蠡溝 Ligou
“Ladle and Groove” · LV5
Foot Jueyin · 5 of 14 · luo-connecting
Where. Five thumb-widths above the inner anklebone, in the middle of the flat inner face of the shin bone.
For. Irregular periods; genital itching; aching shins.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure on the flat of the bone, about a minute each leg.
蠡溝，足厥陰之絡，在足內踝上五寸，別走少陽按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Ligou Sits on the Inner Shin
The dataset’s address for Ligou fits in a single line: on the medial aspect of the lower leg, five cun above the tip of the medial malleolus, at the middle of the medial surface of the tibia. Translated for fingers: the medial malleolus is the familiar knob at the inner ankle — the lowest, most prominent end of the shin bone. Five cun straight up from that tip sets the vertical coordinate, and the cun is the traditional proportional measure taken from the body being examined, a thumb-width serving as the usual rough equivalent. Five of them, stacked one above the other up the inner shin, bring you level with the point. The final clause settles everything else: the point sits at the middle of the medial surface of the tibia — not behind the bone, not on its sharp front ridge, but squarely on the broad flat face the shin turns toward the body’s midline.
The country under the fingertip is simple and honest. Skin, then a thin film of fascia, then bone: the tibia presents a long, shallowly curved face to the inner air, thinly padded along nearly its whole visible length, which is why the shin is the one bone anyone can trace without instruction. Its front crest runs sharp down the middle-front; its rear border rounds off gently toward the calf; between the two stretches the flat face where this point keeps its home. Nothing here pulses, and nothing shifts with the breath. Surface contact meets solid bone almost at once — a fact worth knowing before any pressure enters the picture, and one that shapes both the walkthrough below and the safety notes at the end.
The channel map places the point mid-climb. Five-phase teaching files the liver under wood, and its channel rises from the big toe, travels the inner leg, and climbs toward the ribs — fourteen stations in all, of which Ligou is the fifth. Below it, Zhongfeng (LV4) waits in front of the ankle; two cun higher, on the same line, stands Zhongdu (LV6). Meanwhile the neighbouring spleen channel runs parallel just behind the tibia’s rear border: its well-known Sanyinjiao (SP6) sits three cun above the very same ankle tip, behind rather than upon the bone. Two roads therefore climb the inner leg within a palm’s width of each other, and the shin’s own edge is the boundary marker between them — a detail that earns its keep in the walkthrough below.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit on a firm chair with the feet planted, resting one ankle lightly over the opposite knee if that is comfortable, or simply leaning forward with both feet down. Find the tip of the medial malleolus first: the bony prominence at the inside of the ankle, unmistakable under a fingertip. From that tip, work straight up the inner shin, laying thumb-widths one above the other — five in total, kept snug against each other rather than stretched. Where the fifth ends, slide your fingertip onto the broad flat face of the bone and settle it near the middle of that face. Touch lightly: solid firmness should answer at once. Repeat the whole search on the other leg, because the two points hold identical addresses and deserve equal attention.
Before any real pressure, run a few quiet checks. Compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a thumb-width away in any direction. Then audit the boundaries, because this address is defined by them as much as by its height. If the fingertip rests on the knife-edge crest toward the front of the shin, it has drifted forward — slide back onto the flat. If it sinks into soft muscle behind the bone’s rear border, it has crossed into spleen-channel territory — slide forward until bone returns under the pad. If everything feels right but the height seems doubtful, resist guesswork: return to the ankle tip and lay off the five thumb-widths afresh. Measuring twice costs seconds; pressing the wrong spot teaches nothing.
Beginner errors mostly fall into a short list. First comes riding the sharp anterior crest because it is the easiest feature to find — painful, and wrong; the point wants the flat, not the edge. Second is straying backward into the gentle hollow behind the rear border, where the neighbouring channel’s stations live; the boundary is the edge of the bone itself, and it is easy to feel. Third is careless arithmetic: four thumb-widths falls short, six overshoots, and a casually stretched thumb quietly ruins the tally — keep the units honest and the count will hold. Fourth is pressing harder in hope, as if depth could stand in for accuracy; on a bone-backed point, force buys nothing but soreness. Slow the search instead, and let correctness arrive before pressure does.
Reading the Name: Ladle and Groove
The name divides into a plain character and a curious one. Gou 溝 means groove, ditch, or channel — the same everyday word found across dozens of other point names. Li 蠡 is the curiosity. Dictionaries record it for the shell of a dried gourd cut in half and used as a ladle — a humble, watery implement. An older line of commentary preferred another sense: the grub that bores through timber, leaving a carved track in the wood. Commentators weighed both readings without ever quite settling the matter, and nothing in the licensed dataset forces a choice. What neither reading changes is the second character’s verdict: the name promises a groove, and the long, shallow groove running up the inner face of the shin bone accommodates ladle and woodworm alike.
