水泉 Shuiquan
“Water Spring” · KI5
Foot Shaoyin · 5 of 27 · xi-cleft
Where. One thumb-width straight below the hollow behind the inner ankle, on the inner side of the heel bone.
For. Painful or irregular periods; difficult urination.
Press. Gentle finger pressure, about a minute, then the other foot.
水泉二穴，少陰郄，去太谿下一寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Shuiquan Sits Below the Inner Ankle
On the inner side of the foot, just where the ankle bone gives way to the heel, Shuiquan occupies a small hollow most people have never had reason to name. The dataset places it on the medial side of the foot, posterior and inferior to the medial malleolus — the rounded bone on the inside of the ankle — one cun directly below Taixi (KI3), in the depression on the medial side of the tuberosity of the calcaneus, the bony prominence of the heel. A cun is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location, taken from the person being examined rather than from any ruler: for practical purposes here, one cun comes close to the width of your own thumb. The location therefore reads as a short vertical journey: find the hollow behind the ankle bone where Taixi rests, descend about one thumb-width straight down, and settle into the shallow groove beside the heel’s bony bump.
The terrain under the fingertips is unlike the soft plains of the torso. Bone dominates: the malleolus above, the heel bone behind and below, the taut cord of the Achilles tendon guarding the rear. Soft tissue runs thin over these prominences, so sensation arrives clearly — many people notice a distinct, faintly tender awareness at the true spot long before any real pressure is applied. That clarity is a gift for self-location and a reminder at once: thin padding over bone asks for patience and light contact, not force. Nothing about finding or pressing this point should ever feel like digging.
Shuiquan keeps close company along the channel’s lowest reach. Directly above sits Taixi (KI3), the kidney channel’s yuan-source point, resting in the hollow between the tip of the medial malleolus and the Achilles tendon; directly below the malleolus tip lies Zhaohai (KI6). The three form a loose constellation around the inner ankle, which is precisely why beginners mix them up. The anchor rule is simple: Shuiquan is measured down from Taixi, not from the malleolus itself. Locate the source-point hollow first, drop a single thumb-width straight down, and you will not drift into the neighbours’ territory.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit on a firm chair with the foot you are locating crossed over the opposite knee, so the inner ankle faces you and the muscles of the foot can go slack. Begin by finding Taixi. Run your fingers up the inside of the ankle until you meet the prominent rounded end of the medial malleolus — its tip. Then slide your fingertip backward, toward the heel, into the soft hollow between that bony tip and the firm vertical cord of the Achilles tendon. Press gently there and most people feel a faint, deep awareness: you have arrived in the neighbourhood of Taixi, your measuring stake.
From that hollow, walk your fingertip straight down the skin about one thumb-width, moving toward the underside of the foot. You cross soft ground first, and then the rounded bony mass of the heel rises under your finger — the tuberosity of the calcaneus. Keep to its inner side and search for a shallow depression, a small pocket of give between bone and the softer tissue toward the sole. That hollow, level with the upper slope of the heel prominence and roughly one thumb-width below Taixi, is Shuiquan. Feather-light tapping across the area usually confirms it: the true spot answers with a clearer, faintly achy note than the surrounding ground.
Two slips account for nearly every miss. The first is dropping too far forward, landing in the depression directly beneath the malleolus tip — that is Zhaohai’s address, not Shuiquan’s; remember the measurement starts behind the ankle, at Taixi. The second is sliding too far down onto the weight-bearing underside of the heel, where no meaningful hollow exists. Both correct themselves the same way: return to the hollow between the malleolus tip and the Achilles tendon, and repeat the single downward thumb-width slowly. Practise the search on both feet, since the two sides rarely feel identical, and finish each search knowing exactly how you arrived.
Reading the Name: Water Spring
The name is a picture drawn in two strokes of meaning. Shui 水 means water — the plainest, oldest character for it, originally written as flowing streams. Quan 泉 means spring, in the sense of groundwater welling up out of the earth of its own accord, neither poured nor pumped. Together, Shuiquan reads simply as water spring: a place where water rises from below. Point-names in this tradition favour such natural imagery — gorges, valleys, pools, springs — and the metaphor does quiet work here, marking a low, hidden spot where something gathers underground and presses gently upward toward the surface.
