後谿 Houxi
“Behind the Stream” · SI3
Hand Taiyang · 3 of 19 · shu-stream, eight-confluent point (opens the du vessel)
Where. With a loose fist, on the outer edge of the hand, at the end of the palm crease just behind the little finger’s knuckle.
For. Stiff, aching neck and head; low back pain.
Press. Thumb pad, slow circles, one minute each hand.
後溪者，木也。在手小指外側，本節後陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
配 · Pairs with
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Houxi Sits on the Little-Finger Side of the Hand
The dataset locates Houxi with the fist slightly clenched, on the ulnar side of the hand, proximal to the fifth metacarpophalangeal joint, at the junction of the red and white skin at the head of the far transverse palmar crease. Each phrase unpacks cleanly. Ulnar means the edge that faces the little finger, named for the ulna, the forearm bone on that side. Proximal means nearer the trunk — so the hollow sought here lies behind the little-finger knuckle, toward the wrist, not out toward the fingertip. And the fifth metacarpophalangeal joint is friendlier than it sounds: the fifth metacarpal is the long bone inside the little finger, and its meeting with the finger bone is simply the knuckle at the base of that finger.
The far transverse palmar crease rewards a moment of attention. Curl the fingers loosely and two main lines appear across the palm: one crossing the middle of the palm, and the farther one running close beneath the bases of the fingers. It is that farther line the record names — its head, its outer end where it meets the side of the hand. There the junction of the red and white skin crosses as well: along the hand’s edge, paler palmar skin hands over to the finer, often darker skin of the back of the hand along a visible border, and classical location practice used this colour line as a ruler all around fingers and palm. Where the colour boundary meets the end of the far crease, behind the knuckle head, the flesh parts enough to leave a genuine hollow under a resting fingertip.
Neighbours give the clearest orientation. One space toward the fingertip, on the near side of the same knuckle, sits Qiangu (SI2), whose record places it distal to the joint — the mirror image of Houxi. Farther back, in the depression where the base of the fifth metacarpal meets the hamate bone, lies Wangu (SI4); Yanggu (SI5) waits beyond that at the wrist. Houxi owns the middle ground: the pocket immediately behind the little-finger knuckle, on the side of the hand, where the colour line runs through it. Which side of the knuckle your pad rests on decides which point you are actually touching, so the distinction is not pedantry — it is the whole difference between arriving and nearly arriving.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably and lay the back of your left hand on a table or thigh, fingers curled into the half fist the dataset asks for. With your right thumb, find the knuckle at the base of the left little finger and trace to the bump’s little-finger-facing edge. From there walk toward the wrist, staying on the side of the hand, until your pad settles into a shallow dip right where the paler palm-side skin changes to the darker back-of-hand skin, level with the end of the far crease. Press feather-light and bend and straighten the little finger slowly: the hollow deepens as the knuckle folds, confirming you are in the pocket behind it. Repeat the whole search on the other hand.
Two checks help before any real pressure begins. First, the roll test: flexing and extending the finger should make the knuckle glide under your pad while the spot itself stays put — if the tender-feeling point rides away with the bone, you were sitting on the knuckle itself, a few millimetres off. Second, the comparison test: light contact at the true hollow usually brings a faint, dull awareness, while the skin just beside it stays quiet. What you should not feel yet is anything sharp; if light touch alone stings, move off and try again a fraction closer to the wrist.
The classic slips are three. Landing on the near side of the knuckle puts you on Qiangu instead — easy to do, since both hollows hug the same joint. Sitting squarely atop the bony knob finds no point at all, only a bruise waiting to happen. And sliding too far back along the hand’s edge wanders toward Wangu’s territory, losing the knuckle landmark entirely. When in doubt, reset: curl lightly, find the knuckle bump, name its little-finger side, then step one hollow behind it. The channel’s own counting helps here — first station at the corner of the nail, second hollow in front of the little-finger knuckle, third hollow behind it.
Reading the Name: Behind the Stream
The name pairs a direction with water. Hou 後 means behind or after; xi 溪 is a small stream or rivulet — the kind of flow that gathers in a gully after rain. Read against the terrain, the picture is exact: the little-finger knuckle rises like a small ridge, and just behind it, along the hand’s edge, lies the dip the stream imagery marks. Classical teaching read the body this way throughout: classical texts describe the smaller gatherings of flesh between bones and sinews as streams and the larger ones as valleys — general landscape language of the old literature, offered without any claim about a single point. Houxi is therefore both an ordinal — third station of the channel — and a set of walking directions: find the knuckle, go behind it, follow the watercourse line.
The characters carry a little history too. Older editions frequently write the stream character with its variant form, 谿, which takes the valley sign as its semantic part and xi 奚 as its sound; modern standard practice settled on 溪, which wears the water sign instead — arguably the fitter dress for this name. And simplified writing quietly folds two older words into one glyph, 后: the hou of behind-and-after, written 後 as here, and the unrelated 后 that names a sovereign’s consort. In this name it is the first — pure position, no royalty. Spoken aloud the name is Hòuxī: hòu falls sharply on the fourth tone, while xī rides flat and high on the first tone, a short bright syllable that suits a trickle of water. Like gates, valleys, courtyards, and storehouses elsewhere on the channels, the metaphor does instructional work: it tells your thumb exactly what kind of ground to look for.
