Not while an ear is draining or painful.
聽宮 Tinggong
“Listening Palace” · SI19
Hand Taiyang · 19 of 19 · crossing-point
Where. In front of the small flap of the ear, in the dip that opens when you open your mouth.
For. Ringing ears, dull hearing, toothache.
Press. Mouth open, gentle finger pads, one minute each side.
Caution. Not while an ear is draining or painful.
聽宮，在耳中，珠子大，明如赤小豆按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Tinggong Sits Before the Ear
The dataset locates the point on the face, anterior to the tragus of the ear and posterior to the condyloid process of the mandible, in the depression that opens when the mouth is opened. Each landmark repays unpacking. The tragus is the modest flap of cartilage that guards the front of the ear canal — the little ledge many people press reflexively when they want to shut out noise. The condyloid process is the rounded head of the lower jawbone, riding snugly against the skull immediately in front of the ear. Notice what the record does not give: unlike most limb points, no proportional cun measurements anchor this station. Everything here runs on landmarks alone, which makes it unusually friendly to self-palpation — the geography announces itself to anyone patient enough to listen.
That geography is the jaw joint at work. With the teeth together, the jawbone’s rounded head fills the space right before the tragus, and the fingertip meets firm fullness rather than hollow. Open the mouth slowly and the head glides forward and downward, sliding out from under the finger and leaving behind a shallow depression between its trailing edge and the tragus — precisely the gap the record describes. Beneath the resting pad lie skin, a thin layer of facial tissue, and close beneath them the busy machinery of the jaw joint itself, with small vessels threading the territory in front of the ear. All of which argues for contact that stays light, unhurried, and strictly on the surface.
As everywhere on the body map, the two sides answer one another: whatever hollow the finger settles into before one ear should summon its twin before the other. Terrain checks help too. The pad should rest on yielding soft tissue — not on the gristle of the tragus itself, not climbing toward the temple, not sliding down onto the cheekbone. Precision matters more than usual along this rim, because neighbouring channels keep stations on the same shelf: the triple burner channel’s Ermen (TH21) sits a little higher, beside the upper notch of the tragus, while the gallbladder channel’s Tinghui (GB2) sits a little lower, beside the lower notch of the tragus. A thumb-width of drift can mean a different point entirely.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and the jaw deliberately loose — unclench, part the lips slightly, let the tongue rest low. Rest the tip of your index finger gently on the firm fullness immediately in front of the tragus, with the teeth lightly together: you should feel the rounded resistance of the jawbone’s head under the pad. Now open the mouth slowly. The fullness glides forward beneath your fingertip, and a soft hollow opens in the space it vacated, tucked between the moving bone and the tragus. Settle your fingertip into that hollow and hold it there while you close the mouth again, feeling the roundness ease back to meet you. That hollow, found while the mouth is open, is Tinggong. Repeat the whole search on the other side with hands swapped.
Two confirmations settle doubt. First, the movement test: park the fingertip in your marked hollow and open and close the mouth a few times, slowly. The pad should feel the jawbone’s head slide away and return — proof that the finger sits in the corridor the condyle travels, exactly where the record places the point. Second, compare sides with a feather-light touch before any real pressure begins: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and little sensation a thumb-width away. A mirror helps the first time, letting the eyes confirm what the fingers report — fingertip kissing the front edge of the tragus, neither climbing the ear nor descending the cheek.
Common slips cluster predictably. Pressing while the mouth hangs wide in a yawn puts the tissues at their most stretched; search with the jaw moving gently instead. Drifting backward finds the tragus gristle, which answers with cartilage squeamishness rather than softness. Sliding downward lands on the cheekbone or wanders toward the corner of the jaw; sliding upward climbs toward the temple, where different points keep office. And pressing hard enough to bruise teaches nothing: this ground responds to patience, not force. Whenever the search goes wrong, return to the simple anchor — the flap of the tragus, the slow opening of the mouth — and begin again.
Reading the Name: The Listening Palace
The two characters build a small piece of architecture. Ting 聽 means to listen, to hear — the act this point’s neighbourhood is named for. Gong 宮 is a palace: in the oldest layers of the writing it pictured a walled compound with rooms arranged within, a grand residence where something important resides and holds court. Among the gates, wells, valleys, and courtyards that crowd channel maps, a palace ranks among the most exalted addresses. Read together, Tinggong offers something like the listening palace — the seat where hearing keeps its court. The name has company along the rim of the ear: the gallbladder channel’s neighbour Tinghui reads as the meeting-place of listening, so the two stations share both a street and a verb.
