Never press on a baby's soft spot: the skull there has not yet closed.
囟會 Xinhui
“Fontanelle Meeting” · GV22
Governing Vessel · 22 of 28
Where. On the midline of the head, two thumb-widths inside the front hairline.
For. Headache, dizziness, a blocked nose.
Press. Gentle, about a minute; for adults only.
Caution. Never press on a baby's soft spot: the skull there has not yet closed.
囟會，在上星後一寸，骨間陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Xinhui Sits on the Crown of the Head
On the top of the head, Xinhui occupies the body’s dead centre line: the dataset locates it two cun directly above the midpoint of the anterior hairline, which works out to three cun in front of Baihui (GV20) at the very summit of the skull. A cun, as always in this tradition, is a proportional unit taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler — a thumb-width at the knuckle is the usual working approximation — so the same written distance lands slightly differently on different heads. “Directly above the hairline” means straight back along the midline, neither left nor right; “in front of Baihui” means counting from the summit downward toward the forehead.
Unlike most points on the limbs and trunk, Xinhui is not one of a pair: it rides the seam where the body’s two halves meet, and there is no left-sided or right-sided twin to confuse it with. Beneath the fingertips the layers are few and friendly — hair and scalp first, then the easy glide of scalp over bone, and beneath that the solid dome of the skull. There are no rib gaps here, no hollow spaces, no organs close to the surface; of all the geographies a point can occupy, scalp-over-bone is the most forgiving ground for gentle surface work. The structure does the guarding, and your fingers only ever need to visit the surface.
The midline ladder helps orientation. The same dataset measurements that place Xinhui two cun behind the hairline midpoint place Baihui five cun behind it, so Xinhui sits on the stretch between the two — noticeably nearer the hairline than to the summit. Walking the centre line backward from the forehead, the scalp rises gently through the frontal region toward the crown, and Xinhui lies partway up that rise, where the hand begins to feel the skull curving over the top. Knowing the rungs of the ladder matters less for pressing than for confidence: if you can name them, you always know where you stand on the line.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair, feet planted, shoulders heavy, and give the scalp a moment to settle. Find the midpoint of the front hairline: the place where the hairline crosses the vertical centre line of the forehead, easiest to sight straight ahead in a mirror. Stack the pads of your index and middle fingers on that point and walk them straight back along the midline — not diagonally, not drifting toward whichever temple feels easier — for two thumb-widths. Let the fingers come to rest where the upward slope of the forehead begins to round over into the crown. That centred resting place, level with the first stretch of the crown’s curve, is the location the dataset describes.
Several quiet confirmations separate a confident find from a guess. Feather-light first: touch the candidate spot, then slide a finger-width to either side; the true midline point usually carries a faint, dull awareness that the flanks lack. Second, movement: a slow, small nod lets the scalp travel over the bone beneath, and the spot stays put under a still fingertip while everything slides past. Third, a cross-check from the other end of the ladder — if you already know Baihui from its own page or a previous search, walk three thumb-widths forward from the summit toward the forehead and see whether you arrive where you began.
Two slips account for nearly every miss. The first is leaving the midline: hands tire, attention wanders, and the search drifts half a thumb-width toward one side, where dozens of unremarkable spots await. The correction is simply returning to the centre seam and feeling for the line where sensation symmetrizes. The second is misjudging an uneven or receding hairline, which throws the whole two-cun count off from the start; when the hairline argues with you, abandon it and count backward from Baihui instead. Losing the place is never a failure of skill — it is a cue to re-anchor and measure once more, slowly.
Reading the Name: Fontanelle Meeting
The name is a fossil of infancy. Xin 囟 is the old word for the fontanelle — the membrane-covered gap at the top of a newborn’s skull where the bony plates have not yet grown together. Character dictionaries describe 囟 as a simple drawing: the outline of an infant skull seen from above, with crossed strokes marking the seams where the plates approach and the soft space between them. Hui 會 adds the verb — to meet, to converge, to gather into one. Read together, Xinhui is the meeting-place of the fontanelle: the spot where the unfinished crown of a baby’s head comes together.
