Not on a freshly sprained or swollen ankle.
商丘 Shangqiu
“Mound of Shang” · SP5
Foot Taiyin · 5 of 21 · jing-river
Where. In the hollow just in front of and below the inner ankle bone.
For. Bloating, loose stools or constipation, ankle pain.
Press. Thumb or two finger pads, slow circles, one minute each ankle.
Caution. Not on a freshly sprained or swollen ankle.
商丘者，金也。在足內踝下微前陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Shangqiu Sits on the Inner Foot
The dataset places Shangqiu in the depression anterior and inferior to the medial malleolus — the inner ankle bone — at the midpoint of the line between the navicular tuberosity and the tip of that malleolus. Unlike many channel points, this address asks for no proportional measuring at all: two landmarks, one invisible line, one hollow. The medial malleolus is the rounded knob on the inner side of the ankle, ending below in a pointed tip. The navicular tuberosity is a smaller prominence halfway along the inner border of the foot, where the arch rises toward the instep; on flatter feet it stands out plainly, on higher arches it hides a little deeper along the curve. Join tip to bump in imagination and press at the halfway mark: most fingers land in a genuine soft pocket where both bony prominences fall away.
What lies under that pocket explains the gentleness this page keeps asking for. The skin here is thin and mobile, the ankle bone close beneath, and tendons bound for the foot slide past on either side when the toes move. A large superficial vein — the great saphenous vein, the leg’s longest surface vessel — commonly rides visibly across the region just in front of the malleolus, which is one more reason contact belongs on the feather-light end of the scale. Nothing about the neighborhood rewards force: the point announces itself through a faint dull awareness under patient pressure, not through ache provoked by digging. Think of the spot as a doorway sill rather than a knot to be worked out; everything worth feeling there can be felt through simple, quiet contact.
A little map-making helps. The spleen channel climbs from the inner corner of the big toe, travels the medial border of the foot, rounds the ankle directly in front of the malleolus — exactly where Shangqiu waits — and then ascends the inner leg toward the chest. Downhill from the hollow, the channel’s earlier stations line the inner foot: Taibai (SP3) rests behind the big-toe knuckle, and Gongsun (SP4) sits near the base of the first metatarsal on the border. Uphill, Sanyinjiao (SP6) climbs three cun above the malleolus tip onto the inner calf. And behind the ankle bone lies a different country altogether: the hollows tucked between malleolus and heel cord answer to the kidney channel. Knowing these neighbors prevents the commonest error, which is searching for Shangqiu in someone else’s territory.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit on a firm chair and rest your right ankle across the left knee, or plant the foot flat and turn the knee gently outward — whichever lets the inner ankle face you without strain. Begin with the malleolus: walk your thumb down the inner knob until you feel its lowest, pointed tip. Then slide forward and downward along the foot’s inner edge, onto the arch, until you meet the navicular tuberosity, the distinct bump midway along the border. Now join the two in your mind with a straight line and bring your fingertip to its midpoint. Press softly. Most people find the fingertip settling into a shallow pocket bounded by the two bony prominences, a hollow that feels distinctly different from the hard ridges around it. That meeting of low ground between hill and bump is the location recorded for this point.
A few quiet confirmations settle the matter before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and almost nothing a finger-width away. Wiggle the toes slowly — tendons stir on either side of the hollow while its soft centre stays put. Flex the ankle up and down and feel the whole neighborhood shift except that one sheltered dip. If your finger lands on unyielding bone, ease off the edge half a thumb-width and search again rather than pressing harder into the ridge. Take your time; landmark-hunting done slowly teaches your hands the geography of your own ankle, and that knowledge pays out at every later visit.
Common slips are few and easy to correct. The first is drifting too far down and forward, off the malleolus and deep onto the arch — that heads toward the navicular itself and away from the midpoint. The second is stopping too high, on the face of the malleolus where there is no hollow at all. The third is wandering behind the bone into the softer ground beside the heel cord, which belongs to another channel’s points entirely. One caution concerns condition rather than technique: swollen ankles redraw the map. After long flights, hot days, or an injury, landmarks blur; simply skip the search on puffy days and return when the ankle reads clearly, or ask a practitioner to guide your fingers once so your hands learn the site.
