Keep off any spot where you feel a pulse.
陰廉 Yinlian
“Margin of the Yin” · LV11
Foot Jueyin · 11 of 14
Where. At the top of the inner thigh, three finger-widths below the groin, beside the cord that stands out as the knees squeeze.
For. Irregular periods; low belly pain.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.
Caution. Keep off any spot where you feel a pulse.
陰廉，在羊矢下，去氣沖二寸動脈中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Yinlian Sits at the Root of the Thigh
The licensed dataset fixes the address precisely: on the medial aspect of the thigh, two cun directly below Qichong (ST30), at the root of the thigh below the pubic tubercle, on the lateral border of adductor longus. Every phrase earns its place. Medial means the inner face of the thigh, the quieter side. Qichong, the reference point overhead, sits just above the groin crease, level with the upper border of the pubic bone and two thumb-widths out from the body’s central line; dropping straight down from that level brings you to this station. A cun, meanwhile, is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location, taken from the person being measured rather than from any ruler — a thumb-width of your own hand, in effect — so the same count of cun lands at slightly different true distances on different frames.
The muscular landmark gives the search its backbone. Adductor longus is the strap of muscle that fans down the inner thigh from its origin at the pubic bone; squeeze the thighs gently toward each other and its tendon leaps up at the top like a bowstring. The recorded location sets Yinlian along the lateral border of that strap — on its outer side, in the shallow seam where the adductors give way to softer tissue. Just above stands the pubic tubercle, the small bony knob on the upper rim of the pubic bone. Beneath the fingertips there is no bony shield, only the layered soft tissue of the thigh’s root, and through the nearby groin corridor pass the vessels and nerves bound for the whole leg. Geography like this invites lightness, and the practice described below takes the invitation seriously.
The neighbours confirm the line. One cun further down the same inner-thigh track sits Zuwuli (LV10), three cun below Qichong, so the pair stack like adjacent rungs of a short ladder descending from the groin. Both belong to the liver channel, which the classical maps describe rising from the big toe, climbing the whole inner leg, and finishing among the ribs — fourteen stations altogether. Yinlian stands near the foot of that climb, at the very hinge where leg becomes trunk. Knowing the ladder helps twice over: it explains why the location is given as a descent from Qichong rather than a climb from the knee, and it hands you a second landmark to check against whenever the first seems ambiguous.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Settle somewhere private and unhurried — seated on the floor or lying back, whatever lets the inner thighs soften. Find the pubic bone first: at the base of the belly you can trace a firm horizontal ledge, and toward its middle a small knuckle of bone on the upper rim, the pubic tubercle. From that neighbourhood identify the level of Qichong: just above the crease where the belly folds into the groin, two thumb-widths out from the central line. Now walk straight down the inner thigh two thumb-widths — the recorded two cun — keeping the path parallel to the midline rather than angling outward. Press the knees gently toward each other and watch the bowstring of adductor longus rise under the skin; slide your fingertip to the outer side of that strap, into the seam along its border, and rest there. That seam, at that depth below the groin-crease level, is the spot the dataset describes.
A few quiet checks steady the result. Touch feather-light and compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and little sensation half a thumb away. Re-run the vertical line: the fingertip should sit directly beneath the Qichong level, neither drifting up into the groin fold nor wandering down the thigh. Trust the muscle over the arithmetic — if squeezing the knees together moves the tissue distinctly under your pad, you are on or beside the strap, and the seam along its outer edge is your target. Sensation here tends to run deep-set and mild rather than electric; a pronounced throb belongs to the vessel corridor nearer the crease and calls for easing away, not pressing in.
Three slips account for most misses. The first is sliding too far up and inward, off the muscle and into the fold of the groin itself, where tissue turns tender and the pulse runs close — a strong beat under the finger means retreat outward and downward. The second is parking squarely on the tendon ridge instead of alongside it; the address is the margin, not the bowstring. The third is measuring diagonally, letting the finger drift out toward the front of the thigh; the descent from Qichong falls straight toward the knee. Re-anchor often — tubercle, crease level, straight down — and after two or three passes most people hold a dependable inner map of the spot.
