豐隆 Fenglong
“Abundant Prominence” · ST40
Foot Yangming · 40 of 45 · luo-connecting
Where. Halfway between the outer knee hollow and the outer ankle bone, two finger-widths out from the shin.
For. Headache, dizziness, a phlegmy cough.
Press. Firm thumb pressure, about a minute each leg.
豐隆，足陽明絡也，在外踝上八寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Fenglong Sits on the Outer Shin
On the anterolateral aspect of the lower leg — the front-outer face of the calf — Fenglong occupies the address the dataset records: eight cun above the tip of the lateral malleolus, two finger-breadths lateral to the anterior crest of the tibia, lying on the fleshy part slightly before the fibula. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler. For this stretch of leg, the conventional proportional map counts sixteen cun between the crease behind the knee and the tip of the outer ankle bone, so eight cun marks that segment’s exact midpoint — Fenglong sits halfway up the outer shin, neither near the knee nor near the ankle.
The landscape under the fingertips is generous muscle. Slide inward from the point and you meet the firm ridge of the shin bone’s front edge; slide outward and you find the slender outer bone of the lower leg, the fibula, with the point resting on the soft fullness just ahead of it. Between those two bony borders runs a fleshy corridor — the territory of the muscles that raise the foot — and Fenglong lies where that corridor is fullest. Lifting the toes gently makes the muscle firm beneath your fingers, which turns locating from a matter of measuring into a matter of feeling.
The neighbours confirm the address. Tiaokou (ST38), recorded one finger-breadth out from the same tibial crest, shares essentially this level band, so the dataset’s note that Fenglong stands lateral to it reads simply as one more step outward along the same corridor, closer to the fibula. As for the channel itself: classical texts describe the stomach meridian descending the whole front of the body from the face to the second toe, and through the lower leg it travels precisely this front-outer passage between the two bones. Finding Fenglong therefore finds a stretch of the channel’s road, and both legs carry the same mirrored station for your two-sided attention.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably with one ankle resting across the other knee so the whole outer shin can be seen and reached, or stay seated and explore by feel. Begin with the height. Find the tip of the outer ankle bone with a fingertip; bend the knee once to locate the crease at the back of it; then picture the stretch between those two landmarks and take its middle — that halfway band is the level the record gives, eight cun up from the ankle tip in proportional language. Next, trace the firm ridge running up the shin to identify the front edge of the tibia. From that edge, walk outward two finger-breadths onto the fleshy slope, and settle where the muscle rises fullest, just shy of the slender outer bone.
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 point and little sensation a finger-width away. Lift the toes gently off the floor a few times — the muscle corridor firms beneath the pad as it works, and the fullest part of that firmness is the target; then relax and let the spot soften again. Check the horizontal position too: your finger should rest clearly beyond the shin’s front edge, yet need not wrap around toward the back of the outer bone. If everything under the pad feels like bare bone, drift outward until flesh returns; if the calf bulge behind the fibula swallows the fingertip, come forward again.
Two slips account for most misses. The first is height: people anchor on the ankle and climb too little, landing low where the corridor narrows, or they hunt diagonally and drift gradually toward the back of the leg. Re-anchor often — ankle tip, knee crease, middle. The second slip is width: pressing straight down on the tibial crest itself, which reads as hard and unyielding rather than fleshy, or overshooting past the fibula into the deeper hollow behind it. The true ground is yielding muscle held between the two bones, fullest where it bulges gently forward. A few unhurried surveys usually fix an inner map of the spot for good.
Reading the Name: Abundant Prominence
The characters sketch the terrain first. Feng 豐 means abundant, luxuriant, plentiful — harvest imagery of fullness. Long 隆 carries the sense of swelling prominence: a mound rising, a belly rounding out. Together, Fenglong reads as abundant prominence, and commentators have long taken the name topographically: at this level the calf’s muscular landscape swells generously, and the point rests upon the most prominent part of that fullness. Like many channel points named for hills, valleys, markets and storehouses, the name doubles as a location note written in poetry.