Reading the Name: Mound of Shang
The hanzi pair 商丘 compresses a small landscape. Qiu 丘 means mound or hillock — the character itself pictures ground rising — and classical commentators heard it as the inner malleolus: a round hill lifting out of the flat plain of the foot, with the point resting in the low ground at the hill’s foot. Shang 商 leads the name, and its resonances run wide: trade and commerce, the markets where goods change hands, and beyond them the memory of the Shang dynasty whose name still marks the ancient heartland. Commentators offered both echoes without forcing a choice — a merchant’s mound or a dynastic one. Either way the name behaves like good directions: find the hill, seek the hollow beneath it, and the point has told you where it lives.
Classification adds a second story. Classical teaching sorts the points nearest hand and foot into five offices per channel, named for water gathering downhill: well, spring, stream, river, and sea. Shangqiu holds the spleen channel’s river office — the stretch where the current, having gathered through the shallower stages, runs broad and steady. Five-phase arithmetic then assigns each office a phase, and the river points of the yin channels belong to metal. The spleen itself is earth, and earth traditionally generates metal, so the old reckoning reads this station as the channel’s abundance flowing onward to its child phase — a place of release and handing-on rather than storage. Classical discussion reached for such points when the subject was letting the channel’s activity move outward. Hold all of it as a lens for reading the literature, not as anatomy.
Pinyin renders the name Shāngqiū, and both syllables ride the same flat first tone — high and level, the tone dictionaries describe as even from beginning to end. The characters are simple enough to hold at a glance, and they belong to a large family of point names borrowed from landscape and architecture: gates, valleys, markets, courtyards, wells, mounds. The metaphors do real work. They record where to press, and sometimes how the tradition imagined the point behaving — a river grown broad, a market where things exchange, a hollow at the base of a mound. Learn the name and you hold half the location; the other half is your own thumb.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: abdominal distension, diarrhoea, constipation, jaundice, ankle pain, edema, infantile convulsions, and whooping cough. The first three form one household in the traditional frame. Classical practice paired spleen and stomach as the middle burner’s working partnership, charged with transforming food and moving fluids onward; when that partnership faltered, the records describe a recognisable scene — distension, a subjective ballooning and blockage across the abdomen, alongside stools that either hurry through or refuse to move. That both diarrhoea and constipation stand in one list is not carelessness but a classical habit: certain points were consulted as regulators, approached at either pole of bowel trouble because the underlying pattern, in traditional eyes, was one failing of transport wearing two faces.
Jaundice and edema enter through the same door. Tradition made the spleen steward of dampness — mover of water and transformer of what the body takes in — and read yellowed colouring and puffy swelling as damp failing in its journeys. A spleen-channel point holding the river office therefore stood naturally in classical discussions of fluid complaints. Ankle pain needs no such bridge: wherever a channel passes, local discomfort was approached locally, and Shangqiu sits squarely in the path the channel takes around the malleolus. These are frameworks for reading old records, offered for cultural understanding; they are not claims about what pressing the point achieves.
Two entries resist tidy explanation and deserve honesty instead: infantile convulsions and whooping cough. Why a quiet hollow at the ankle appears against childhood fits and whooping cough is a question the records preserve without fully answering; later commentators linked such entries to broad channel logic, but the honest annotation leaves them standing as history. Nothing on this page addresses childhood acute illness — seizures or breathing difficulty in a child are emergencies belonging to immediate medical care, without exception. And the wider hedge bears repeating: where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. These indications document a tradition; they do not prescribe a treatment.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the hollow found, settle in: seated, shoulders heavy, breath unhurried. Use the pad of your thumb or the curled pads of index and middle fingers — never a knuckle, elbow, or tool — and rest them on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small circles, letting the skin glide over the hollow rather than grinding against the bone beneath. Pressure should register as gentle dullness or faint warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to long exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Finish one side, then give the other ankle the same minutes; symmetry keeps the practice honest.
Quality outweighs duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact is what wellness traditions actually mean by practice; force teaches the body nothing and risks bruising thin tissue stretched over bone. Warm your hands first if they run cold, since chilled skin flinches. Choose a quiet chair over a screen, and let the session double as a pause: feet off the floor, attention resting at the ankles, inhale through the nose, soften on the exhale. People who keep such routines usually anchor them to something already habitual — morning coffee steeping, an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is the entire secret. Two honest minutes daily beat an ambitious quarter hour attempted once.