The name suits the office the record assigns the point. Classical teaching gives every one of the twelve regular channels a single xi-cleft point — a place where the channel’s activity is understood to gather and run deepest, like water collecting in a submerged pool. Tradition treats the xi-clefts as addresses sought out when trouble arrives suddenly along a channel, and classical practice reached for them accordingly. Shuiquan holds this office for the kidney channel, and its position near the heel — among the lowest ground the channel crosses before turning upward — fits the image of the deep spring at the foot of the hill. These are frameworks of traditional physiology, offered as context rather than mechanism.
Pinyin renders the name Shuǐquán: shuǐ carries the third tone, a dipping fall-and-rise, while quán carries the second tone, an even climb upward. Two further touches round out the naming story. The kidney channel begins at the sole of the foot and ascends the inner leg toward the chest, and its first point, on the very sole, is named Yongquan — the gushing spring. Channel and names agree with one another: from the gushing spring beneath the arch, water imagery follows the channel upward, and the quieter spring at the heel marks where the rising water has yet to break the surface. The hanzi pair 水泉 rewards a second look from anyone learning the script.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: irregular menstruation, dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea, prolapse of the uterus, infertility, difficult urination, and blurred vision. The menstrual cluster dominates, and the traditional reasoning is straightforward. In the classical frame, the kidney stores essence — jing, the deep, inherited vitality — and reproductive life is understood as rooted there: the cycle, conception, and gestation were all read as expressions of that stored wealth. A point understood to gather the channel’s qi deeply was therefore reached for when the cycle lost its rhythm — painful periods, periods that did not arrive, cycles that wandered without pattern. These categories describe experiences rather than modern diagnoses, and the framing throughout is traditional use, never promised effect.
The middle entries extend the same logic. Prolapse of the uterus and infertility belong to the traditional understanding of the lower abdomen as territory governed by the kidney system’s stored reserves. Difficult urination reaches back to the name itself: the kidney governs water in classical physiology, charged with the body’s fluid movements, and a water-spring point on the kidney channel was a natural address for water that would not flow. Classical writers connected these threads through the channel map — a single line ascending from the sole of the foot up the inner leg to the chest — rather than through any notion of local anatomy at the foot itself.
The last indication, blurred vision, looks furthest from the heel until the classical web of connections is consulted: tradition links kidney and liver as paired storehouses — of essence and blood respectively — and the eyes were taught to draw on those shared reserves. A depleted store showing at the eyes is a familiar figure in classical writing, and points along the kidney channel belonged to such discussions. It bears repeating plainly: all of these are uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding, not claims that pressing this point treats any condition. 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.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, foot crossed comfortably, ankle supported. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the hollow. Start with plain contact for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin travel over the thin tissue rather than grinding against the bone beneath. Sensation should register as clear dullness, mild warmth, or a faint spreading ache — the honest currency of acupressure — never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed loosely with slow exhales; then swap hands and give the other foot the same courtesy.
Quality outweighs duration at this bony address. Cold hands make the search clumsy, so warm them first; a quiet room beats a screen; and anchoring the practice to an existing habit — after the morning wash, before the evening wind-down — does more good than extending any single session, because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. Feet carry people all day and rarely receive deliberate attention; a minute of patient contact at the heel doubles as a small acknowledgment of that debt. If a day is missed, nothing is owed — the practice resumes tomorrow without penance.