Classical commentators, working centuries apart, read the name the same two ways at once: an ordinal — third point from the corner of the little finger’s nail — and a description of terrain, the dip where flesh yields behind the knuckle. Both readings survive in the dataset this site licenses, and both serve the visitor: the ordinal tells you where you stand in the sequence; the terrain tells your fingertip where to stop. A name functioning simultaneously as address and instruction is the tradition’s quiet genius, and Houxi earns its place among the cleanest examples. It even foreshadows its own category, discussed next: a stream, by definition, sits somewhere in the middle of a longer journey.
A Stream Point That Opens the Governing Vessel
Beyond its place in the count, Houxi holds two formal titles in classical theory. The first is recorded in its dataset category: shu-stream point of the small intestine channel. The five transport points sort each channel’s first five locations into an ascending series borrowed from landscape — well, spring, stream, river, and sea. Qi, in the traditional picture, behaves like water: emerging barely at the fingertip wells, trickling at the springs, broadening where the streams run, gathering current at the rivers, pooling wide at the seas near elbow and knee. The small intestine channel climbs nineteen stations from the little finger up to the face, and its stream stage falls precisely here, at the widening middle of the journey’s opening stretch.
Tradition attached a temperament to each stage, and generalised classical guidance describes stream points as places where the flow has gathered body enough to matter, reached for when complaints felt heavy, settled deep, or came and went over time. That last phrase gives context to one of the more antique entries on Houxi’s record: malaria, the intermittent fever that returns and recedes in cycles. In the tradition’s idiom, a complaint that comes and goes belongs at a point class associated with flows that gather and move — reasoning from category to use, in its own era’s terms, long before modern categories existed. Presented this way, the entry becomes legible history rather than a puzzle.
The second title reaches further. Houxi is also recorded as one of the eight confluent points — eight locations on the limbs that classical theory paired with the eight extraordinary vessels — and the pairing assigned to this point opens the governing vessel, the du vessel whose course classical maps trace up the midline of the back and over the head. That single line of theory does heavy lifting for the indication list: stiffness and pain of the neck, ache of the lower back — territory the du vessel commands — gathering at a hand point that opens its pathway. One refinement completes the picture: on yang channels the source office moves off the stream stage, and here neighbouring Wangu (SI4) holds the yuan-source post. The channel itself pairs inwardly with the heart channel in the interior–exterior scheme, and both belong to the fire phase — context the old writers took for granted.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The licensed record lists seven indications: stiffness and pain of the head and neck, lower back pain, spasm and pain of the fingers, elbow, and arm, deafness, red eyes, mania and epilepsy, and malaria. Laid out plainly, the portfolio runs from a stiff neck to a fever of antiquity — and nothing here is a promise. Every entry below is framed as what classical practice reached for, recorded for cultural and historical understanding. Read inside the tradition, though, each item has its seat, and the seats are mostly visible from ground this page has already crossed: channel course, vessel pairing, organ partnership, point temperament, and sheer locality.
The head-and-neck and lower-back entries ride the governing-vessel confluence just described: the du vessel commands the spine and the crown territory, so its opening point drew those complaints toward itself. The finger, elbow, and arm entries ride locality and course: the channel begins beneath this very knuckle and climbs the arm, so spasm and pain anywhere along its route were approached from points along the way. Deafness and red eyes ride the channel’s upper reach — classical descriptions send it past the ear and across the cheek to the face, which places ear and eye inside its postal district. Mania and epilepsy belong to the old language of the spirit, sitting naturally on a channel paired with the heart, keeper of the shen. Malaria, finally, echoes the stream-point temperament discussed above — an intermittent rhythm matching a category associated with flows that come and go.
Honesty requires the other half of the paragraph. These are traditional uses, documented for context; they are not claims that pressing Houxi treats disease. Where modern research has examined self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on context, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Practical routing matters more than hope. A headache that is sudden and severe, unlike your usual pattern, or arrives with stiff neck, fever, confusion, or disturbed vision belongs in urgent care today. New hearing change, a red painful eye with altered sight, numbness or weakness spreading down an arm, low-back pain after a fall, or back pain joined by bowel or bladder changes each deserves prompt professional evaluation. Everything slower can begin, sensibly, with gentleness and observation.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point confirmed, set up gently. Sit upright, rest the back of the hand on your leg, and keep the fingers softly curled. Place the pad of your opposite thumb — pads, never tips, nails, or tools — on the hollow and simply rest there through three slow breaths. Then add small circles, letting the skin travel lightly over the tissue beneath. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or faint warmth, nothing sharper. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed to unhurried exhales. Finish by repeating everything on the other hand, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Hand points tempt people toward too much force. The skin is thin, the knuckle close beneath, and a thumb naturally leans hard on such compact ground — so aim deliberately lighter than feels decisive. Warm your hands first on cold days, because chilled tissue guards itself. Give the practice a quiet setting rather than a screen, and let it double as a pause: contact on the inhale, gentle circling down the long exhale. People who keep such routines attach them to existing habits — coffee brewing, an afternoon stretch — because regularity, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask of anyone.