The category record adds a second layer: Tinggong is noted as a crossing-point. Classical descriptions gather the pathways of the small intestine, triple burner, and gallbladder channels around the ear, converging on the very ground where this station stands, and tradition accordingly counts Tinggong among the places where routes meet and trade duties. Its seniority within its own channel reinforces the picture: the small intestine pathway sets out at the little finger, climbs the back of the arm, crosses the shoulder country, rises beside the neck and cheek, and arrives here — the nineteenth station, and the last. A channel’s final address tends to inherit every conversation held along the road.
Pinyin renders the name Tīnggōng: a flat, high first tone on ting, and another flat, level first tone on gong — the whole name rides a single steady pitch, which suits a point devoted to quiet listening. The hanzi pair 聽宮 stays legible at a glance, and like so many channel names drawn from architecture, the metaphor does real work. It says the tradition treats this spot not as a way-station but as a residence — a place where the business of hearing is actually conducted. The name is itself a small set of instructions: come here quietly, and pay attention.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The record lists five traditional indications: tinnitus; deafness; discharge of pus from the ear; toothache; and loss of voice. The first three travel together, rooted in geography. Classical texts carry the small intestine pathway up beside the neck and cheek to finish in front of the ear, and a channel that ends at the ear naturally lent its points to complaints there — ringing ears, hearing grown dull, and discharging ears were all approached at the stations gathered before the tragus. The third entry deserves its own plain sentence: whatever the old logic, an ear that drains fluid, aches persistently, or comes with fever belongs promptly with a physician, never with a pressure routine. The listing survives as cultural history, plainly labelled as such.
Toothache looks less surprising once the map returns to view. The point stands directly beside the hinge of the jaw, in territory the channel sweeps across on its way up the cheek, and classical reasoning drafted local points wherever a complaint lived along the route — an aching tooth sat squarely in this neighbourhood’s jurisdiction. Old formularies therefore reached here alongside other cheek-region stations when teeth complained. Today the destination for tooth trouble is the dental chair, and nothing on this page suggests otherwise; the entry documents how the tradition mapped complaint to locality, a habit of thought coherent within its own scheme even where anatomy alone would not predict it.
Loss of voice is the furthest traveller, and the bridges classical readers built to reach it are instructive. One reading leans on partnership: the small intestine channel pairs with the heart channel as interior and exterior, and five-phase teaching places the heart’s opening at the tongue, so voicelessness — qi failing to arrive at the throat — could be read into the pair. Classical texts also describe branches of the channel system carrying influence toward the throat and cheek regions. It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding, not claims that pressing this point treats anything. 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. Changed hearing or persistent ringing deserves professional evaluation on its own merits.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
Settle in seated, feet down, shoulders heavy, and find the point by the walkthrough above, finishing with the mouth closed and the jaw relaxed — teeth apart, face unclenched. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the hollow before one ear. Begin with contact alone for a few unhurried breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against it. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or spreading warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and give the other side the same courtesy.
Quality matters more than duration. Jabbing invites the jaw and face to guard, which undoes the very ease a self-care pause wants; chilled fingers startle tissue, so warm the hands first. Choose a quiet corner over a screen — fitting, for a point named for listening — and let the practice double as a genuine pause: soften the jaw on each exhale, notice the small sounds arriving from the room, keep the pressure kind. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after the morning wash, midway through desk hours — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually reward. Across weeks, notice what changes without demanding outcomes: perhaps less clenching, perhaps easier settling, perhaps only ninety borrowed seconds of attending to your own body.
Boundaries belong inside the practice, not merely around it. On days when the jaw aches, the face feels inflamed, or clenching runs high, grant the area the day off — gentleness includes knowing when not to touch. Never press into a wince, and never escalate force, duration, or depth to hurry a result; escalation is the one move this practice never rewards. Curiosity that pulls toward forcing meets the same answer every time: return to gentleness, or stop for today. The palace imagery earns its keep here — audiences at a palace proceed calmly, by invitation, and never by pushing past the gate.