Treat the minutes as attention practice rather than treatment sessions. Over weeks, notice honestly what changes: perhaps the spot grows easier to find, perhaps the ache softens sooner, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend two minutes attending to your own body. Every one of those outcomes sits within the honest scope of self-acupressure. What sits outside it is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result the practice was never designed to deliver. When curiosity pulls in that direction, return to gentleness, or set the practice aside for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
An honest safety section begins with the record itself: the licensed dataset registers no specific cautions for Shuiquan. That clean slate reflects the site’s forgiving geography — a shallow hollow over the heel bone, distant from lungs, organs, and major vessels — but absence of recorded warnings is not an invitation to force. Thin tissue over bone transmits pressure efficiently, which means clumsy input arrives loudly. Professional techniques at this point belong entirely to trained hands and sit outside this page’s scope; home practice stays on the surface, by design and without exception.
Practical rules follow plainly. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools — and keep pressure light enough that you could hold a conversation mid-press. Skip the point over broken or irritated skin, over swelling or bruising, after any recent foot or ankle injury until ordinary movement is comfortable again, and during any illness that leaves you run down. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone managing a diagnosed health condition, do best to consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice to their routine.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, acupressure is self-care, and neither is diagnosis or therapy. Cycle changes deserve clinical eyes promptly — periods that stop without explanation, pain that disrupts normal life, bleeding that is unusually heavy, occurs between periods, or appears after menopause; difficulty passing urine; and fertility concerns that have run longer than a year of trying. These belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint, not with a pressure routine. The spring imagery makes gentle company for daily care; it is no substitute for the assessment persistent symptoms call for.
Shuiquan, the Water Spring, rests low on the inner side of the heel, tucked behind and beneath the ankle bone. As the xi-cleft of the kidney channel, classical practice read it as a deep pool where a channel’s activity gathers, reaching for it above all when the cycle fell out of rhythm. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shuiquan without knowing anything about cun?
- Anchor on Taixi instead. Find the rounded tip of the bone on the inside of your ankle, then slide into the hollow between that tip and the firm cord of the Achilles tendon — that hollow is Taixi. From it, walk your fingertip one thumb-width straight down toward the underside of the foot until the bony mass of the heel rises, and search out the shallow groove on its inner side. Cun measurements simply encode that landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Shuiquan myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the licensed record registers no specific caution for this point. Expect clearer, more distinct sensation than at fleshy sites — the point lies over thin tissue near bone — and let that clarity stand in for force. The universal stop rules apply unchanged: sharp, radiating, or worsening discomfort means finish immediately and try again another day, if at all.
- What did classical practice use Shuiquan for?
- The traditional record lists irregular menstruation, dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea, prolapse of the uterus, infertility, difficult urination, and blurred vision. Its xi-cleft status — the spot where a channel’s activity gathers deeply — explains why sudden trouble along the kidney channel features in classical discussions of the point. Those are traditional frameworks documented for cultural context, not evidence-backed treatment claims, and nothing here should be read as a promise about outcomes.
- Why do so many of its indications involve menstruation?
- Because classical physiology placed reproductive life under the kidney system’s care. The kidney stores essence — the deep reserve tradition calls jing — and the cycle, conception, and gestation were all understood as expressions of that stored wealth. A point read as a deep gathering place of the kidney channel’s activity therefore sat naturally in discussions of the cycle. It is a coherent framework within its own worldview, preserved here as history and context rather than clinical advice.
- Can acupressure at Shuiquan replace seeing a doctor about my cycle?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and several situations call for prompt professional assessment: periods that stop without explanation, severe pelvic pain, unusually heavy bleeding, bleeding between periods or after menopause, difficulty passing urine, or fertility concerns beyond a year of trying. Think of the two as different floors of the same building — daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs. Neither substitutes for the other, and persistent symptoms are always an upstairs matter.
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, xi-cleft theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for KI5 Shuiquan — 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/ki5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki5/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI5",
"name": {
"en": "Shuiquan",
"gloss": "Water Spring",
"zh-Hant": "水泉",
"zh-Hans": "水泉"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 5,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "One thumb-width straight below the hollow behind the inner ankle, on the inner side of the heel bone."
},
"for": [
"painful or irregular periods",
"difficult urination"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle finger pressure, about a minute, then the other foot.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Tongren Shuxue Zhenjiu Tujing, book 5",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki5",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}