The name describes the neighborhood, not just the bone. Classical writers linked this region of the head with the fontanelle of early childhood; in the adult the plates have long since fused into one seamless dome, but the point-name preserves the memory of what stood here. There is a second, wider resonance: hui is the same character that closes Baihui, the Hundred Meetings, three cun behind — and the du vessel this point serves is traditionally described as running up the midline of the back and head and uniting all the yang channels. One character, many gatherings: the tradition’s naming habit shows itself neatly in two adjacent names.
Pinyin writes the name Xìnhuì, and the tone marks repay attention: both syllables carry the falling fourth tone, delivered with a short, decisive drop, so the name falls on the ear like two firm little footsteps climbing toward the crown. The hanzi pair 囟會 is compact enough to hold at a glance, though the first character is rare outside medical vocabulary — most readers meet it here for the first time, which makes the point-name itself a small lesson in how the tradition named what it saw.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: headache, dizziness, sinusitis, nosebleed, epilepsy, palpitations, drowsiness, and poor memory. The first cluster explains itself by address. A point set high on the midline of the head sat naturally in classical discussions of head pain and of the swimming, unsteady sensations grouped under dizziness; and because the governing vessel keeps to the body’s centre line, complaints of the nose and sinuses — congestion, pressure, nosebleeds — were also brought to points along this upper stretch. Traditional practice reasoned in routes and neighborhoods long before it reasoned in systems.
The second cluster asks more care. Epilepsy, palpitations, drowsiness, and poor memory belong, in modern eyes, to the brain, the heart, and the mind; classical records gathered such disturbances under broad headings of consciousness, spirit, and clear-headedness, and drew head-points on the governing vessel into those discussions. Two honesty rules apply before anything else. These are historical categories, transcribed so the record can be understood — not promises attached to pressure. And epilepsy in particular is today the province of physicians: any seizure history belongs in clinical hands, full stop. The list tells us where the tradition reached, not what self-care achieves.
It bears repeating plainly: everything above is the traditional portfolio recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. None of it is a claim that pressing Xinhui treats disease. Where modern research has touched self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on context, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition as a window onto another way of mapping the body, and hold the safety rules of the next sections as non-negotiable.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, jaw loose. Stack the pads of two fingers — never the nails, never a knuckle — on Xinhui and begin with contact alone, letting the scalp accept the weight of a resting hand. After a few slow breaths, add small circles about the size of a coin, so slow that the skin glides over the bone rather than dragging on it. Sensation should register as warmth or a pleasant, dull spreading — never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes at a sitting, once or twice a day, each circle riding a long exhale out. Because the point is single and central there is no side to swap; some people close instead with thirty seconds of simply resting a flat palm over the crown.
Quality outweighs duration, as it does everywhere on this site. The bone beneath the scalp removes any danger of pressing too deep — but comfort is not an invitation to dig, and grinding force teaches the body nothing except to guard. Warm the hands first on cold days, because chilled scalps tighten. Choose a quiet chair corner over a screen, and let the practice double as a thinking pause: eyes closed, breath through the nose, attention resting exactly where the fingers do. Readers who keep the habit up tend to anchor it after something they already do daily — washing the face, an afternoon stretch — because regularity, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually reward.
Treat the exercise honestly: a ceremony of attention, not a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes — perhaps the scalp feels less tight, perhaps the head seems a shade clearer afterward, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent two minutes attending to yourself at the top of the day. Every one of those outcomes sits comfortably inside what self-acupressure can truthfully offer. What sits outside it is escalation: pressing harder to force a result, or stretching sessions to earn one. When curiosity pulls that way, come back to gentleness — or close the notebook for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a warning in the licensed record, and it deserves its prominence. The dataset cautions practitioners not to apply deep technique at Xinhui in infants, because the cranial sutures have not yet closed and deep insertion there is unsafe. The reason is the name made visible: the very fontanelle region the point commemorates is, in a baby, unfinished architecture — membrane standing where an adult carries fused bone. The home translation is simple and absolute. Adults may explore their own scalps; no point practice of any kind belongs on an infant’s head. Babies’ soft spots are tended by parents’ hands and pediatric clinicians — never by wellness routines.
