漏谷 Lougu
“Leaking Valley” · SP7
Foot Taiyin · 7 of 21
Where. Two hand-widths above the inner ankle bone, just behind the edge of the shinbone.
For. Bloating, a rumbling belly, weak legs.
Press. Two finger pads, slow circles, one minute each leg.
漏谷，在內踝上六寸骨下陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Lougu Sits on the Inner Calf
The dataset gives the address in one measured sentence: on the medial aspect of the lower leg, on the line connecting the tip of the medial malleolus and Yinlingquan (SP9), six cun above the tip of the medial malleolus, posterior to the medial border of the tibia. Unpacked for everyday hands: medial means inner — the side of the calf that faces its partner leg. The medial malleolus is the prominent bone at the inner ankle, and its tip is the pointed end you can catch between a finger and thumb. Yinlingquan, the next station upslope, sits near the knee in the hollow below the inner shin prominence. A line joins those two landmarks up the inside of the leg, and Lougu waits along it, six cun above the ankle tip.
A cun, as everywhere in this literature, is not an inch off any ruler but a proportional unit taken from the body being examined, so the same written distance stretches differently on tall and slight frames. Tradition offers a handy conversion: the width of four fingers held together counts as three cun. Six cun therefore comes to two stacked four-finger spans measured straight up from the ankle-bone tip. As for what lies under the fingertips once you arrive — the spot occupies the shallow valley behind the tibia’s sharp inner edge, where the layered muscle of the calf begins. Superficial veins of the inner leg thread through this territory, and padding between skin and structures is modest, which is reason enough to keep every touch light and patient.
Neighbours help confirm the address. On the same line, one four-finger span above the ankle tip, sits Sanyinjiao (SP6); continue past Lougu another span or so and you reach Diji (SP8), and beyond it Yinlingquan (SP9) close by the knee. Counting spans turns a vague slope into a ladder: one span lands at Sanyinjiao, two at Lougu. Each leg carries its own mirror copy of the point, identical in position, so whatever search routine works on one side should be repeated, unhurriedly, on the other.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably and draw one ankle across the opposite knee, or simply lean forward until the inner calf is within easy reach. Find the tip of the inner ankle bone first and rest a fingertip on it. Now place the edge of your opposite hand — four fingers held flat together — across the leg with its lower edge touching that tip: the upper edge marks three cun. Stack the hand once more directly above and the top edge falls at six cun, your working height. From there, slide your fingertips a thumb-width backward, off the face of the shin, until they settle into the soft groove just behind the bone’s inner edge. That groove, level with the second hand-span, is the neighbourhood of Lougu. Search both legs the same way.
A few quiet checks steady the verdict before any real pressure begins. Press feather-light first: most people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot — a shy ache quite unlike the blank response of nearby tissue. Compare sides; the sensation should sit symmetrically. Flex your foot gently up and down under a resting fingertip and feel the tension in the groove change as the calf engages — a sign you are over muscle rather than bare bone. If all you meet is hard, flat shin surface, you have drifted onto the front of the bone; slide back until the fingertip rounds the inner edge and settles behind it.
The classic mistakes deserve naming. Stopping after a single four-finger span delivers you to Sanyinjiao — a worthy point, but not the one sought — so always count two spans from the ankle tip. Sliding forward onto the face of the shin leaves you pressing bare bone, which answers with discomfort and little else; the point hides behind the edge, on the calf side. And drifting too far back into the bulk of the calf overshoots the shallow valley entirely. Whenever the map blurs, return to the ankle-bone tip, measure twice slowly, and let the landmarks do the navigating.
Reading the Name: Leaking Valley
Two characters carry the whole image. Lou 漏 means to leak, drip, or seep through — water escaping where it should be held; the same character lent its name to the dripping water-clocks that once marked time in China, drop by patient drop. Gu 谷 means valley, the low ground between heights where water gathers and runs. Together Lougu reads as leaking valley. The picture suits the place twice over: the point rests in a literal groove, a valley of tissue behind the shin bone’s inner edge, and the traditional uses recorded around it cluster, as we shall see, around fluids — fullness, rumbling, water reluctant to move.