Reading the Name: Margin of the Yin
The two characters are spare and exact. Yin 陰 names the shaded, sheltered face of things — in the body’s traditional cartography, the inner and hidden aspects, and by extension the reproductive sphere, which old writings gathered under the umbrella phrase “the yin regions”. Lian 廉 carries the sense of an edge, a rim, the place where a surface turns a corner; classical point names that borrow the character take it as margin. Joined, Yinlian reads naturally as the margin of the yin: the borderland where the inner thigh gives onto the territory associated with the reproductive life. Commentators steeped in the tradition gloss it almost exactly that way, and the location agrees with the label — the point stands precisely at such an edge, hugging the outer border of the adductor strap.
The name also seats the point inside its channel’s story. Traditional teaching assigns the liver the office of storing blood, and reads a woman’s monthly cycle as blood gathering, moving, and releasing under the liver’s keeping — one reason the channel’s classical associations run so strongly toward the rhythms of women’s bodies. The pathway suits the theme: the maps draw it rising from the big toe, threading up the inner — the yin — face of the leg through exactly this neighbourhood, then onward toward the trunk and the ribside. A point named for a margin, planted at the hinge of leg and pelvis on the channel of stored blood, fits the system’s logic like a well-cut join. None of this is physiology in the modern sense; it is an old, coherent way of drawing connections, and grasping it renders the indications below readable.
Pinyin renders the name Yīnlián: the first syllable carries the first tone, high and held level, while the second climbs on the second tone, an upward inflection — the written accents over ī and á record precisely those shapes. The hanzi pair 陰廉 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. Like many points named for landscape and architecture — gates, valleys, courtyards, margins — the metaphor behaves as instruction: it tells you the point keeps a border, and which border. Remember “where the yin territory edges the inner thigh”, and both the location and the classical portfolio come along without extra charge.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, and lower abdominal pain. Take them in order. Irregular menstruation is a wide traditional tent — cycles arriving early or late, flowing heavily or sparsely, predictably or not — and classical writers folded such unevenness into discussions of blood failing to keep its proper rhythm. Because the liver was taught to store blood, points along its channel took part in that conversation, and this station at the channel’s lower reach belonged among them. Framed as tradition rather than promise, practitioners of the old school reached for Yinlian when cycles wandered.
Vaginal discharge translates a specific classical category — daixia in Chinese sources — which covered the ordinary secretions of the female tract and their unwelcome shifts in amount, colour, or texture; tradition read troublesome discharge as dampness and stagnation settling low in the body. Lower abdominal pain, the third entry, was read less as an organ fault than as flow gone stuck: qi and blood hesitating in the basin of the pelvis. The positional reasoning recurs across the classical literature — the root of the thigh faces the lower abdomen across the groin, and channels funnel through that crossing, so a point on the near shore was drawn into discussions of the far one. It is reasoning by geography and correspondence, elegant within its own premises, recorded here as cultural understanding rather than clinical advice.
For the record, plainly: these are the traditional uses entered in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for historical and cultural comprehension. They are not claims that pressing this point treats any condition, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on circumstance, and evidence gathered at any single point remains sparse. Cycle changes and persistent pelvic symptoms deserve professional eyes first and acupressure curiosity second. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules tightly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, arrange the session: reclined or half-seated, hips easy, hands warmed. Curl index and middle fingers together and set the pads — never the tips — on the seam beside the adductor border. Begin with contact alone through several slow breaths, then add small circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than dragging across it. Aim the sensation at pleasant dullness or spreading warmth; anything sharp means lighten or lift. A common home rhythm runs one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed where possible to long exhales so each circle travels out on the breath. Give the other side its equal turn, keeping the two sessions symmetrical.
Setting matters at so intimate an address. Choose a private moment without hurry, screen set aside; trim the nails so the pads do all the work. If the room is cold, warm your hands first, because chilled muscle braces against touch. People who sustain a practice tend to hitch it to something already habitual — after the evening wash, last thing at night — since regularity, not heroics, is what these traditions actually request. Two calm minutes on most days accomplish more than the occasional determined quarter-hour, and noticing beats striving at every step.
