齦交 Yinjiao
“Gum Junction” · GV28
Governing Vessel · 28 of 28
Where. Inside the mouth, where the small fold under the upper lip joins the gum.
For. Sore, swollen gums; bad breath.
Press. Light touch with a clean fingertip, about a minute.
齦交，在唇內齒上齦縫中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Yinjiao Sits Inside the Upper Lip
The dataset locates Yinjiao inside the upper lip, at the junction of the upper labial frenulum and the upper gum. In everyday terms: lift your top lip toward your nose and look in a mirror. Running down the middle of what you see is a small cord of soft tissue — the frenulum — tethering the inner lip to the pink gum just above the two front teeth. Where that cord fans out and merges into the gum is the junction the record describes. It is one of the few named points that sits squarely on the body’s centre line while remaining invisible until deliberately sought.
Most stations of the Governing Vessel announce themselves through bone: spinous processes along the spine, ridges and hollows across the skull. This final station trades all that scaffolding for mucosa. The tissue here is a thin, moist lining stretched over the firm gum ridge, with the roots of the front teeth close beneath. Oral tissue of this kind is richly supplied with blood vessels — it heals quickly, and it bleeds easily. Everything about the address argues for the lightest possible hand, and for cleanliness placed ahead of curiosity.
Because the point hides from view, most people first meet it through sensation rather than sight: a moment of odd tenderness while brushing the teeth, or a faint pull when the lip is lifted wide. Anatomies vary a little in how high the frenulum attaches, and that variation is ordinary — search by structure, the cord meeting the gum, rather than by any imagined millimetre. The midline keeps you honest: whatever you find should straddle the centre, not sit off to one side.
A Hygienic Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Cleanliness comes before contact, because this point lives inside the mouth. Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water, and file any sharp nails smooth first. Sit comfortably before a well-lit mirror, tilt the chin up slightly, and place the pad of a clean index finger against the outside of the upper lip. Draw the lip upward and outward until the inner surface and the frenulum come fully into view. Identify the small midline cord running from lip to gum.
Now follow the cord downward with the fingertip, stroking gently until it spreads and blends into the gum. That blending zone is the address. Move slowly enough to notice texture: the fold feels springy and yielding, the gum firmer and fixed to bone. Many people register a faint dull awareness, a mild tenderness, right at the junction compared with the tissue around it — a quiet confirmation, never something to chase with force. Rest the fingertip still for a few slow breaths and simply learn the terrain.
Predictable slips deserve their own mention. The finger can slide past the fold onto bare gum, drift sideways off the midline, or poke with the nail edge instead of the pad — return to centre by tracing along the teeth line to the very middle, then re-finding the cord. Dry, dragging contact irritates, so let the mouth’s own moisture do the lubricating. If the tissue is ulcerated, inflamed, or freshly irritated, skip the search entirely and try another day. Nothing here rewards persistence against pain.
Reading the Name: Gum Junction
The characters explain themselves. Yin 齦 means the gums — the same character found in ya yin 牙齦, the everyday word for the fleshy ridges that cradle the teeth. Jiao 交 means to cross, to join, to meet; the oldest form of the character pictures two shins crossing. Together the name reads Gum Junction or Gum Crossing, and the fit with the location is exact: this is where the lip’s central fold crosses onto the gum. Few names in the collection state their address so plainly.
Pinyin renders the name Yínjiāo. The syllable yín climbs on a rising second tone; jiāo holds steady on a high, level first tone. Care is worthwhile because the collection contains a namesake: on the Conception Vessel, low on the front of the trunk below the navel, sits another point romanized Yinjiao — written with a different character meaning yin as opposed to yang, and pronounced with a flat, high first tone. Two vessels, two characters, two tones: the tone marks are not decoration but the difference between one point and another.
There is a quiet wit in the naming. Classical teaching describes the Governing Vessel making the longest climb in the body’s map — up the midline of the back and over the head — before descending across the face to finish at this modest fold inside the upper lip, the last of its twenty-eight named stations. That the grandest line of the traditional anatomy should end at a speck of gum tissue strikes some readers as poetry and others as humour; either way, the name works as an instruction: look inward, lift upward, and the answer waits between lip and teeth.
Traditional Indications, Explained
Read as families, the recorded indications tell a coherent story. The first family gathers around the point’s own doorstep: swollen painful gums and bad breath. With the name and the address both saying gums, it surprised no one in earlier centuries that gum complaints were brought to this junction; bad breath, in the old frame, belonged to discussions of the mouth and stomach taken together. Stated plainly for today: these are traditional associations, documented for historical understanding — and persistent swollen or bleeding gums belong with a dentist before any self-care conversation begins.
A second family concerns the face and nose: deviation of the mouth, sinusitis, and nosebleed stand together in the record. Points along the governing line were drawn into classical conversations about facial complaints, and this terminal station kept the doorway to them all. One item needs a firm modern footnote: sudden deviation of the mouth — a drooping face — is recognised today as a possible warning of stroke and belongs to emergency services immediately, never to self-care. Stubborn sinus trouble and recurring nosebleeds likewise deserve clinical review rather than patient pressing.
