Keep off the pulse and the windpipe; never both sides at once.
水突 Shuitu
“Water Rushing” · ST10
Foot Yangming · 10 of 45
Where. On the neck, at the front edge of the long neck muscle, halfway between ST9 and the inner end of the collarbone.
For. Sore throat, cough, shortness of breath.
Press. Light touch, one side at a time, about a minute.
Caution. Keep off the pulse and the windpipe; never both sides at once.
水突，一名水門，在頸大筋前，直人迎下，氣舍上按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Shuitu Stands on the Front of the Neck
The licensed dataset places Shuitu on the neck, on the anterior border of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, midway between Renying (ST9) and Qishe (ST11). Unpacked: the sternocleidomastoid is the long strap muscle running from just behind the ear down to the collarbone and breastbone, springing forward under the skin whenever the head turns; its anterior border is the edge facing the windpipe. Renying, the station above, sits level with the laryngeal prominence — the forward jut of cartilage most people call the Adam’s apple. Qishe, the station below, rests at the upper border of the inner end of the collarbone. Midway between the two means roughly halfway down the stretch of neck separating those two lines, always hugging the muscle’s front edge. Because every landmark involved scales with the person, the position reads almost identically on tall and slight frames alike — friendlier to beginners than many proportional addresses.
What lies beneath the skin here deserves genuine respect. The front border of the sternocleidomastoid skirts the corridor of the great vessels: the carotid artery can be felt beating close by, while the thyroid gland and the windpipe occupy the ground toward the midline. The licensed record names all three plainly — the carotid artery, thyroid, and trachea lie nearby and must be avoided. None of this makes feather-light surface contact unreasonable for healthy adults, but it explains why classical location texts treat the neck as territory for trained hands, why the professional records urge restraint at exactly this site, and why every practice suggested on this page stays in the skin’s outermost story.
The neighbours help confirm the address. Higher on the same front-border line stands Renying (ST9), level with the Adam’s apple and noted in the records for its strong pulse. Lower still sits Qishe (ST11), tucked at the top of the breastbone-end of the collarbone. Between those two stations, parked about halfway, is Shuitu. When checking placement, walk the fingertip down the muscle’s front edge from the laryngeal prominence until about half the distance to the collarbone has been covered. If the finger slides onto the windpipe’s midline lane or settles onto a strong beat, return to the landmarks and start the short journey again — the point lives on muscle, not on either of its more dramatic neighbours.
A Gentle Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and shoulders released, so the neck muscles soften. First let the muscle introduce itself: turn the head slowly to one side and watch the strap-like ridge stand out along the opposite side of the neck; trace it mentally from behind the ear to the collarbone, then bring the head back to neutral and let everything soften. Rest the pads of the index and middle fingers very lightly on the front border of the muscle, about halfway between the Adam’s-apple line and the top edge of the collarbone, and let them sink only until they feel the firm band and the softer slope just ahead of it. The whole search takes a few unhurried seconds and asks for attention, never force.
A few small confirmations settle the placement before any pressing begins. Compare sides with feather-light touch, noticing how the spot sits symmetrically on either side of the throat. Feel for the pulse: if a soft beat arrives under the fingertips, ease them half a width aside so they rest on muscle rather than on the moving vessel — on this page, no habit matters more. Swallow once and watch the fingers hold steady while the larynx glides upward beneath them, confirming the height has not drifted. Throughout, nothing should ache; tenderness hunting is not part of this practice, and the neck does not reward it.
Three mistakes account for nearly every misplacement. The first is pressing deeper and deeper hoping a satisfying tender spot will announce itself — depth is precisely what the caution record warns against at this site. The second is drifting inward, off the muscle’s front edge toward the windpipe and the thyroid’s ground; the front border, not the midline, is the working lane. The third is sliding upward toward the Adam’s apple, into the stronger-pulsed territory of Renying. Working both sides at once with two hands is ruled out altogether: one side at a time, always. Whenever doubt creeps in, return to the first step — watch the ridge, mark the two lines, and travel the short distance between them once, slowly.