The script adds a small bonus for modern readers. In simplified Chinese, gu 谷 does double duty: besides valley it also carries the everyday sense of grain, a meaning older texts wrote with a separate character. A point whose classical portfolio centres on the belly thus wears, in today’s script, a character that can mean both valley and grain. None of this amounts to mechanism, and no old commentary is being quoted here; it is simply how the tradition liked its names to rhyme with its observations — geography below, function above, and a word holding both at once. Names along these channels are small memory palaces, built to be walked through rather than decoded once.
Pinyin renders the name Lòugǔ. The first syllable carries the fourth tone — a firm, decisive fall, spoken with the finality of something slipping away — while the second rides the third tone, the low dip that sinks before rising again. Said slowly, lou-gu behaves like water finding a channel: a release downward, then a gathering lift. The hanzi pair 漏谷 is simple enough to memorise at a glance, and like the gates, pools, and courtyards scattered along the channels, the metaphor earns its keep — it tells you the tradition saw this spot as terrain where things collect, seep, and move, not merely as a coordinate on a limb.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: abdominal distension, borborygmus, difficult urination, nocturnal emission, urinary tract infection, weakness of the lower limb, and scapular pain. Borborygmus is the formal word for borborygmi — the audible gurgles and rumbles of intestines at work, familiar to anyone whose middle speaks during a quiet room. Abdominal distension, in the traditional vocabulary, means a subjective tightness or swelling across the belly, understood as qi and fluids failing to move freely. Difficult urination covered hesitancy, scanty flow, and straining — complaints the old physicians grouped by the observation that water was not going where it should. All of this is description of a record, not a promise of effect.
Reading the list whole, a theme surfaces: much of it concerns fluids and their passage — fullness above, rumbling within, water below reluctant to leave. Nocturnal emission, the involuntary release of semen during sleep, belongs to the same classical ledger as a disturbance to be understood rather than a shame to be hidden; the record notes it plainly, and so do we, with the plain caveat that persistent intimate concerns belong with a qualified practitioner, not with self-diagnosis. The entry for urinary tract infection carries modern clinical wording inside a traditional list; treat it as the dataset faithfully transmitting what practice reached for, and hold it alongside the red flags discussed below. Weakness of the lower limb needs no distant theory: the point lives on the leg itself.
Scapular pain is the surprise guest. Why a calf point appears beside a shoulder-blade complaint is not spelled out in the lines we hold; channel logic offers one traditional way in — classical texts describe the spleen channel beginning at the big toe, climbing the inner leg, and passing upward through the abdomen toward the chest, and practitioners reasoned along such courses rather than along nerves, reaching for leg points when troubles sat far above them. It bears saying plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease. Where research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, the leg supported so the calf can soften. Curl index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — in the groove behind the shin’s inner edge. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue rather than grinding against bone. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or a mild spreading warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per leg, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap sides and keep the two sessions symmetrical.
Quality outranks duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; jabbing harder teaches the body nothing and the bruise everything. Warm cold hands before you begin, because chilled muscle guards itself. Choose a quiet corner over a screen — the practice doubles as a pause: inhale through the nose, feel the calf release under still fingers, press gently on the long exhale. People who keep such routines often anchor them to an existing habit — after morning washing, before an evening walk — because what self-care traditions actually ask for is consistency, not intensity.
Treat the minutes as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks you might notice the area feels less guarded, or that digestion feels easier on the days you practise, or perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent two unhurried minutes attending to your own leg. Every one of those outcomes sits inside the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not belong there is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result the record never promised. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or simply stop for the day and let the habit carry you.
Cautions and Safe Practice
An honest page begins with what the record does and does not say. For Lougu, the licensed dataset records no specific caution — the catalogue’s caution field stands empty. That emptiness fits the geography: this stretch of inner calf holds muscle, tendon, and bone, with no lungs or abdominal organs anywhere near the surface, so surface-level touch has long been among the least fraught kinds of point work. But an empty field is not a blank cheque. It records the absence of a specific warning, not the presence of unlimited licence, and every general rule of gentle self-care still applies in full.