The third family follows the channel’s own corridor: lower back pain and stiff neck appear here because the Governing Vessel runs up the midline of the back, making the spinal seam its home territory by classical reasoning. Haemorrhoids stand in the older lists too, tied by the old writers to the vessel’s deep course through the lower trunk; any rectal bleeding warrants proper assessment first. Finally, epilepsy appears in the record — classical texts grouped convulsive disorders among the conditions discussed at this point. Today, seizure activity belongs wholly to emergency and specialist care; nothing applied at the lip substitutes for it. Across every family, reviews suggest that modern evidence for single-point pressure remains thin: these listings document a framework of ideas, not measured effects.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
Practised at home, Yinjiao asks for ceremony more than effort. Begin with the hygiene ritual as part of the practice itself: hands washed, nails smooth, mirror ready. Locate the junction by the walkthrough above, then rest a single clean fingertip pad upon it. Feather-light contact is the entire vocabulary here — a still hold through ten or so slow breaths, or the tiniest circles, letting the mouth’s own moisture carry the movement. Once a day is ample; half a minute of attention outranks five minutes of grinding.
Expect subtle sensations: a faint dull ache, a spreading warmth of awareness, occasionally a ticklish echo toward the front teeth. Sharp pain has no place, and neither does bravely endured nausea. If the gag reflex protests, withdraw, breathe, and approach again from the outer lip more slowly — or simply finish for today. Many people pair the exercise with evening tooth-brushing, an anchor habit that solves hygiene and memory in one motion. The mouth heals quickly, but it also remembers roughness; gentleness is both courtesy and strategy.
Keep the honest scope in view. This is a minute of attention paid to a corner of the body most people never consciously greet: noticing tension held in jaw and lip, breathing slowly, treating tender tissue kindly. Perhaps the area feels calmer afterwards; perhaps nothing shifts beyond the noticing itself. Every such outcome fits self-acupressure truthfully. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, the practice is complete for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point’s licensed record opens with a clear line, and it takes top billing here as it would anywhere. The dataset cautions: do not apply moxibustion, as recorded in classical literature. Moxibustion — the traditional warming of points with burning mugwort — belongs to professional practice in any case, but here the old literature itself draws the line, and the dataset repeats it without elaborating the reasoning. For home purposes the translation is simple: this is a touch-only point. Every heat device, warmed balm, and steaming ritual stays out of the program, and nothing hot ever approaches the lips during practice.
The interior of the mouth adds housekeeping of its own. Skip the point entirely over ulcers, cold sores, inflamed or actively bleeding gums, orthodontic irritation, and any recent dental work until healing has settled. Clean hands every time; stop at once on sharp sensation; never practise during an active nosebleed. Because gum tissue bleeds readily, anyone taking blood-thinning medication or living with a bleeding disorder should ask a qualified practitioner before adding this point. Pregnant readers should consult a practitioner before adding any new point practice at all.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek urgent help — not more pressing — for sudden facial drooping, slurred speech, limb weakness, or any seizure. Arrange prompt clinical review for gum swelling or bleeding lasting beyond a week or two, dental pain, heavy or repeated nosebleeds, or sinus symptoms accompanied by fever. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the concern. The smallest landmark on the body’s grandest line offers, at most, a minute of kind attention — and knowing when to hand the rest to professionals is the mature half of wellness.
Yinjiao, Gum Junction, hides more thoroughly than almost any named point: inside the upper lip, where the midline fold of tissue meets the upper gum. It stands at the far end of the Governing Vessel's climb up the back and head, and old records reached for it when gums swelled and faces complained. This guide covers finding it cleanly and pressing it with real restraint.
Cautions from the classical sources
- No moxibustion, per the classical texts.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Yinjiao without knowing anything about cun?
- No measurements are involved, which makes this point unusual for the Governing Vessel. Wash your hands, stand before a mirror, lift the upper lip, and follow the small midline cord of tissue from the lip down to where it merges with the gum. That merging zone is the location the dataset describes. Proportional cun measures govern most points of the channel; this final one needs only a mirror, a clean finger, and patience.
- Is pressing inside my own mouth really safe?
- Light fingertip contact on intact, healthy tissue is a reasonable, brief self-care gesture for healthy adults. The genuine risks concentrate elsewhere: unclean fingers, broken or inflamed tissue, force, and the heat therapies the record already excludes. Work clean, stay superficial, honour the stop signals — sharp pain above all — and leave anything persistent to a clinician or dentist.
- What did classical practice use Yinjiao for?
- The traditional record lists swollen painful gums, deviation of the mouth, bad breath, sinusitis, epilepsy, lower back pain, stiff neck, nosebleed, and haemorrhoids. The spread makes sense inside the old framework: mouth complaints sat at the point’s doorstep, while spine-side complaints followed the Governing Vessel’s course up the back. These listings document how premodern medicine organised its experience — context, not promises.
- Why does a point of the body’s central back line live inside the upper lip?
- Classical descriptions give the Governing Vessel a long arc: rising along the midline of the back and over the head, then descending across the face to finish at this junction inside the upper lip, its twenty-eighth and final station. The old maps complete the picture by drawing the conception vessel ascending the front midline, the two lines reading as one circuit met near the mouth — an image from traditional anatomy, offered as tradition rather than measured fact.
- My gums are swollen and sore — should I press this point instead of seeing the dentist?
- No. Swollen, tender, or bleeding gums need professional eyes first: the causes range from simple inflammation to infections best caught early. Acupressure, if used at all, arrives afterwards as a gentle companion to proper care, never as its replacement. Any swelling that is severe, worsening, or joined by fever goes to a clinician promptly.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GV28 Yinjiao — location, point class, actions, and caution 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, terminal-point status, 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/gv28/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gv28/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gv28/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GV28",
"name": {
"en": "Yinjiao",
"gloss": "Gum Junction",
"zh-Hant": "齦交",
"zh-Hans": "龈交"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GV",
"order": 28,
"of": 28
},
"location": {
"text": "Inside the mouth, where the small fold under the upper lip joins the gum."
},
"for": [
"sore",
"swollen gums",
"bad breath"
],
"press": {
"text": "Light touch with a clean fingertip, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gv28",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}