Not in pregnancy.
橫骨 Henggu
“Horizontal Bone” · KI11
Foot Shaoyin · 11 of 27 · crossing-point
Where. Just above the top edge of the pubic bone, half a thumb-width out from the midline.
For. Lower belly ache; difficult urination.
Press. Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.
Caution. Not in pregnancy.
橫骨，一名下極，在大赫下一寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Henggu Sits on the Lower Abdomen
Henggu occupies the very floor of the front torso. The licensed dataset locates it on the lower abdomen, five cun below the centre of the umbilicus and half a cun to the side of the anterior midline. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, so a cun across a broad-framed adult differs from a cun on a slight teenager. Five cun below the navel is a meaningful distance on almost every body, because it corresponds to the level where the soft abdominal wall finally meets the upper ridge of the pubic bone — the transition from belly to pelvis.
What lies beneath the skin here explains much of the point’s character. Directly below runs the horizontal bar of the pubic bone itself, the very feature the point is named for; deeper still, sheltered by the layers of the lower abdominal wall, sits the bladder, which fills and rises toward exactly this region. To either side, the soft tissue of the groin gathers vessels and cords that deserve a gentle hand. None of this makes light fingertip contact inappropriate — but it does mean this is territory for patient, feather-light touch rather than firm work, and every suggestion on this page stays inside that boundary.
The wider channel map helps place the point. Classical teaching draws the kidney meridian beginning on the sole of the foot, climbing the inner aspect of the leg, surfacing on the lower abdomen in precisely this low region, and then continuing upward along the front of the trunk about half a thumb-width beside the midline before rising toward the chest. Henggu is therefore the first place the kidney channel meets the body wall on its long ascent from foot to chest, and the paired points — one on each side — stand like gateposts at the bottom of that road.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Begin settled rather than rushed: lying on your back with the knees softly bent relaxes the abdominal wall best, and a visit to the bathroom first leaves the whole area calmer to touch. Find the centre of your navel, rest two fingertips there, and walk them straight down the midline until you feel the first firm resistance — the upper edge of the pubic bone. The soft wall just above that bony ridge is the five-cun level the dataset describes. From the midline, slide sideways about half a thumb-width: the spot under your pad, level with the top of the bone, is Henggu’s neighbourhood. Repeat on the other side, since the point exists as a symmetric pair.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressure begins. Touch with almost no force and compare the two sides; many people notice a faint, deep awareness at the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away. Check that your finger really rests half a thumb-width clear of the midline rather than on it, and that the bony ridge sits just below your pad rather than squarely beneath the fingertip — if bone pushes up against you, glide upward onto the soft wall above. Everything should register as mild warmth or dull attention; anything sharper belongs to a different day.
Common slips are worth naming. Measuring down from the navel with wide thumbs can undershoot and land on the bone itself; the remedy is simply to search for the ridge first and work upward from it, letting the skeleton define the level. Drifting outward is another trap — the kidney channel hugs the midline along the whole abdomen, so the point lives close beside it, not out toward the hip. And because bodies differ, the proportional system matters more than any ruler: on some torsos the span from navel to bone feels longer than expected. Trust landmarks over arithmetic, and return to the pubic ridge whenever in doubt.
Reading the Name: Horizontal Bone
The name is anatomy set to poetry, or nearly. Heng 橫 means horizontal or crosswise; gu 骨 means bone. Together they name the pubic bone — in the traditional vocabulary of the old texts, the horizontal bone — which lies crosswise across the lowest reach of the front torso. The point takes its title from its neighbour: it rests directly above the upper margin of that horizontal bridge, close enough to lean on it. Many points on the body’s surface borrow their names from the terrain beneath, and this one is among the most literal in the entire collection.
The dataset adds a second credential: Henggu is recorded as a crossing point. Classical sources describe it as one of the places where the qi of the kidney channel meets another vessel travelling through the lower abdomen, commonly identified in the literature with the penetrating vessel — the chong mai of classical theory. Meetings like this made a point noteworthy in classical discussions, the way a junction town earns its place on an old map: converging movement marked a spot worth attending to. The imagery is cartographic, not clinical — a way of honouring convergence, not a claim about outcomes.
Pinyin renders the name Hénggǔ: a rising second tone on heng, and a dipping third tone on gu — the third tone falls first, then lifts, the way a voice hesitates before asking again. The hanzi pair 橫骨 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. Within the kidney channel’s roster — springs, valleys, courtyards, and gates scattered along its climb from sole to chest — this low opening entry keeps the geography unusually plain. It tells you exactly what lies under the finger, which is itself a small safety lesson: know the bone, and respect what shelters behind it.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: distending pain of the lower abdomen, hernia, difficult urination, enuresis, nocturnal emission, and impotence. Read as tradition rather than promise, the first item describes a familiar sensation in Chinese-medical language — a lower belly that feels swollen, pressurised, or stuck, understood as qi and fluid failing to move smoothly in the lower burner. Difficult urination gathered, in the old records, a family of complaints in which water would not pass freely; enuresis, the involuntary loss of urine, sat at the same borderland between water and weakness. These were the situations in which classical authors most often named this point.
The remaining items form the urogenital cluster that dominates the point’s historic portfolio. Hernia — in the traditional sense of downward-drifting sensations and bulges in the groin — appears throughout the older literature alongside lower-abdominal pain, and the point’s position at the body’s lowest front made it a natural candidate in such discussions. Nocturnal emission and impotence belonged to the traditional picture of the kidney as the organ that stores essence and anchors the lower body; a channel rooted in the kidney and surfacing just above the pubic bone fit that frame neatly. All of this is framework thinking, documented for context rather than asserted as effect.