Reading the Name: Water Rushing
The two characters sketch a scene of motion. Shui 水 means water; tu 突 carries the sense of rushing or surging forth, and by extension names something that juts abruptly outward. Joined, Shuitu invites the reading water rushing. One widely retold traditional understanding connects the name with swallowing: food and drink pass exactly this stretch of the neck on their way down the throat, and the old commentators pictured their passage as the movement of water. Another reading finds the surge closer to the surface — the vessel’s beat, felt under an exploring finger like flowing water pushing past. Commentators through the centuries weighted these images differently, and this page simply keeps both, since each teaches the same practical lesson: everything here moves.
The character tu turns out to be a naming habit of this neighbourhood. Several points clustered around the throat and the base of the neck share it: Futu (LI18), Support the Prominence, stands close by on the side of the neck, and Tiantu holds the front midline at the root of the neck. The channel map tells the same story from another angle. Classical teaching draws the stomach channel beginning at the face beside the nose and running down the front of the body all the way to the second toe; its earliest stations descend past the throat, and this point belongs to that stretch. Wherever swallowing, breath, and voice converge, the tradition planted points and named them for movement.
Pinyin renders the name Shuǐtū: shui in the third tone, which dips first and rises again, like a thought reconsidered; tu in the first tone, held flat and high. Both characters are compact enough to memorise at a glance. Point names favour landscapes — gates, valleys, courtyards, pools — so a verb of motion stands out among them, and it doubles as an etiquette: approach expecting movement, because breath passes, swallows pass, pulses beat, and the kindest touch is one that joins the flow rather than interrupting it.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: sore swollen throat, goitre, cough, shortness of breath, and panting with inability to lie down. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list opens with the throat. The stomach channel’s neck stations line the road every breath and every swallow travels, and classical practice traditionally reached for them when the throat felt hot, swollen, and painful, or when cough and laboured breathing kept irritating the passage. Locating a complaint at the throat meant looking to the points stationed there, and Shuitu stood among them on the strength of its position alone.
Goitre belongs to the vocabulary of another era: the visible swelling at the front of the neck that generations of physicians described, graded, and managed long before anything was known of glands and hormones. The term records what classical doctors observed; it is history, not a home programme. One consequence bears stating without decoration: that territory is understood today as the thyroid’s, so anyone who notices a new lump, a growing swelling, or persistent fullness at the front of the neck belongs first in a clinic, where examination and imaging can say what the old texts never could.
The closing entry, panting with inability to lie down, is the old records’ plain-spoken description of breathlessness so severe that lying flat stopped being possible. Preserved as history, the phrase shows how carefully classical physicians graded distress; translated into the present, it draws the boundary this page insists on — marked shortness of breath, or breathlessness that worsens lying down, calls for urgent medical care, never a pressure routine. All of this is traditional framework, documented for cultural understanding. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence attached to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition as heritage; hold the safety rules as law.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, shoulders heavy, jaw loose, working one side at a time. Rest the pads of two fingers on the spot and give yourself a few breaths of simple contact before adding anything — the skin learns a visitor before it accepts a conversation. Then add the smallest possible movement: slow circles the size of a lentil, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath, or a still, light hold that barely indents the surface. Sensation should read as faint warmth or the mildest dull awareness, and one to three unhurried minutes per side is plenty. Finish one side completely before considering the other.
The neck pays dividends to patience and charges heavily for force. No digging, no knuckles, no tools or devices, no dragging the skin; warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the session double as a breathing pause — inhale through the nose, soften on the exhale, and let each small circle ride the breath out. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit, morning wash-up or the evening wind-down, because what self-care traditions actually reward is repetition measured in weeks, not intensity measured in minutes.
Keep the honest scope in view: this is a few minutes of attending to your own body, a ceremony of attention rather than a treatment course. Across a fortnight of gentle practice you may notice the area feels less guarded, or that pausing to breathe becomes easier, or nothing measurable at all — every one of those outcomes fits what self-acupressure honestly offers. One small signal deserves a mention: if pressing makes swallowing feel ticklish or tight, the contact is interfering with the throat’s own work, and the right response is lighter pressure or stopping for the day. What never fits is escalation — harder, longer, deeper in pursuit of a result. The name itself advises otherwise: meet the rushing water lightly.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point earns its caution more plainly than most. The licensed dataset instructs practitioners to needle with caution here and never deeply, because the carotid artery, the thyroid, and the trachea lie nearby and must be avoided — the record says exactly this, and it is the reason the safety framing on this page runs stricter than usual. Plain geography explains the warning: the lower front of the neck concentrates a great vessel, an important gland, and the airway itself inside a space narrower than three fingers. Professional training manages that density with technique and anatomy; home self-care manages it differently and far more reliably, by never leaving the surface at all.