Regard the few minutes as attendance rather than intervention. Across weeks you might register that the inner thighs feel less guarded, that the press itself becomes a cue to slow the breath, or simply that a corner of the body long overlooked now receives ninety seconds of kind attention — all of it within the honest scope of self-acupressure. Outside that scope lies escalation: pressing harder, lingering longer, or bearing deeper to compel a result, above all over symptoms that persist. When the impulse arrives, answer it with gentleness or with an appointment, whichever the day actually calls for.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed table records no cautions for Yinlian — a blank row, which is information rather than licence. The surrounding geography still asks for courtesy. Nothing bony shields the thigh’s root; the corridor of vessels and nerves bound for the leg threads the groin crease close by; and the reproductive territory this point borders merits a conservative hand on general principle. Self-care therefore stays strictly superficial: finger pads on skin and outermost tissue, no tools, no driving inward, and never firm pressure anywhere a beat pulses under the fingertip. Here, lightness is not caution for its own sake; it is the craft entire.
Draw the practice to a full stop during acute episodes touching the bordered territories: newly painful or changing symptoms in the pelvis or groin, a feverish illness, or any break, rash, or irritation of the skin at the site. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation and do not retry that day. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, as should anyone recovering from pelvic, groin, or gynaecological procedures or living with a diagnosed condition involving the region. Few rules, easily kept, and none of them negotiable.
And the standing rule covers everything: this page educates, and it neither diagnoses nor treats. Seek prompt medical care — never a pressure routine — for sudden severe lower-abdominal or pelvic pain, discharge accompanied by fever or strong odour, bleeding outside a pattern you know, any new lump or swelling in the groin, or cycle changes that arrive abruptly and stay changed. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint. What Yinlian offers most people, safely, is quieter than therapy: a finer acquaintance with the hinge of their own body, tended lightly and without force.
Yinlian, the Yin Margin, sits low on the inner thigh where the leg meets the groin — a station on the liver channel’s long climb from the big toe toward the ribs. Classical practice reached for it around women’s cycles and stubborn lower-abdominal complaints. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Yinlian without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the pubic bone and the groin crease as the whole map. Find the firm ledge at the base of the belly and the small knob on its upper rim; note the level just above the crease where belly becomes groin, two thumb-widths out from the central line; then drop straight down the inner thigh two thumb-widths. Squeeze your knees gently together to raise the adductor strap, and settle into the seam along its outer edge. That spot is the location the dataset records — the cun figures simply retell the same landmark walk in proportional language.
- Is pressing Yinlian myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care, and the licensed record notes no cautions for this point. Two courtesies still apply because of where it sits: keep every touch superficial and well clear of any spot where a strong pulse pushes up against the finger, and leave the point alone entirely whenever the area feels actively unwell. Sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that builds all mean finish immediately and try nothing further that day.
- What did classical practice use Yinlian for?
- The traditional record lists irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, and lower abdominal pain — a register gathered almost wholly around women’s cycles and the pelvic basin. Classical teaching tied the liver channel to the storage and movement of blood, which made its stations natural participants in conversations about rhythmic disorders. Those are frameworks from a pre-modern way of mapping the body, documented here for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a liver-channel point sit on the inner thigh?
- Because the classical course of the channel runs exactly there. The maps draw it beginning at the big toe and climbing the inner — the yin — face of the leg, passing this neighbourhood at the root of the thigh before continuing toward the trunk and the ribside, fourteen stations altogether. Inner-leg territory belongs to the yin surfaces in traditional cartography, and the liver channel walks nearly all of it. Yinlian stands near the top of that ascent, a station or two before the channel crosses from leg to trunk.
- Can acupressure at Yinlian replace seeing a doctor about cycle problems?
- No. Self-acupressure comforts; it cannot examine, diagnose, or treat. Menstrual patterns that shift markedly, discharge that changes character or arrives with fever, and any persistent pelvic pain belong with a professional promptly — behind such changes stand causes that only proper assessment can tell apart. Treat home practice and clinical medicine as companions with different jobs: the daily tending you do yourself, and the examination you seek when something persists or frightens. Neither replaces the other, and the second is not optional when warning signs appear.
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 and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for LV11 Yinlian — 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/lv11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/lv11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/lv11/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "LV11",
"name": {
"en": "Yinlian",
"gloss": "Margin of the Yin",
"zh-Hant": "陰廉",
"zh-Hans": "阴廉"
},
"channel": {
"id": "LV",
"order": 11,
"of": 14
},
"location": {
"text": "At the top of the inner thigh, three finger-widths below the groin, beside the cord that stands out as the knees squeeze."
},
"for": [
"irregular periods",
"low belly pain"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [
"Keep off any spot where you feel a pulse."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/lv11",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}