臂臑 Binao
“Arm's Muscle” · LI14
Hand Yangming · 14 of 20
Where. On the outer upper arm, in the dip where the shoulder muscle ends; let the arm hang to feel it.
For. Shoulder and arm ache, a stiff neck, headache.
Press. Firm thumb pressure, about a minute each arm.
在肘上七寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Binao Sits on the Outer Arm
On the outer arm, Binao occupies the muscular corridor between elbow and shoulder. The dataset places it on the line connecting Quchi (LI11) and Jianyu (LI15), seven cun above Quchi; with the arm hanging naturally it lies on the outer aspect of the arm at the insertion of the deltoid muscle. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler. Classical proportional maps allot about nine cun between the elbow crease and the armpit crease, so seven cun above the elbow lands most of the way up the outer arm, in the stretch where the shoulder muscle gathers down onto the arm bone. For everyday purposes that means: start at the outer end of the elbow crease and travel up the outside of the arm until the rounded shoulder muscle begins to taper — the neighborhood you arrive in is the one the record describes.
What lies under the fingertips here is friendlier terrain than many point locations offer. This is meaty country: the deltoid wraps the shoulder and funnels down to its attachment, flanked by the muscles that bend and straighten the elbow, with the arm bone lying safely beneath the padding. Unlike points high on the chest wall, there is no delicate cavity behind this spot — no ribs stretched thin over lung tissue, no hollow where a careless press could travel far. The principal residents are dense muscle fibers and the vessels and nerves that thread between them, and those reward patience while punishing force. Because the tissue is substantial, honest pressure registers quickly as a spreading dull ache; that clear feedback makes Binao a comfortable point for learning how much sensation is enough.
Binao belongs to a ladder of points that climbs the outer arm. At the bottom sits Quchi, at the outer end of the elbow crease, one of the most-visited points in the entire tradition; at the top rests Jianyu, in the hollow beneath the front of the shoulder knob. Between them the channel walks the deltoid’s slope, and Binao marks its upper stretch. Locating by this line confirms itself: if your fingertip rests on the connecting line and level with the deltoid’s lower gathering, the elbow and shoulder landmarks bracket it neatly on either side. Losing the position mid-search simply means returning to the elbow crease and walking up again, slowly.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Stand or sit comfortably and let the arm hang loose, palm turned toward the thigh, shoulders released — the dataset’s own picture of the arm hanging naturally. With the opposite hand, find the outer end of the elbow crease and rest your fingertips there. Walk upward along the outside of the arm, staying on the muscle-rich outer border rather than sliding to the inner or rear surfaces, and feel the contour change as the forearm muscles give way to the single broad mass of the deltoid. About three-quarters of the way to the shoulder, where the round belly of the muscle narrows toward its attachment, press gently: most people meet a distinctly tender, springy band. That tender zone near the deltoid’s lower gathering is Binao’s address.
Two confirmations help before any real pressing begins. First, recruit the muscle itself: lift the arm a few degrees away from the body or clench the fist lightly, and the deltoid stands out in relief — its lower border and the softening just below it become obvious, and the point waits at the edge of that transition. Second, compare sides with a feather-light touch: the authentic spot usually answers with a faint, dull awareness that a finger-width away does not share. Sensitivity here is commonly livelier than at neighboring stretches of the arm, which is why classical teachers grouped it among the points the body announces willingly. Neither confirmation requires force; both ask only for slow, curious fingers.
Common slips are few and easy to correct. Pressing too low leaves you among the elbow-side muscles, worthy territory in its own right but not this point; wandering too high carries you onto the shoulder cap, where the deltoid thickens toward Jianyu. Searching through a thick sleeve mutes every landmark — bare skin or a thin layer serves far better. And holding the arm rigid hides the muscle’s shape entirely; relaxation is part of the map. When in doubt, let the arm hang once more, find the outer end of the elbow crease, and measure up a single time, unhurried.
Reading the Name: The Arm’s Own Muscle
The name is anatomy before poetry. Bi 臂 means arm — the character points plainly at the limb. Nao 臑 is the older and more flavorful half: in classical usage it named the firm flesh of the upper forelimb, the well-worked muscle of the arm in beast and person alike. Set side by side, the two characters read as the arm’s muscle — and the point obligingly sits exactly where that reading puts it, on the thick muscular sweep of the outer upper arm. Some points received names of gates, palaces, pools, and valleys, rich with imagery; this one was labeled the way a carpenter labels a drawer. Plainness is its character.
Pinyin writes the name Binao, with a falling fourth tone on both syllables. The hanzi pair 臂臑 is compact enough to take in at a glance, and that economy suits its station on the channel. The large intestine channel enters the limb at the index finger and climbs — wrist, forearm, elbow crease, upper arm, shoulder, and onward to the face — and its stations sketch the journey in place-names, each marking a stage of the ascent. Binao holds the middle miles of that road, the crossing from the elbow’s busy junctions into the shoulder’s open country. Names of this kind worked as memory aids as much as geography: recite the sequence and the channel unfolds stepwise.
There is a quieter lesson in the name too. Where poetic names invite meditation, a muscular name invites the hand: it tells you the tradition located this point primarily by feel, on living tissue, rather than by rote measurement alone. Classical teaching arranged the arm’s points along the channel’s climb and expected students to know the landscape of muscle and tendon under their thumbs. The name Binao preserves that tactile habit — an instruction to learn your own arm, pressed gently and mapped patiently, before trusting any number on paper.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: shoulder and arm pain with paralysis, spasm of the neck and nape, cervical scrofula, eye disorders, and headache. Take the first and largest group in its own era’s language. Painful obstruction and weakness of the shoulder and arm — aching, heaviness, stiffness, or an arm grown unreliable after illness — filled a large chapter of classical case literature, and the outer-arm points of the large intestine channel stood near the centre of those discussions. Tradition frames the reasoning simply: the channel runs the length of the limb, and the yangming channels were described as unusually rich in qi and blood, so discomfort along the route was met with points along the route.
