下巨虛 Xiajuxu
“Lower Great Hollow” · ST39
Foot Yangming · 39 of 45 · lower-he-sea of the small intestine
Where. One thumb-width below ST38, one finger out from the shin.
For. Loose stools, lower-belly ache.
Press. Firm thumb pressure, about a minute each leg.
巨虛下廉，足陽明與小腸合，在上廉下三寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Xiajuxu Sits on the Shin
The dataset places Xiajuxu on the anterolateral aspect of the lower leg — the front-outer slope where muscle, not bare bone, faces forward — nine cun below Dubi (ST35) at the knee, one finger-breadth lateral to the anterior crest of the tibia, one cun below Tiaokou (ST38), resting in the soft corridor between the tibia and the fibula. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location, a proportional length taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, so the same number lands differently on different frames. The landmarks do the real work: begin at a named point on the knee, travel straight down the shin line, and stop a thumb-width past another named point.
A family portrait makes the geography easier to hold. The catalogue strings four points down one shared line on this part of the leg, every one of them a finger-breadth lateral to the sharp front edge of the shin bone: Zusanli (ST36) three cun below the knee, Shangjuxu (ST37) six cun down, Tiaokou (ST38) eight cun down, and Xiajuxu a further thumb-width lower still. The record adds a helpful cross-reference: Tiaokou sits midway between the crease at the back of the knee and the tip of the outer ankle bone, which puts Xiajuxu a thumb-width below the halfway mark of the whole shin stretch — squarely in the fleshy roll where the front-outer muscles are fullest, well above the tendinous terrain near the ankle.
Beneath the fingertips the setting is a groove of muscle cradled between the two long bones. The tibia, the larger of the pair, forms the ridge you can trace right up the front of the shin; the fibula runs finer and deeper along the outside. Between them lies the muscular channel the record points to, and a little further down the same corridor stands a useful confirming neighbour: Fenglong (ST40), recorded eight cun above the tip of the outer ankle bone. Knowing that both bookends exist — the point family counted down from the knee, Fenglong counted up from the ankle — turns locating from guesswork into arithmetic you can feel.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit on a firm chair and bend the knee slightly, because the knee landmark itself is found with the knee flexed. Locate Dubi (ST35) first: the small hollow that appears between the kneecap and the stout cord running from it down the shin, on the outer side — traditional charts nickname it the outer eye of the knee. From that hollow, walk your fingertips straight down the front-outer shin, keeping one finger-breadth of clearance from the sharp bony crest. Counting thumb-widths works, but the easier route is the midpoint method: picture the line from the crease at the back of the knee to the tip of the outer ankle bone, find its halfway point on the outer-front shin, then drop one thumb-width straight down. That spot, a finger-breadth off the crest, is the neighbourhood the record describes.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressing begins. Compare sides with feather-light touch: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and much less sensation a finger-width away. Lift the toes gently toward the shin — the front-outer muscle firms under the fingertips there, and the true point sits on that working muscle, not on bone. Check the clearance from the crest once more: the finger pad should rest on muscle throughout. If you meet the hard edge of the shin bone, slide outward a few millimetres and search again.
Common slips cluster at predictable places. Drifting inward lands you on the bony crest itself, which feels hard and tender underfoot; drifting outward wanders toward the fibula’s shallower ridge. Sliding too low carries you toward Fenglong’s territory above the ankle. None of these findings are harmful — simply re-anchor. Return to the outer knee eye, retrace the descent slowly, and recount. With two or three patient passes the line becomes familiar, and most people thereafter can go straight to the spot without counting at all.
Reading the Name: Lower Great Hollow
The three characters sketch the site in miniature. Xia 下 means below or lower; ju 巨 means great, large; xu 虛 carries the sense of a void, emptiness, open hollow ground. Read together they give the lower great hollow — and the pairing is deliberate. Six cun up the very same line stands Shangjuxu 上巨虛, the upper great hollow, the same naming idea with shang, above, swapped in. The two names behave like signposts posted one above the other on a single trail: whatever the tradition sought at one, it also considered at its sibling, each matched to its own organ.
The office Xiajuxu holds explains why a leg point speaks for a belly organ. Classical teaching assigns each of the six fu organs a special gathering point below the knee, called a lower he-sea point — a place where that organ’s activity was understood to pool and become reachable from the body’s surface. The small intestine’s gathering point stands here, notably on another organ’s pathway: the Stomach channel hosts it. Classical descriptions send that channel down the front of the body, from the face all the way to the second toe, so its lower-leg passage became shared territory where the affairs of several organs were traditionally addressed. The tradition reads the lower leg as a kind of switchboard for the fu.
Pinyin renders the name Xiàjùxū: xià falls away on the fourth tone, jù repeats the falling fourth tone, and xū rides the high, flat first tone. Three compact characters, easy to hold at a glance. Like gates, valleys, and courtyards elsewhere in the channel maps, hollows are doing real work here: a hollow is where flow gathers, slows, and can be met by a hand. The name is a small set of instructions — go low, look for the wide soft space, and press there.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: diarrhoea, dysentery, lower abdominal pain, atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs, and breast abscess. In the traditional frame, diarrhoea meant loose, frequent stools, and classical practice reached for the small intestine’s gathering point when the bowels ran loose. Dysentery was a historical category covering urgent, distressing bowel illness often marked by blood and mucus — language worth translating carefully for modern readers: anyone experiencing those symptoms today needs prompt medical assessment, not self-care. Lower abdominal pain was understood as qi and blood moving poorly around and below the navel, a stuckness rather than an acute event; sudden, severe, or worsening abdominal pain has always belonged to urgent care.