Keep expectations sized to the practice. Across a week or two you may notice the spot feeling less guarded, or simply enjoy ninety seconds of attended stillness in a busy day; either outcome sits inside acupressure’s honest scope. What sits outside it is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, especially over a knuckle that aches afterwards. Soreness that outlasts the session is feedback, and the right response is less, not more. Curiosity that pulls toward force is the signal to return to gentleness or close the day’s practice altogether.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Reassuring geography first: nothing vital lies directly beneath this spot. Under the skin sit tendon, the small muscles between the knuckles, the head of the metacarpal bone, and the fine nerves and vessels of the hand’s edge — no organs, no cavities — which places hand points among the calmer locations for surface work. The licensed dataset records no specific cautions for Houxi, and this page echoes that empty record faithfully. An absence of recorded cautions is not an invitation to enthusiasm, though; hands meet the world constantly, and this busy stretch of the little-finger side deserves a conservative margin all its own.
Practical limits follow. Skip the point whenever the skin there is broken, peeling, bitten, or inflamed — hangnails, cuts, eczema flares, and trouble around the nail all qualify. Set the practice aside after any recent injury to that hand: sprains, jams, fractures under healing, tendon trouble, or an arthritis flare in the knuckle itself. Redness, warmth, or swelling calls for assessment, not compression. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation ends the session immediately, that day. Anyone pregnant, and anyone managing chronic illness or blood-thinning medication, does well to consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point routine at all.
And the frame around everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is comfort self-care — not diagnosis, not treatment, never a substitute for professionals whose job is precisely the symptom you may be hoping to quiet. Draw the referral lines plainly: sudden severe headache or the worst headache of your life; headache joined by stiff neck, fever, confusion, or changed vision; new weakness, numbness, or clumsiness anywhere; sudden hearing loss; low-back pain following injury, or back pain with bowel or bladder changes — each belongs with prompt medical assessment rather than a pressure routine. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint.
Houxi, Behind the Stream, waits in the hollow just behind the little-finger knuckle, along the outer edge of the hand. Third station of the small intestine channel, classical practice reached for it amid stiff necks, aching lower backs, and sore fingers and arms. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How is Houxi different from Qiangu (SI2), its nearest neighbour?
- They share one knuckle but stand on opposite sides of it. Qiangu sits distal — between the knuckle and the fingertip — holding the ying-spring post, second of the channel’s transport points; Houxi sits proximal, in the pocket behind the knuckle, holding the shu-stream post. Classical records give the two overlapping interests, but locating either correctly depends entirely on which side of the joint your pad has settled on, which is why this page spends so long on that distinction.
- Why would a point on the hand be used for the lower back?
- Vessel logic. In the classical framework Houxi opens the governing vessel, the pathway mapped up the spine’s midline and over the head, and a point that opens a pathway was treated as speaking for its whole territory. Lower-back and neck complaints therefore gathered at this hand point — a coherent correspondence within its own era’s physiology, presented for understanding the record, not as an anatomical discovery or a promise about outcomes.
- Is Houxi safe during pregnancy?
- Prudence first: ask a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice while pregnant. Houxi’s own licensed record says nothing specific about pregnancy, and that silence is exactly why an individual answer should come from someone who can see the whole picture rather than from a general page. Nothing on this site substitutes for that conversation.
- My neck feels stiff — can I press Houxi instead of seeing anyone?
- Treat gentle pressure, at most, as a companion to judgment, never a replacement for it. Ordinary end-of-day stiffness after screen work is a reasonable setting for the light routine this page describes. Stiffness following an injury, a headache arriving with it, fever, numbness or weakness in an arm or leg, or any symptom that frightens you changes the answer completely: those need professional assessment promptly. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner — Western medicine or East Asian medicine, whichever suits the complaint.
- What should pressing Houxi actually feel like?
- Expect little and stay patient. Many people notice a faint dull awareness at the true hollow immediately and nothing further for weeks; some feel warmth spread into the little finger. None of that predicts outcomes, and no timetable would be honest. If your purpose is relief and nothing shifts over a reasonable stretch, take that as information and bring it to a licensed practitioner. The steadier returns — a daily pause, a hand attended to — arrive regardless.
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, stream-point theory, and eight-confluent context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for SI3 Houxi — location, point class, actions, and the (empty) 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/si3/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/si3/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/si3/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SI3",
"name": {
"en": "Houxi",
"gloss": "Behind the Stream",
"zh-Hant": "後谿",
"zh-Hans": "后溪"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SI",
"order": 3,
"of": 19
},
"location": {
"text": "With a loose fist, on the outer edge of the hand, at the end of the palm crease just behind the little finger’s knuckle."
},
"for": [
"stiff",
"aching neck and head",
"low back pain"
],
"press": {
"text": "Thumb pad, slow circles, one minute each hand.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/si3",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}