The remaining indications ride the channel upward. Classical texts describe the large intestine pathway leaving the arm across the shoulder, ascending the neck, and arriving at the teeth, cheek, and the groove beside the nose — which is how an arm point came to appear in old discussions of headache, complaints of the eyes, and spasm gripping the nape. Cervical scrofula deserves separate care in reading: the term named swellings strung along the sides of the neck, a familiar affliction of earlier centuries. Old formularies paired such swellings with points on the passing channels; the pairing reflects a worldview in which the body’s pathways carried both trouble and remedy. Anyone finding a persistent lump in the neck today should treat it strictly as a matter for prompt medical examination — that belongs to modern medicine’s office, not to a pressure routine.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point relieves illness, and nothing in this guide 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 tied to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, the working forearm resting on a table or thigh so the shoulder stays lazy. Curl your index and middle fingers together and lay the pads — never the tips — on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the dense muscle beneath. Aim for a pleasant dullness, a mild spreading warmth — the honest ache of good pressure — never sharpness or electricity. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to long exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and repeat on the other arm, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing bruises the muscle and teaches the body nothing. Warm cold hands before starting, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the minutes double as a pause: inhale through the nose, feel the arm soften under still fingers, lean the pressure in gently as the breath leaves. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after morning stretching, before the afternoon slump — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the shoulder rides looser, perhaps the tender spot grows less talkative, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds genuinely listening to your own arm. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — digging harder, lingering longer, or pressing through pain to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or simply stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a caution worth reading slowly. The licensed record notes that classical authorities judged Binao better served by moxibustion — the traditional warming of points — than by the needle, and that even needle work, where attempted, was held to a sparing minimum. Whatever one makes of the old judgment, it paints a consistent portrait: tradition treated this as a point for patience and gradual warmth rather than aggressive intervention. Translated into the language of home self-care, the lesson is almost comically simple. Fingertip acupressure neither pierces nor burns anything; it touches. Keeping that touch light, brief, and unhurried honours the same conservatism the old texts urged, with a margin of safety they never imagined.
Practical rules follow. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools — and direct pressure into the muscle rather than grinding against the arm bone. Skip the point entirely over broken, irritated, or inflamed skin, and over any area that is swollen, hot, or freshly injured. Because nerves thread this muscular corridor, a sudden sharp or electric streak means stop at once and do not try again that day; dull ache may be welcome, electricity never is. Pregnant readers, and anyone managing a chronic illness, taking regular medication, or recovering from arm or shoulder surgery, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
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 longer pressing session — for pain following an injury or fall, numbness or weakness spreading down the arm, a shoulder that refuses to move, fever alongside limb pain, or a neck lump persisting beyond a couple of weeks. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. Binao’s oldest virtue, according to its own recorded caution, was restraint; that remains the safest thing this old point can teach.
Binao, whose two characters read as the arm’s own muscle, rises along the outer arm on the large intestine channel. Classical practice reached for it when the shoulder and arm ached, weakened, or seized, and the old records tie it to neck and head complaints besides. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently at home.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Classical texts favour moxibustion over needling here; if needled, go no deeper than three to five fen.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Binao without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the muscle, not the arithmetic. Let the arm hang loose, find where the round shoulder muscle tapers onto the outer arm, and explore the tender, springy band near that taper — most of the way up from the outer end of the elbow crease. That is the neighborhood the dataset describes; the cun measurements simply encode the same landmarks in proportional language.
- Is pressing Binao myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure on this thick muscular stretch is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults — muscle and bone lie under the hand, far from the delicate cavities that make some points demanding. The recorded classical caution concerned needle-and-moxibustion technique, categories home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp, electric, or radiating sensation ends the session immediately.
- What did classical practice use Binao for?
- The traditional record lists painful, weak, or paralyzed shoulder and arm, spasm of the neck and nape, cervical scrofula, eye disorders, and headache. Classical theory read them through the channel’s climb from hand to face. Those are documented frameworks for understanding the body, offered for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why would an arm point appear in old discussions of eyes and headaches?
- Channel thinking, not local anatomy. Classical texts draw the large intestine channel up the arm, over the shoulder, and along the neck toward the teeth, cheek, and nose, so complaints at the top of the route were traditionally met with points along the whole road. Binao sat mid-route on a channel the classics describe as rich in qi and blood.
- When should a sore shoulder go to a professional instead of a pressure routine?
- Whenever symptoms persist, worsen, or carry red flags: numbness or tingling running into the hand, new weakness, swelling or heat, pain after a fall, fever, or a neck lump that outlasts a couple of weeks. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner — medical or East Asian medical as fits the problem.
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, channel pathway, and classical indication context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for LI14 Binao — 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/li14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/li14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/li14/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "LI14",
"name": {
"en": "Binao",
"gloss": "Arm's Muscle",
"zh-Hant": "臂臑",
"zh-Hans": "臂臑"
},
"channel": {
"id": "LI",
"order": 14,
"of": 20
},
"location": {
"text": "On the outer upper arm, in the dip where the shoulder muscle ends; let the arm hang to feel it."
},
"for": [
"shoulder and arm ache",
"a stiff neck",
"headache"
],
"press": {
"text": "Firm thumb pressure, about a minute each arm.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/li14",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}