The physiology the tradition attached to the small intestine ties these threads together. Classical texts describe the organ as separating the clear from the turbid — sorting usable fluids from waste as digested material passes through. When that sorting faltered, the expectation was watery stool, gurgling, and griping around the lower abdomen, which is precisely the register of this point’s recorded uses. Atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs belongs to the channel-side of the ledger: with the pathway passing down the front of the body to the second toe, weakness and wasting along the route were traditionally approached at points on the way. Breast abscess looks the furthest flung; classical writers routinely explained distant complaints through channel connections, reaching from leg to trunk. Acute breast swelling with fever and spreading redness is, today, a reason to seek medical care quickly.
It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. 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. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found, settle in: seated on a firm chair, or lying down with a rolled towel under the knee so the leg relaxes. Rest the pads of the index and middle fingers — never the tips, never a knuckle or tool — on the spot. Begin with simple contact for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the muscle beneath. Aim for pleasant dullness or a mild spreading warmth; anything sharp means easing off at once. Swap hands and repeat on the other side, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
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. Quality outranks duration: light, patient, regularly repeated contact suits the wellness register this page practises, while hard jabbing teaches the body nothing and bruises readily over the shin. Warm your hands first if they run cold, choose a quiet corner over a screen, and anchor the minute or two to an existing habit — morning coffee, an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for.
Treat the practice as a small ceremony of attention. Across weeks, notice honestly what changes: perhaps the area feels less tight, perhaps the legs feel more awake on the morning stairs, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend two minutes attending to your own body. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record carries no specific caution for this entry, and it is worth reading that absence precisely: it tells you what the recorded sources noted, and it never converts pressure into force. The corridor between the shin bones carries vessels and nerves the way any limb segment does, and the tibial crest next door is unforgiving under hard pressure. Gentle, purely surface contact remains the entire repertoire of home practice — the moment force enters, the practice has left its lane regardless of what any record says.
Practical rules follow. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and leave the point alone for the rest of the day. Skip the area entirely over broken, irritated, or inflamed skin, and after any lower-leg injury, burn, or surgery until ordinary activity has been cleared. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone living with diabetes, circulation problems, or persistent numbness in the feet should ask a clinician before making pressure routines a habit. Keep sessions short and light — more is not better here, only riskier.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, acupressure is self-care, and neither is diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for blood in the stool, fever accompanying bowel upset, diarrhoea lasting beyond a couple of days, sudden or severe abdominal pain, new weakness or numbness in a leg, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The safest gift Xiajuxu offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own legs, treated kindly.
Xiajuxu, the Lower Great Hollow, sits on the upper outer shin where the Stomach channel passes between the two long bones of the lower leg. Classical practice honoured it as the small intestine’s gathering place for loose bowels, dysentery-style illness, and lower abdominal discomfort. This guide covers finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Xiajuxu without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the midpoint trick. Picture the line from the crease at the back of your knee to the tip of the outer ankle bone and find its halfway point on the outer-front shin; drop one thumb-width straight down from there, keeping a finger-breadth of clearance from the sharp crest of the shin. The catalogue records Tiaokou (ST38) at that midpoint and Xiajuxu one cun below it, so the two measurements converge on the same spot. Cun measurements simply encode this landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Xiajuxu myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the licensed record for this entry notes no specific caution. That is an observation about the sources, not an invitation to force: the shin rewards lightness and resents grinding. Respect the stop signals — sharp pain, electric or radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finishing immediately and trying again another day, or not at all.
- What did classical practice use Xiajuxu for?
- The traditional record lists diarrhoea, dysentery, lower abdominal pain, atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs, and breast abscess. Classical texts describe it as the lower he-sea point where the small intestine’s activity gathers, which is why bowel complaints dominate its historic portfolio. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why is the small intestine’s gathering point on the Stomach channel?
- Classical teaching gives each of the six fu organs a lower he-sea point below the knee, placing them along routes where their activity was thought to concentrate — which does not always mean their own channels. The small intestine’s was assigned to the Stomach channel’s descent between the shin bones, with its sibling Shangjuxu, the large intestine’s gathering point, three cun higher on the same line. The arrangement reflects how the tradition mapped the lower limbs as shared, densely significant ground rather than as private property of each channel.
- Can acupressure at Xiajuxu replace seeing a doctor about digestive problems?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and bowel symptoms carry real red flags — blood in the stool, fever, severe or worsening pain, duration beyond a couple of days — that need professional assessment promptly. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs that 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, lower-he-sea theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for ST39 Xiajuxu — location, point class, 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/st39/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st39/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st39/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST39",
"name": {
"en": "Xiajuxu",
"gloss": "Lower Great Hollow",
"zh-Hant": "下巨虛",
"zh-Hans": "下巨虚"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 39,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "One thumb-width below ST38, one finger out from the shin."
},
"for": [
"loose stools",
"lower-belly ache"
],
"press": {
"text": "Firm thumb pressure, about a minute each leg.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st39",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}