Treat the exercise as attendance rather than treatment. Across weeks, notice what actually changes: perhaps the area feels less tender, perhaps the ritual simply gives your evenings a slower opening chapter, perhaps nothing measurable shifts at all. Every one of those outcomes fits what self-acupressure genuinely offers. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder to force a result, extending sessions to earn one, or turning a comfort practice into a test of endurance. When curiosity pulls toward more, return to gentleness, or set the practice down for the day. The hollow has waited centuries; it does not need your urgency.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed dataset records no specific caution entry for this point, and it is fair to say so plainly. But absence of a recorded warning is not an invitation to force. Geography alone argues gentleness: thin mobile skin, bone close beneath the hollow, tendons passing on either side, and a large superficial vein that often crosses just here. Professional work in this depth of the body is trained craft with its own rules and its own setting; home acupressure operates in a different and far simpler register — surface contact, light hands, short sessions. Keeping those two registers separate is the most useful safety rule this page can offer.
The practical rules follow. Use finger pads only, and keep the intention in skin and superficial tissue. Skip the point over broken, infected, or inflamed skin, and leave it alone entirely while an ankle injury is fresh — sprains, suspected fractures, recent surgery, and marked swelling belong with professional assessment before any pressing begins. Readers who are pregnant should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point routine, as should anyone managing circulation problems, diabetes-related skin changes, or blood-thinning medication. During any session, sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not retry that day; a mild dull awareness that fades quickly is ordinary, but pain that persists or worsens is information, not achievement.
And the standing rule covers everything else: this page is educational, self-acupressure is self-care, and neither diagnoses nor treats anything. Seek prompt medical assessment — not a pressing routine — for persistent abdominal symptoms: diarrhoea lasting beyond a few days, constipation that changes character or resists usual habits, blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss, or severe pain. Yellowing of skin or eyes calls for medical attention in its own right. Ankle pain that persists, swells repeatedly, or follows injury deserves proper examination too. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The safest gift this small hollow offers most people is a better acquaintance with their own ankle, treated kindly.
Shangqiu — the Mound of Shang — shelters in the soft hollow forward and below the inner ankle bone, halfway along a line drawn from the arch’s bony bump to the ankle’s pointed tip. Classical practice consulted this quiet riverside station chiefly for the middle body: distension, loose bowels, sluggish bowels, and the fluid troubles tradition laid at the spleen’s door.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shangqiu without knowing anything about cun?
- This is one of the rare points where cun barely matter — the recorded location is built from two landmarks. Find the pointed tip of the inner ankle bone, find the bony bump midway along the inner border of the foot, imagine a straight line joining them, and press gently at its midpoint. The soft pocket your finger meets there is the place the dataset describes.
- Is pressing Shangqiu myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care, and the licensed dataset records no specific caution entry for this point. The practical limits remain: finger pads rather than tools, no pressing over broken skin, fresh injury, or marked swelling, and an immediate stop on sharp or radiating sensation. When in doubt, ask a qualified practitioner to check your technique once.
- What did classical practice use Shangqiu for?
- The traditional record lists abdominal distension, diarrhoea, constipation, jaundice, ankle pain, edema, infantile convulsions, and whooping cough. Classical frameworks explain much of the grouping: the spleen governed transport and fluids, bowel complaints were read as transport failing, and local pain was answered at local points. These are documented traditional uses offered for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a point associated with digestion live at the ankle?
- Classical channel theory drew the spleen pathway climbing from the big toe, rounding the front of the malleolus, and ascending the inner leg toward the chest — and points along a channel were understood to speak for that channel’s themes wherever they stood. The five-phase layer agrees: as the channel’s river point, this station was read as a broad, steady stage of the flow. Correspondence, not plumbing, is the operative idea.
- Can acupressure here replace seeing someone about my symptoms?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Bowel habits that change and stay changed, blood in the stool, jaundice, or an ankle that remains painful and swollen need professional assessment promptly. Picture the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care downstairs, clinical medicine upstairs, visited whenever symptoms persist — 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, jing-river classification, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for SP5 Shangqiu — 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/sp5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/sp5/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/sp5/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SP5",
"name": {
"en": "Shangqiu",
"gloss": "Mound of Shang",
"zh-Hant": "商丘",
"zh-Hans": "商丘"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SP",
"order": 5,
"of": 21
},
"location": {
"text": "In the hollow just in front of and below the inner ankle bone."
},
"for": [
"bloating",
"loose stools or constipation",
"ankle pain"
],
"press": {
"text": "Thumb or two finger pads, slow circles, one minute each ankle.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not on a freshly sprained or swollen ankle."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/sp5",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}