The practical rules are short enough to memorise. Use finger pads only — never elbows, knuckles, or tools — and keep pressure directed at the surface layers, not driven inward. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or visibly swollen skin, during any feverish illness, and while a flare of any kind is acute. Never press through pain or while holding the breath. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and try nothing more that day. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone living with a chronic condition affecting the legs, circulation, or kidneys should do likewise. Gentle and infrequent beats vigorous and daily whenever the two conflict.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Some symptoms call for prompt medical care rather than a pressure routine — urinary burning joined by fever or chills, blood in the urine, pain in the flank or lower back with urinary symptoms, inability to pass water, persistent or worsening change in urinary habit, abdominal swelling that persists, or digestive trouble that will not settle. Persistent symptoms of any kind belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The valley imagery is charming, but the surest thing Lougu offers most visitors is a better acquaintance with their own lower leg, treated kindly and pressed lightly.
Lougu — Leaking Valley — waits on the inner calf, six cun above the tip of the inner ankle bone, in the shallow groove behind the shin bone’s sharp inner edge. Classical practice reached for it when fullness and rumbling gathered in the abdomen, or when water seemed unwilling to move. This guide covers finding it by touch, pressing it gently, and the limits of home practice.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Lougu without knowing anything about cun?
- Use your own hand as the ruler. Find the pointed tip of the inner ankle bone, lay four flat-held fingers across the leg with their lower edge on that tip, then stack the same hand-width once more directly above. Where the top edge falls — six cun up, in traditional language — slide your fingertip just behind the shin bone’s sharp inner edge into the soft groove. That groove is the location. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional words.
- Is it safe to press Lougu myself, even daily?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held at the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the inner calf is far from the vulnerable territories that make some other points delicate. Daily light practice suits this point better than occasional hard sessions. Respect the stop signals regardless: sharp pain, electric or radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately, and broken skin, feverish illness, or pregnancy are reasons to pause the routine and ask a qualified practitioner first.
- Why would a calf point have anything to do with the shoulder blade?
- Because classical practice reasoned along channels rather than along nerves. The traditional map draws the spleen channel starting at the big toe, ascending the inner leg, and travelling up through the trunk toward the chest, so points along that route were understood to bear on regions far above their own neighbourhood. Scapular pain appears in Lougu’s recorded indications against that backdrop. It is a window into traditional reasoning, documented for context — not a modern claim that pressing the calf relieves the shoulder.
- How is Lougu different from Sanyinjiao just below it?
- Height, chiefly, plus everything that follows from it. Sanyinjiao (SP6) sits one four-finger span above the inner ankle-bone tip, behind the same bony edge; Lougu doubles that to six cun, two stacked spans higher on the same diagonal line. The counting is the safeguard: one span lands you at Sanyinjiao, two at Lougu. Their recorded traditional portfolios differ accordingly — Sanyinjiao’s centres on women’s health, while Lougu’s leans toward abdominal fullness and fluid movement — though both belong to the same long channel.
- When should urinary symptoms send me to a doctor instead of to this page?
- Promptly — and sooner rather than later — when burning on urination arrives with fever or chills, when urine looks pink or bloody, when flank or lower-back pain accompanies urinary trouble, when passing water becomes impossible, or when changes in urinary habit persist beyond a few days or steadily worsen. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice with no diagnostic power whatsoever; these signals call for assessment by a licensed clinician, who can examine what a fingertip never can.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License), complateXwInfo.json — Chinese-language location, indications, and point class for this entry.
- 02WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008), World Health Organization — nomenclature conventions.
- 03A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition and spleen-channel context.
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/sp7/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/sp7/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/sp7/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SP7",
"name": {
"en": "Lougu",
"gloss": "Leaking Valley",
"zh-Hant": "漏谷",
"zh-Hans": "漏谷"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SP",
"order": 7,
"of": 21
},
"location": {
"text": "Two hand-widths above the inner ankle bone, just behind the edge of the shinbone."
},
"for": [
"bloating",
"a rumbling belly",
"weak legs"
],
"press": {
"text": "Two finger pads, slow circles, one minute each leg.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/sp7",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}