For an adult’s own self-care the rules follow the same geography. Keep contact light and purely superficial — finger pads on scalp, intention staying at the surface, never driving inward even though bone lies below. Skip the point entirely over broken skin, rashes, scalp conditions, or fresh scars; skip it during feverish illness; and after any concussion, head or facial surgery, or significant knock to the head, wait until a clinician has cleared ordinary activity before resuming. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with neurological or heart conditions, should ask a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
And the wider rule stands over the whole page: this guide educates; it does not diagnose. Seek prompt medical care — not a longer pressing session — for a sudden severe headache, a headache after a blow to the head, headache with fever and a stiff neck, changes in vision or speech, weakness or numbness, fainting, repeated nosebleeds, dizziness that will not settle, or palpitations that persist. Persistent symptoms belong with licensed clinicians, medical or East Asian medical as the complaint suggests. The fontanelle imagery is tender, but the safest gift Xinhui offers most households is a respectful map of the crown of the head — touched lightly, or not at all.
Xinhui, the Fontanelle Meeting, stands alone on the midline of the crown, two cun behind the midpoint of the front hairline. The du vessel climbs the body’s central line past this point toward the summit. Classical practice reached here for headache, dizziness, and troubled sinuses. This guide walks through finding it, reading its name, and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Never needle infants here — the skull sutures are still open, so deep needling is unsafe.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Xinhui if I cannot pin down my hairline midpoint?
- Anchor from the other end of the ladder. Locate Baihui, the point at the very summit of the head, then walk three thumb-widths forward along the midline, toward the forehead, keeping to the centre seam the whole way. However you arrive, confirm the result the same way: the spot should feel exactly centred, with matched sensation a finger-width to either side. An uneven hairline only spoils the count from below; counting down from the crown sidesteps the problem entirely.
- Is pressing the top of my own head actually safe?
- For a healthy adult, gentle fingertip contact held to the surface is reasonable self-care, because the fingertip rests on scalp stretched over solid bone — no rib gap, cavity, or organ lies within reach of surface pressure. The hazard preserved in the record concerns deep professional technique aimed at an infant’s unclosed skull, a category home practice never approaches. Keep the stop signals absolute: sharp or electric sensation ends the session at once.
- Why would anyone name a point after a baby’s fontanelle?
- Because the name is a memory. Xin 囟 is the classical word for the soft gap between the plates of an infant skull, and character dictionaries depict it as a little drawing of the crown seen from above. The point occupies the head region the tradition associated with that soft landscape; once the bones fuse in adulthood the landmark vanishes, and the name keeps it alive. Naming points after vanished landmarks is one of the tradition’s ways of writing anatomy into language.
- Older family remedies mention this point for blocked sinuses — is that the recorded use?
- Yes — nose and sinus complaints sit squarely in the traditional record for Xinhui, alongside headache, dizziness, and nosebleed. Those entries describe how classical practice mapped the head; they were framed within whole-pattern assessments rather than single-point fixes, and they record intent and reasoning, not assured outcomes. If congestion recurs, lingers for weeks, or arrives with facial pain or fever, that is material for a clinician’s examination, with any pressure routine kept to the gentle supporting role this site describes.
- Can pressing Xinhui improve my memory or concentration?
- Poor memory genuinely appears in the traditional indication list, alongside drowsiness — evidence of what classical practice attended to, not of what pressure achieves. Evidence that single-point acupressure improves memory or concentration is thin, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Treat any session as a focusing ritual that earns its value through stillness and regularity; and if forgetfulness is new, worsening, or interfering with daily life, bring it to a physician rather than to a point chart.
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, du-vessel context on the head, and classical indication history.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GV22 Xinhui — location, 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/gv22/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gv22/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gv22/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GV22",
"name": {
"en": "Xinhui",
"gloss": "Fontanelle Meeting",
"zh-Hant": "囟會",
"zh-Hans": "囟会"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GV",
"order": 22,
"of": 28
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline of the head, two thumb-widths inside the front hairline."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"dizziness",
"a blocked nose"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle, about a minute; for adults only.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Never press on a baby's soft spot: the skull there has not yet closed."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gv22",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}