The point’s official class adds a second layer of story. Traditional teaching assigns each of the twelve regular channels a single luo-connecting station: the place where a collateral departs from the main course to link the paired channel — and in classical pairing theory, the liver links interiorly with the pericardium. Old discussions liked to say that a luo station speaks for two territories at once, since the collateral carries the connection. Authors in the tradition used precisely that logic to explain why this modest leg station shows up in records spanning women’s cycles, genital complaints, and water metabolism — a breadth that puzzles any purely local reading of the map. Whatever one makes of the old physiology, the bookkeeping is elegant: one address, transacting two channels’ worth of business.
Pinyin renders the name Lígōu, and the tones repay character-by-character care. The first syllable carries the rising second tone — written with an acute accent, lí — a delivery that lifts as it finishes, and the reading dictionaries give for the gourd-ladle sense of the character. (The same character takes other readings elsewhere in the language, as dictionaries note; the licensed dataset records Lígōu here, and that record governs.) The second syllable holds the high, level first tone — written with a macron, gōu — steady from start to finish, like water lying quiet in a channel. The hanzi pair is compact enough to memorise at a glance, and like the gates, valleys, wells, and courtyards scattered along the channels, the metaphor earns its place: it describes terrain, and the terrain is findable.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, prolapse of the uterus, swelling and pain of the testes, enuresis, itching of the external genitals, nocturnal emission, hernia, difficult urination, and pain of the shin. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the first three gather into a women’s-health cluster. Irregular menstruation meant cycles losing their accustomed rhythm, and the tradition explained this through the liver’s association with the free movement of qi and blood — wood imagery, springtime imagery, the current that is meant to flow. Vaginal discharge was understood as dampness descending and pooling low in the body. Prolapse of the uterus belonged to discussions of qi too weak to hold things in place — a sinking, in the old vocabulary, that lifting approaches were meant to answer.
The next group forms the genitourinary cluster: swelling and pain of the testes, bedwetting, itching about the external genitals, nocturnal emission, hernia, and difficult urination. The luo-connecting office supplies the traditional reason a single shin station could appear in all of them: speaking, as the collateral was said to do, for two linked channels at once, it stood proxy for territory far larger than its own neighbourhood. Modern readers can simply observe the pattern — on the old books’ pages, the inner-leg roads and the pelvis’s private business travel together. The final entry, pain of the shin, needs no such machinery: the road serves its own region, and a station on the tibia’s face was naturally consulted for aching along it.
Honesty belongs in the same breath as the list. These are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding — not claims that pressing this point helps any condition. Where modern research has looked at acupressure at all, reviews to date describe gentle, situation-dependent effects rather than dependable ones, and evidence tied to any single point remains sparse. Several entries also carry modern obligations: unexplained bleeding between cycles or after menopause, pelvic pain that persists, and sudden or one-sided testicular pain — the last an emergency — belong with qualified clinicians promptly, whatever the tradition wrote beside them. Take the tradition as a map worth reading; take the referral rules as the ground the map stands on.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, leg supported, hands warm. Rest the pad of your index or middle finger on the spot — the pad, never the knuckle or any tool — and begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths. Then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the bone beneath rather than grinding against it. Sensation should read as a comfortable, dull warmth; anything sharp means easing off at once. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, and pairing the circles with slow exhales makes the minute easier to inhabit. Finish one side, then repeat on the other, keeping the two sessions symmetrical.
Gentleness outranks endurance here, as on every bone-backed point. Warm cold hands before starting, because chilled tissue guards itself. Prefer a quiet corner to a screen, and let the practice double as a pause: a few unhurried minutes of attention for a leg that carries you all day. People who keep such routines usually anchor them to something already habitual — after the morning wash, before bed — and what the self-care traditions reward is return visits, not heroics. Afterwards, a short easy walk suits the legs far better than stretching cold muscles, and closes the session with movement the region naturally enjoys.
