes, poor circulation, or nerve-related symptoms in the feet does well to ask first as well — feet deserve extra gentleness when their sensation or supply is diminished.
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 high or persistent fever, for a painful red swollen breast, for a hot swollen painful foot, for sudden changes in hearing, for severe or unusual headache, or for eye pain with disturbed vision. Persistent symptoms of any kind belong with a licensed practitioner, Western or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The clasped stream suits the point best as a reminder: keep the water clear and the banks gentle, and leave whatever muddies the current to those equipped to tend it.
Xiaxi — the Clasped Stream — sits in the web between the fourth and fifth toes, where the finer skin of the instep meets the fleshier skin of the sole. A ying-spring point near the end of the gallbladder channel’s long descent, it was sought in classical practice when the head throbbed, the ears rang, or heat ran high.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Xiaxi without knowing anything about cun?
- You barely need cun here at all — the address is given by landmarks alone. Find the fold of skin where the fourth and fifth toes merge into the foot, slip the fingertip just behind it toward the ankle, and search for the faint line where the finer skin of the instep turns into the firmer skin of the sole. Where that change of texture meets the middle of the cleft, you have found the spot the dataset describes. Proportional measurements simply encode the same landscape in different language.
- Is pressing Xiaxi myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults: the site is padded soft tissue over small bones, far from the delicate structures that earn some other points explicit warnings. Remember that a record with no caution entry is not permission for force — it is simply a shorter file. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Xiaxi for?
- The traditional record lists headache, eye pain, tinnitus, deafness, dizziness, fullness of the chest and rib-side, swelling and pain of the foot, febrile disease, and mastitis. Its standing as a spring point tied it classically to heat presentations, and the channel’s zigzag across the side of the head tied it to head-side complaints. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a point between the toes speak to the head at all?
- Because classical channel thinking reads the pathway as one continuous rope: the gallbladder channel is described climbing the side of the head before zigzagging down the body to end at the fourth toe. Along such a long road, practitioners traditionally treated trouble at one end from handles at the other, and the points nearest the tip were prized partly for their very distance. It is a geometry of the imagination as much as of the body — one modern readers are welcome to hold as history rather than physiology.
- When should I skip this point and see someone instead?
- Skip conservatively and often: during feverish illness, over broken or visibly changed skin, over recent foot injuries, whenever sensation turns sharp, and during pregnancy unless a qualified practitioner has advised otherwise. Seek proper assessment rather than continued pressing for high or persistent fever, a red painful swollen breast, a hot swollen foot, sudden hearing changes, severe or unusual headaches, or eye pain with vision disturbance. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice alongside good care, never a substitute for it.
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, ying-spring theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GB43 Xiaxi — 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/gb43/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gb43/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gb43/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GB43",
"name": {
"en": "Xiaxi",
"gloss": "Clasped Stream",
"zh-Hant": "俠溪",
"zh-Hans": "侠溪"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GB",
"order": 43,
"of": 44
},
"location": {
"text": "On top of the foot, between the fourth and fifth toes, just behind the edge of the web."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"ringing ears",
"dizziness"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each foot.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gb43",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}