Cautions and Safe Practice
An honest page states what the record does and does not say. For this entry the licensed dataset attaches no caution note — a plainer sheet than many points carry. Say that plainly, then say the rest of it: absence of a recorded caution is information, not invitation. The face before the ear is crowded country — the jaw joint working directly underfoot, small vessels threading the region, the ear canal a breath away — none of which benefits from blunt assault, and all of which asks to be left alone by anything heavier than thoughtful fingertip contact. Surface kindness is the entire method, here more than almost anywhere.
The practical rules gather quickly. Use finger pads only — no knuckles, elbows, or tools. Keep the intention strictly superficial, in skin and the thinnest surface layer, never driving inward toward the joint. Stop at once, and for the day, on any sharp, electric, or radiating sensation. Skip the point entirely over broken or irritated skin, during any feverish illness, while an ear is draining or painfully blocked, during acute facial or jaw pain, and for some weeks after ear or dental surgery until a clinician clears ordinary care. Pregnant readers, and anyone managing significant health conditions, do best consulting a qualified practitioner before adding new point work to their routine. None of these rules costs the practice anything; gentleness was already the plan.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care — comfort and companionship for a body, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical attention, not a longer pressing session, for sudden changes in hearing, severe or worsening ear pain, discharge from the ear, swelling around the ear or jaw, weakness or drooping of the face, or ringing that persists and wears on daily life. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint. The listening palace keeps its oldest lesson to the end: the best thing this point teaches most people is how to listen, kindly and early, to their own body.
Tinggong, the Listening Palace, stands in the soft hollow just before the ear — the gap that opens only when the mouth does. It closes the small intestine channel as its nineteenth and final station, and classical practice gathered several pathways around the ear here, reaching for this point when ears rang or hearing dimmed. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Tinggong without knowing anything about anatomy?
- Let the mouth do the teaching. Rest a fingertip on the firm fullness just in front of the little flap of the ear, then open the mouth slowly: the fullness slides forward, and the soft hollow it leaves behind is the point. This record attaches no proportional measurements at all — the tragus and the moving jawbone are the entire map, and they work on every face.
- Is pressing Tinggong myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip contact held on the surface is reasonable everyday self-care for healthy adults: it engages skin and the thinnest surface layers, far short of the joint and vessels deeper in the region. The recorded entry carries no special caution, and home acupressure never approaches professional techniques. Respect the stop signals regardless — sharp, electric, or worsening sensation all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Tinggong for?
- The traditional record lists tinnitus, deafness, discharge of pus from the ear, toothache, and loss of voice. Classical texts describe the small intestine channel ending in front of the ear and gather the triple burner and gallbladder pathways around the same ground, which ties the ear entries and the cheek entries to one map. Those frameworks document how tradition reasoned — offered for cultural understanding, not as evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a small intestine channel point live in front of the ear?
- Because the journey ends there. The classical course sets out at the little finger, climbs the back of the arm, crosses the shoulder, rises beside the neck and cheek, and arrives at this hollow as its nineteenth and final station — with older descriptions adding that the triple burner and gallbladder routes converge on the same neighbourhood, making it a noted crossing-point.
- Can pressing Tinggong replace seeing someone about my ringing ears?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not diagnosis or therapy, and ringing that is new, one-sided, pulsing, or accompanied by changed hearing or dizziness needs proper assessment promptly. Think of two floors of one building: daily gentle self-care lives downstairs, while the consulting room upstairs belongs to licensed clinicians you visit when symptoms persist or escalate. Neither substitutes for the other.
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, crossing-point lore, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for SI19 Tinggong — location, action record, and caution status.
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/si19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/si19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/si19/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SI19",
"name": {
"en": "Tinggong",
"gloss": "Listening Palace",
"zh-Hant": "聽宮",
"zh-Hans": "听宫"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SI",
"order": 19,
"of": 19
},
"location": {
"text": "In front of the small flap of the ear, in the dip that opens when you open your mouth."
},
"for": [
"ringing ears",
"dull hearing",
"toothache"
],
"press": {
"text": "Mouth open, gentle finger pads, one minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [
"Not while an ear is draining or painful."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/si19",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}