Treat the exercise as a few borrowed minutes of paying attention to yourself, not as a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the area feels less tender to the touch, perhaps the pause becomes the quietest part of the day, perhaps nothing shifts except the attention itself — and that last outcome sits squarely within what self-acupressure honestly offers. What lies outside the offer is escalation: pressing heavier, longer, or deeper to force a result. On a point backed directly by bone, escalation purchases only a bruised shin. When curiosity pulls that way, lighten up or stop for the day — the groove is patient, and it is not going anywhere.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record for this point is quiet: the dataset lists no specific caution for Ligou, unlike entries whose warning lines fill their rows. The calm comes mostly from simple geography. Beneath the skin lies solid bone, separated from the surface by little more than thin fascia; no delicate structure sits close enough for gentle surface pressure to trouble. Yet calm on paper never made force sensible. Shins bruise readily, sit close to the world’s table edges, and complain loudly when mistreated — a temperament that argues for light fingers rather than bold ones.
Home practice keeps a short rulebook. Use finger pads only, on intact skin only — skip the point over broken, irritated, or inflamed skin, however minor it looks. Pause during feverish illness, and set the practice aside entirely during any acute pelvic, genital, or urinary complaint until it settles. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone with a diagnosed circulatory or skin condition affecting the lower legs does well to ask a clinician first. A sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. None of this is elaborate; all of it keeps the practice pleasant.
And the frame around everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care — comfort and attention for a body, not diagnosis or therapy. Draw the referral lines plainly. Irregular vaginal bleeding, especially between periods or after menopause, deserves professional assessment promptly. Pelvic pain that persists, urinary symptoms joined by fever, and shin pain following an injury each belong with the appropriate clinician. Sudden, severe, or one-sided testicular pain is an emergency and needs urgent care without delay. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint. Within those fences, the plainest gift Ligou offers most people is acquaintance with the sturdy architecture of their own lower leg: measured patiently, met lightly, and treated kindly.
Ligou — the Gourd-Ladle Groove — stands on the inner shin, five cun above the tip of the inner ankle bone, square on the flat face of the shin bone itself. Classical practice reached for it when cycles lost their rhythm or dampness settled low in the body. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently at home.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Ligou without knowing anything about cun?
- Start at the ankle. Find the bony knob at the inside of the ankle — the medial malleolus — then lay thumb-widths up the inner shin, one above the other, five in all. Where the fifth ends, settle onto the broad flat face of the bone, halfway between its sharp front edge and its rounded rear border. That is the location the dataset describes, mirrored on both legs. The five-cun figure simply writes the same thumb-width count in the language of proportional measurement.
- Is pressing Ligou myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure at the surface is generally reasonable self-care: the licensed record lists no specific caution for this point, and solid bone lies so close beneath the skin that ordinary light pressure runs out of depth almost immediately. Keep the usual disciplines anyway — pads rather than knuckles or tools, intact skin only, and an immediate stop if anything feels sharp or radiating rather than dull and warm.
- What did classical practice use Ligou for?
- The traditional record spans irregular menstruation, vaginal discharge, prolapse of the uterus, swelling and pain of the testes, bedwetting, genital itching, nocturnal emission, hernia, difficult urination, and shin pain. Classical theory reads the point as a luo-connecting station whose collateral links the liver channel to its paired channel, letting one small address speak for two territories — the framework the tradition used to gather such a wide portfolio. Those are documented ways of thinking, not treatment claims.
- Why does a shin point appear in discussions of women’s cycles?
- Two traditional threads meet here. The luo-connecting logic let this station stand in for territory beyond its own neighbourhood, and the neighbouring spleen channel — climbing just behind the tibia — carries its own celebrated cycle-related stations, so the inner leg reads, on the classical page, as ground connected to the pelvis. Both threads are frameworks for understanding the body as the tradition drew it; they illuminate the old records rather than promising anything about modern results.
- Can acupressure replace seeing a doctor about these complaints?
- No. Think of the two as different jobs in the same household: self-care is the daily tidying, and medicine is the trained tradesperson called when something is broken or behaving strangely. Cycle changes that persist, unusual discharge, pelvic pain, genital or urinary symptoms, and anything sudden or severe all fall on the tradesperson’s side of the line — assessment first, comfort practices alongside afterwards if useful. Neither job replaces the other, and telling the two apart is itself a self-care skill.
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, luo-point theory, and liver-channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for LV5 Ligou — location, point class, actions, and indication 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/lv5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/lv5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/lv5/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "LV5",
"name": {
"en": "Ligou",
"gloss": "Ladle and Groove",
"zh-Hant": "蠡溝",
"zh-Hans": "蠡沟"
},
"channel": {
"id": "LV",
"order": 5,
"of": 14
},
"location": {
"text": "Five thumb-widths above the inner anklebone, in the middle of the flat inner face of the shin bone."
},
"for": [
"irregular periods",
"genital itching",
"aching shins"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure on the flat of the bone, about a minute each leg.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/lv5",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}