膝關 Xiguan
“Knee Pass” · LV7
Foot Jueyin · 7 of 14
Where. Below the inner knee: from the groove under the knob of the shin bone, one thumb-width back onto the calf muscle.
For. Swollen, painful knees; weak legs.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each leg.
膝關，在犢鼻下二寸陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Xiguan Sits Below the Inner Knee
The dataset locates Xiguan on the medial aspect of the lower leg — the inner face of the calf — posterior and inferior to the medial condyle of the tibia, one cun behind Yinlingquan (SP9), on the upper part of the medial head of gastrocnemius. Unpacked landmark by landmark: the tibia is the shin bone, whose medial border rises as the hard ridge along the inner calf; near the top, that ridge swells into a broad rounded knob called the medial condyle, forming the lower-inner corner of the knee. Posterior means toward the back of the leg; inferior means toward the foot. And a cun is not a ruler inch but a proportional unit taken from the body being examined, so these counts record relationships between your own landmarks rather than fixed distances.
All three descriptors agree on one place. Starting at the knee’s inner knob, drop slightly down and ease toward the back of the leg, and the terrain changes character: the bony-groove territory of the knee corner gives way to the soft rise of the calf itself. This is the upper part of the medial head of gastrocnemius — the inner one of the two fleshy bellies that power pushing off the ground — and the point rests there, on yielding muscle braced at depth by sturdy bone. Fingertips meet something forgiving here: no thin membrane stretched over a vulnerable space, no delicate structure immediately beneath the skin. The licensed dataset records no specific caution for this entry, and the local geography supports their calm.
The neighbouring ladder pins the position from both directions. Directly above, in the shallow groove behind and below the inner knob, sits Yinlingquan (SP9) — the landmark this entry borrows. Higher still, at the inner end of the crease behind the knee, the channel reaches Ququan (LV8); lower down the same inner face, Zhongdu (LV6) waits seven cun above the tip of the inner ankle bone. The registry draws the liver channel rising from the big toe up the inner leg toward the ribs, and near the knee it walks close beside its earth-natured partner, the spleen channel, which climbs the same corridor from the big toe to the chest. Travelling beside a neighbour makes borrowing its landmark natural — hence a location written relative to a spleen point.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit on a firm chair with the foot resting flat and give the leg a moment to go quiet. Start mid-calf and trace the hard ridge of the shin bone upward until it swells into the rounded knob of the medial condyle. Let your fingertips slip off the knob’s lower edge and ease a touch backward into the shallow groove below it — that groove is Yinlingquan (SP9), your reference mark. From there, glide straight down the slope about one thumb-width, following the calf as it begins to swell, and let your fingertips sink into the soft rise of muscle you meet. Where the bone-hugging groove ends and the flesh takes over, that transition band on the upper inner calf is where the dataset places Xiguan.
Two confirmations help before any pressing begins. First, touch feather-light and compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation nearby — though calves vary more than most regions do, so take this as a hint rather than a verdict. Second, check the tissue under your pad. At SP9 your finger rests against the edge of bone inside a groove; drop down to Xiguan and the same gentle inward pressure meets springy muscle backed by bone at depth. Move slowly between the two spots a few times and the texture shift — groove to flesh — becomes unmistakable.
The usual slips are predictable. Stopping at SP9 itself leaves you exactly one thumb-width short — remember the point lives in the flesh below the groove, not inside the groove. Sliding too far down lands you mid-calf, where the belly narrows toward its tendon; if your finger finds mostly flat, firm tendon, climb back up. And the point never wanders to the outer side of the leg: it stays on the inner face throughout. When in doubt, return to the knob, find the groove once more, and make the single downward move slowly.
Reading the Name: Knee Pass
Two characters sketch a small piece of geography. Xi 膝 is the knee, written with the flesh radical that Chinese script hangs on body parts — a quiet tag announcing that the name concerns living tissue rather than objects. Guan 關 means a pass in the old travel sense: the narrow junction where a road threads between heights, the crossing every traveller must make. Together, Xiguan reads as the Knee Pass — the place where the calf’s traffic squeezes beneath the ledge of the knee. Anyone who has felt the crowded fullness at the back of a bent knee will recognise the image at once.
This pass joins a large family. Inner Pass (PC6) sits on the inner wrist, Outer Pass (TH5) faces it across the forearm, and gates, courtyards, markets, and ravines scatter generously through the canon of point names. The metaphors do real work rather than decorate: a pass marks where movement narrows and concentrates, a gate marks what opens and closes. Classical teaching carried location and function inside one image precisely so students could hold both at once — and for this entry the geography is unusually literal, since a channel climbing the inner leg must indeed thread past the knee’s inner corner before continuing its ascent.
Pinyin renders the name Xiguan, written Xīguān with its tone marks, and the pairing is pleasingly even: xi carries the first tone and guan carries the first tone too, so both syllables ride the same high, level plateau — the name sounds steady from start to finish, like a road holding its elevation across a pass. The hanzi 膝關 are compact enough to take in at a glance. Like the other named crossings of the canon, the word is a small set of instructions: find the knee, find where travel narrows, and look just below.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The record lists three actions: swelling and pain of the knee, weakness of the lower limb, and sore throat. The first two read plainly local. The point sits on the very muscle belly that steadies the knee and drives the push of walking, on the route the channel follows up the inner leg; classical practice worked on the plain principle that where the pathway passes, its own stations answer — so knee complaints and heavy, weak legs naturally dominate the historic portfolio of this stretch of the channel.