The second layer of the name belongs to theory. Classical teaching assigns each of the twelve regular channels one luo-connecting point: a place where a branching pathway departs to bind the channel to its designated partner. Fenglong holds that office for the stomach channel, linking it to the spleen channel — its interior-exterior counterpart, and together with it the traditional engine of digestion and fluid transformation. A teaching paraphrased across the classical literature holds that the spleen is the source of phlegm while the lungs merely store it; a meeting-point joining the stomach line to the spleen line therefore became the tradition’s natural address whenever phlegm abundance framed the complaint.
Pinyin renders the name Fēnglóng: fēng carries a first tone — held flat and high — while lóng rises through a second tone. The hanzi pair 豐隆 is simple enough to read at a glance. Some commentators also recall an older stratum of Chinese lore in which Fenglong served as a name for the spirit of thunder; they enjoy the image of thunder breaking a sky heavy with mist when explaining why this point grew into the tradition’s great disperser of phlegm-clouds. Whether read as geography, pathway theory, or weather lore, the name keeps pointing one way: fullness gathered here meets a way through.
Traditional Indications, Explained
Read as a list, the recorded indications divide naturally. First comes the phlegm cluster: copious phlegm cough, phlegm-rheum disorders, and vomiting with asthma. In the traditional frame phlegm reaches far beyond what a handkerchief catches — it names a thickened, turbid residue of faulty fluid transformation that can lodge anywhere, clouding the head or settling in the chest; rheum is its thinner, watery sibling. Headache and dizziness join this cluster in classical reasoning: turbid abundance clouding upward was one traditional way to account for heavy heads and swimming vision. Framed as history, classical practice traditionally reached for Fenglong when complaints seemed thick, damp and overabundant — never as a promise about any particular illness.
Two further entries look stranger to modern eyes. Mania names a severe traditional category covering profound mental-emotional disturbance — agitation, disordered speech, sleepless excess. Classical records reaching for a stomach-channel connecting point amid such storms belong to a pre-modern medical world and are recorded here as history alone; anything resembling such presentations today calls for psychiatric care, not pressure points. Atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs fits the map more plainly: the channel runs straight down the very limb, and classical practice approached weakness, wasting and heaviness along a channel by working at points along its course — Fenglong among them, stationed midway up the road.
The last entries wear modern clothing: hypertension and sequelae of cerebrovascular disease appear in later clinical records alongside the classical list. These reflect how practice catalogued the point in the modern era, and they arrive with heavy responsibilities attached. Blood pressure belongs under professional measurement and management; stroke and its aftermath belong to urgent medicine and structured rehabilitation teams. Where modern research has touched self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin. This page records these indications for cultural understanding — it does not claim that pressing Fenglong treats any of them.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found, settle in: seated, spine easy, the working leg relaxed. Rest the pad of your thumb on the spot and let contact alone do the first work — a few slow breaths with no added force. Then add small, patient circles, letting the skin glide over the deeper tissue; pressure should register as pleasant dullness, a spreading heaviness, perhaps 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 on the other side so the pair stays symmetrical; the mirrored stations answer each other best when treated alike.
Quality outranks quantity, as with all self-care in this register. Warm hands press more kindly than cold ones; a quiet corner beats a screen; regular short sessions outrank occasional heroics. People who keep such habits usually anchor them to existing routines — after washing up, before an afternoon walk — because consistency, not intensity, is what wellness practice actually asks. If a day is missed, simply resume; guilt is not part of the method. And let the practice double as a pause: the calves carry much of a day’s standing and walking, and a minute of unhurried attention there repays attention with attention.
Keep expectations honest and small. Across weeks you may notice the area feeling less guarded, the legs a little lighter in the evening, or simply that ninety seconds of the day belong to you. All of that sits comfortably within self-acupressure’s honest scope. What does not sit within it is escalation — digging harder, pressing longer, treating discomfort as progress. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or set the practice down for the day. The point has waited centuries; it can wait until tomorrow.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Fenglong begins from a comfortable position: the licensed record attaches no specific caution to this point. That is worth stating plainly, and equally worth reading correctly — absence of a special warning is not an invitation to force. The ground here is forgiving muscle rather than delicate hollow, but every patch of skin shelters structures better left undisturbed, and the tradition’s universal rules were never written per-point. Gentle, superficial, unhurried contact is the whole art; the record’s silence changes nothing about that.