It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses preserved 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 here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and heavily context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin. Some of the conditions named above — persistent urinary difficulty in particular — always warrant proper medical evaluation today. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the area found by the walkthrough above, arrange comfort first: lying down or reclined, knees supported, abdomen unclenched. Curl index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the spot. Start with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue rather than grinding inward. Sensation should read as gentle dullness or spreading warmth, nothing more insistent than that. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched to long exhales so each circle rides the breath out; then swap hands and give the other side equal time.
Quality outranks duration everywhere on this page, and doubly so here. Warm the hands first, because chilled muscle guards; choose a quiet corner rather than a screen; empty the bladder beforehand so the practice never rests on a full one. People who sustain a routine usually anchor it to an existing habit — after morning washing, before sleep — because regularity, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually reward. If anything feels tender beyond mild awareness, lighten further or pause entirely for a few days; this area forgives patience and resents insistence.
Treat the minutes spent here as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Perhaps the lower belly softens; perhaps warmth spreads; perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent three minutes attending honestly to a part of the body most people ignore. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — heavier pressure, deeper digging, longer sessions aimed at forcing a result. Given how delicate this neighbourhood is, curiosity that pulls toward force should always lose the argument. Return to gentleness, or close the day’s practice on a single slow breath.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a caution rarer than most, and the licensed record states it plainly: needling is classically prohibited at this point. Classical texts placed Henggu among the sites where needles were not used, and the modern dataset preserves that verdict word for word; this editorial layer echoes it exactly as policy requires, without softening. A prohibition of that kind deserves a proportionate response rather than alarm: what professional tradition declined to attempt invasively gives home practice even stronger reason to stay light. Surface-level gentleness is not merely adequate at Henggu — it is the entire assignment, and everything else on this page assumes it.
For fingertip practice the rules follow from the map drawn earlier. Keep every contact strictly superficial — skin and the outermost muscle layer, never driving down toward bone or bladder. Use finger pads only; no knuckles, elbows, or tools. Skip the point entirely during pregnancy, since lower-abdominal points are approached with particular restraint in that period; over broken or irritated skin; after recent pelvic, abdominal, or groin surgery; and during any acute urinary complaint until a clinician has looked at it. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Readers living with kidney disease, recurrent urinary infections, or chronic pelvic pain should ask a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
And the wider rule stands over everything: certain signs belong to prompt medical care, not to any pressure routine — inability to pass urine, blood in the urine, fever together with urinary symptoms, sudden severe pain in the lower abdomen or groin, or a painful, firm bulge in the groin that will not settle. Persistent symptoms of any kind call for a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. Self-acupressure is educational self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Practised within those rails, what Henggu offers most people is quieter: a few honest minutes of attention at the body’s floor, taken gently, and a clearer sense of where everyday care ends and professional care must begin.
Henggu, the Horizontal Bone, sits low on the front of the body, half a thumb-width from the midline just above the pubic bone. Classical practice reached for it in cases of distending lower-abdominal pain, difficult urination, and hernia. This guide walks through finding it by touch — and through the unusual respect its recorded history asks of anyone practising there.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Classical texts forbid needling this point.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Henggu without knowing anything about cun?
- Let the skeleton do the measuring. Lie back, find the navel, and walk two fingertips straight down the midline until they meet the first firm ridge — the top of the pubic bone. The soft wall immediately above that ridge, half a thumb-width to one side of the midline, is the area the dataset describes. The five-cun figure simply encodes, in proportional language, the same journey from navel to bone that your fingertips have already walked.
- Is pressing Henggu myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip contact held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it stays far short of the depth of any structure that matters. The point does carry an unusual recorded history — needling is classically prohibited there — which is why this page leans conservative: lighter pressure, shorter sessions, and stricter stop signals than for most points. Sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately and try nothing harder.
- What did classical practice use Henggu for?
- The traditional record lists distending pain of the lower abdomen, hernia, difficult urination, enuresis, nocturnal emission, and impotence. Classical theory framed these through the kidney channel’s course and its recorded meeting with the penetrating vessel at this site. Those are frameworks for understanding the body, preserved for cultural context — not evidence-backed claims about what pressing the point achieves.
- Why would a point be off-limits to needles in the classical record?
- The old texts simply placed this spot among those where needles were not used, and the licensed dataset preserves the caution word for word; the editorial layer is required to echo such statements exactly. This page does not speculate beyond the record. What matters for home readers is the practical translation: keep contact shallow and kind, treat the area as delicate, and leave anything invasive to professionals who assess each person individually.
- Can pressing Henggu replace seeing a doctor about urinary problems?
- No. Difficulty passing urine, blood in the urine, pain, or feverish urinary symptoms are signals for prompt professional assessment, and a suspected hernia — especially a painful or irreducible bulge — needs medical eyes urgently. Think of self-care and medicine as different floors of one building: daily comfort practices live downstairs, and the consulting room upstairs exists precisely for symptoms that persist, worsen, or frighten. Neither substitutes for the other.
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, crossing-point context, and channel course.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for KI11 Henggu — 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/ki11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki11/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI11",
"name": {
"en": "Henggu",
"gloss": "Horizontal Bone",
"zh-Hant": "橫骨",
"zh-Hans": "横骨"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 11,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "Just above the top edge of the pubic bone, half a thumb-width out from the midline."
},
"for": [
"lower belly ache",
"difficult urination"
],
"press": {
"text": "Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not in pregnancy."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki11",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}