Sore throat looks stranger until the channel map is consulted. Classical descriptions trace the liver channel onward beyond the ribs: after surfacing along the chest side, it is followed inward and upward, passing behind the region of the throat before it reaches the eyes. Inside that frame, a point on the route could reasonably enter old discussions of throat complaints even from a calf-side address — the tradition filed symptoms by pathway, not by proximity alone. Stated honestly: these are recorded traditional uses, offered for cultural and historical understanding, not claims that pressing this point treats any condition. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, the fairest reading of existing reviews is that effects, where present, appear modest and context-dependent, and single-point evidence remains thin.
Boundaries deserve bright lines here. A knee that is hot, badly swollen, locking, or giving way; weakness that appears after an injury; a sore throat with fever, trouble swallowing, or hoarseness lasting beyond a couple of weeks — these call for proper assessment, not a pressure routine. Everything else in this guide stays inside the honest scope of self-care: a comfort practice with old roots, held lightly. Hold the tradition as history worth respecting, and hold the boundary lines as history-free absolutes.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall without strain, the working leg relaxed and the foot resting flat. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the soft rise of muscle. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed where possible to slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out; swap hands and give the other leg the same attention.
Quality outranks duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact suits the wellness register this site practises; jabbing at a muscle that already aches teaches nothing and risks bruising. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Prefer a quiet corner to a screen, and treat the minute as a pause: inhale through the nose, soften on the exhale, let attention gather where the fingers rest. Readers who keep routines often anchor them to something already daily — morning washing, an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually compound.
Treat the session as a few honest minutes of attending to your own legs, not as treatment. Across weeks you may notice the calves feeling less tight on stairs, knees feeling easier after long sitting, or simply the satisfaction of having shown up for yourself. All of that fits the scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder or longer to force a knee quiet. If curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, shorten the session, or rest the practice for a day. The pass rewards patience, and patience is the entire method.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Begin with the record: the licensed dataset registers no specific caution for this entry. Nothing in the source material warns of danger at the site, and the geography supports the calm reading — fingertips here rest on thick muscle lying over sturdy bone, far from the chest wall, the abdominal organs, and every structure that makes certain other points unforgiving. Absence of a recorded caution is still not an invitation to force: it licenses light surface work, and every general rule of gentle self-care stands unchanged.
Spelled out. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not resume that day. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or infected skin, and pause during feverish illness. Be cautious after any knee or calf injury or surgery until ordinary movement feels easy again; deeper work at such sites belongs to trained professional hands, a category home acupressure never enters. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice — a general prudence, not a warning recorded against this point. Anyone managing a diagnosed circulatory condition, or taking prescribed medication with blood-thinning effects, does better to ask their clinician before regular pressure of any kind.
And the wider rule stands over everything here: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, never diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not another pressing session — for a hot, badly swollen, or unstable knee, for pain that follows an injury, for leg weakness or numbness that is new, for a sore throat with fever or trouble swallowing, or for anything that frightens you. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint. What the Knee Pass offers most people is humbler than miracles: a few quiet minutes of care for the legs that carry the day.
Xiguan, the Knee Pass, waits on the inner calf just beneath the knee’s inner corner, where the liver channel threads past bone and muscle on its climb from the big toe toward the ribs. Classical practice reached for swollen, aching knees and tired legs, and — through the channel logic explored below — for sore throats. This guide covers finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Xiguan without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the neighbour as the whole map. Climb the shin’s inner ridge to the rounded knob at the top-inner corner of the knee, slip below and slightly behind it into the shallow groove — that is Yinlingquan (SP9) — then glide one thumb-width farther down the swelling slope of the calf. The cun in the dataset simply records that same two-step walk in proportional language: relationships between your own landmarks, not ruler distances.
- Is pressing Xiguan myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and notably the licensed dataset records no specific caution for this point — the site is thick muscle over solid bone, far from the vulnerable territories that make chest and neck points demanding. Reasonable is not unconditional, though: keep pressure light, stop on sharp sensation, avoid broken skin, and pause during fever or after a fresh knee or calf injury.
- Why would a calf point appear in old discussions of sore throat?
- Because the tradition filed symptoms by channel route. Classical descriptions follow the liver channel up from the big toe, along the inner leg, through the trunk, and onward past the region of the throat before it reaches the eyes — so any station on that route could be discussed for throat complaints. It is coherent traditional bookkeeping, documented for context, neither a physiology claim nor an evidence-backed treatment statement.
- Why is a liver-channel point located from a spleen-channel point?
- Both channels begin at the big toe and climb the inner leg — the spleen channel to the chest, the liver channel to the ribs — travelling close companions for much of the calf. Near the knee they draw alongside one another, so the classical authors borrowed the nearer, better-known landmark: one cun behind Yinlingquan (SP9) fixes Xiguan more economically than any free-standing description could. Neighbourly measurement, not hierarchy.
- Can acupressure replace seeing someone about my knee?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnosis, and knees are among the joints that most need examination to speak clearly — locking, giving way, heat, swelling after injury, pain with fever all mean different things. Picture two drawers in the same cabinet: daily care lives in one, assessment lives in the other, and pulling the wrong drawer wastes time a complaint may not have. When in doubt, choose the assessment.
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 LV7 Xiguan — location, 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/lv7/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/lv7/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/lv7/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "LV7",
"name": {
"en": "Xiguan",
"gloss": "Knee Pass",
"zh-Hant": "膝關",
"zh-Hans": "膝关"
},
"channel": {
"id": "LV",
"order": 7,
"of": 14
},
"location": {
"text": "Below the inner knee: from the groove under the knob of the shin bone, one thumb-width back onto the calf muscle."
},
"for": [
"swollen",
"painful knees",
"weak legs"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure, about a minute each leg.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/lv7",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}