Practical limits follow. Use finger or thumb pads, never elbows, knuckles or tools. Stop at once on sharp, electric or radiating sensation, and leave the point alone for the rest of the day. Skip the area over broken, irritated or infected skin, and pause the routine during feverish illness. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with significant circulatory disease, diabetes-related loss of sensation in the feet, or recent injury or surgery to the lower leg, should ask a qualified practitioner before adding any new point work. Discomfort that worsens instead of easing is information — listen to it and stop.
Above everything stands the wider rule. This page is educational; acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for sudden severe headache, fainting, new weakness or numbness, chest pain, breathlessness, or any symptom following a suspected stroke; persistent headaches, dizziness, coughs or blood-pressure concerns belong with licensed practitioners, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The old image of thunder clearing mist is charming, but the safest thing Fenglong offers most households is a small daily ritual of care for legs that work hard — practised lightly, and bounded firmly.
Fenglong, the Abundant Prominence, rests on the fleshy front-outer slope of the lower calf, midway between the crease of the knee and the outer ankle. Classical practice honoured it as the meeting-place where the stomach channel joins hands with the spleen channel, and turned to it when phlegm gathered thick. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Fenglong without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the midpoint rule plus the bony edges. Find the tip of the outer ankle bone and the crease at the back of the knee, then take the halfway point of the stretch between them. Next, trace the firm front edge of the shin bone and step outward two finger-breadths onto the fleshy slope. Where the muscle rises fullest, just before the slim outer bone of the leg, is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Why is Fenglong so strongly associated with phlegm?
- Through its office as the stomach channel’s luo-connecting point. Classical teaching describes the luo point as the doorway where a channel sends a branch to join its paired channel — here, the spleen channel, the stomach’s interior-exterior partner in the traditional work of transforming fluids. Since a teaching paraphrased across the classical literature makes the spleen the source of phlegm and the lungs its storeroom, a point binding the stomach and spleen lines became the tradition’s natural address for complaints framed as thick, damp abundance. It is framework logic, documented for context — not a modern treatment claim.
- What did classical practice use Fenglong for?
- The recorded list runs: headache, dizziness, copious phlegm cough, phlegm-rheum disorders, vomiting and asthma, mania in the old sense of severe mental-emotional disturbance, and atrophy and paralysis of the lower limbs — with hypertension and sequelae of cerebrovascular disease added in later records. Classical texts describe the point as the stomach channel’s link to the spleen, which is why damp, phlegm-framed complaints dominate its early portfolio. Those frameworks are offered for historical understanding, not as evidence-backed treatment promises.
- Is pressing Fenglong myself safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure on this forgiving stretch of muscle is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the licensed record attaches no specific caution to the point. That comfort still lives inside limits: pads rather than tools, light sustained force, immediate stop on sharp or radiating sensation, and skipping the area over broken skin. Anyone pregnant, or managing circulation problems or reduced foot sensation, should check with a qualified practitioner before beginning.
- Can Fenglong acupressure replace medical care for high blood pressure or stroke recovery?
- No. Blood pressure needs professional measurement and ongoing management, and stroke rehabilitation belongs to medical and therapy teams — neither is negotiable. Self-acupressure, at most, is a comfort practice some people fold around their prescribed care; it must never substitute for it, delay treatment, or follow red-flag symptoms such as new weakness, numbness or speech change, which call for emergency assessment. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs for exactly the days ordinary life cannot manage alone.
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, luo-point theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for ST40 Fenglong — 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/st40/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st40/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st40/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST40",
"name": {
"en": "Fenglong",
"gloss": "Abundant Prominence",
"zh-Hant": "豐隆",
"zh-Hans": "丰隆"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 40,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "Halfway between the outer knee hollow and the outer ankle bone, two finger-widths out from the shin."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"dizziness",
"a phlegmy cough"
],
"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/st40",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}