Translated into household rules, the discipline is short. Use finger pads only, with pressure no heavier than a coin resting on the skin. Work one side at a time and never squeeze both sides of the neck together. Never rest pressure on a felt pulse — find the beat, slide aside onto muscle — and stay clear of the windpipe’s midline lane. Skip the point entirely during any feverish illness, on days dizziness visits, over broken or irritated skin, and after recent neck injury or surgery until ordinary activity is cleared. Readers living with thyroid conditions, and pregnant readers, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any front-of-neck practice at all. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, lightheadedness, palpitations, voice change, or trouble swallowing mean stop immediately and do not try again that day.
And the wider rule stands over everything on this page: this is educational material, and acupressure is self-comfort, not diagnosis or therapy. Some signs belong with a clinician promptly, not with a pressure routine — a new lump or swelling in the neck, hoarseness persisting beyond two or three weeks, difficulty swallowing or breathing, a severe sore throat with high fever, or breathlessness at rest and inability to lie flat comfortably, which is urgent and needs care without delay. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. Shuitu’s oldest image — water passing quietly on its way — works best when the hand knows when to simply stay away.
Shuitu — Water Rushing — stands low on the front of the neck, on the front border of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, roughly halfway between the Adam’s apple and the collarbone. Classical practice reached for it when the throat burned or breathing laboured. This guide walks through finding it by touch and keeping every self-care contact strictly superficial.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Needle cautiously and shallowly, keeping clear of the carotid artery, thyroid, and trachea nearby.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shuitu without studying anatomy?
- Use two horizontal lines as the whole ruler. The top line runs level with the Adam’s apple; the bottom line follows the top edge of the collarbone where it meets the base of the neck. Halfway between the two, on the firm front edge of the strap muscle that stands out when you turn your head, lies the spot the dataset describes. Turn the head once to see the muscle, relax, and search that middle stretch — it replaces every measurement.
- Is pressing this point myself actually safe?
- Feather-light fingertip contact on one side at a time is reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and the most superficial tissues and never approaches the structures the caution record names. The documented dangers concern deep professional techniques directed toward the carotid artery, thyroid, or trachea — a category home practice never enters. Keep the habits that matter most: stay off any felt pulse, keep clear of the windpipe, never work both sides together, and stop at once on sharp pain, dizziness, palpitations, or any change in the voice.
- What did classical practice use Shuitu for?
- The traditional record lists sore swollen throat, goitre, cough, shortness of breath, and the severe breathlessness the old texts called panting with inability to lie down. Throat-and-breath complaints anchor the list, matching the point’s position where the channel runs closest to the throat. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, preserved for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims — and goitre in particular describes a finding that today begins with a doctor’s examination.
- Why does a stomach point sit up on the neck?
- Classical channel theory draws the stomach pathway starting beside the nose, crossing the face, then descending the front of the body — past the throat and down through the chest and abdomen and the front of the leg — to finish at the second toe. Its earliest neck stations accompany the throat on that descent, and Shuitu is one of them. A channel bound down the body’s front naturally passes this crossroads, and the tradition filed its throat-related discussions under the points stationed there.
- My throat has been swollen and painful for days — should I press Shuitu?
- Arrange the examination first; the pressing can wait. A sore throat with fever, trouble swallowing, a muffled voice, or any visible swelling at the front of the neck needs a clinician promptly, because proper assessment can sort out causes self-care cannot even see. Self-acupressure neither diagnoses nor replaces that process; it is a comfort practice that lives alongside medicine, never instead of it. Pressing on while an unexplained symptom continues would only delay the visit that matters.
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 ST10 Shuitu — location, actions, and 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/st10/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st10/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st10/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST10",
"name": {
"en": "Shuitu",
"gloss": "Water Rushing",
"zh-Hant": "水突",
"zh-Hans": "水突"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 10,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "On the neck, at the front edge of the long neck muscle, halfway between ST9 and the inner end of the collarbone."
},
"for": [
"sore throat",
"cough",
"shortness of breath"
],
"press": {
"text": "Light touch, one side at a time, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Keep off the pulse and the windpipe; never both sides at once."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st10",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}