陷谷 Xiangu
“Sunken Valley” · ST43
Foot Yangming · 43 of 45 · shu-stream
Where. On top of the foot, in the dip just in front of where the second and third long foot bones meet.
For. A puffy face, red, sore eyes, an aching top of the foot.
Press. Fingertip pressure into the dip, about a minute each foot.
陷谷者木也。在足大指次指間本節後陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Xiangu Sits on the Top of the Foot
The dataset locates Xiangu on the dorsum of the foot, in the depression distal to the junction of the second and third metatarsal bones, and every term in that sentence unpacks cleanly. The dorsum is the upper surface of the foot, the part that faces the sky when you stand. The metatarsals are the five long bones bridging the midfoot to the toes: the second belongs to the ray behind the second toe, the third to the ray behind the third. Travelling from the toes toward the ankle, their two slender shafts gradually draw together and finally meet near their bases, around the level where foot becomes ankle. That meeting is the junction, and distal means the far end away from the trunk — so the depression sought here lies on the toe side of the junction, not behind it.
The terrain under the fingertip suits patient searching. Between the two shafts runs a shallow trough, softest where the bones have not yet merged; across the top of the foot fan the long tendons that straighten the toes, gliding visibly whenever the toes curl or lift. Skin lies thin over all of it, and bone sits close — there are no organs and no body cavities anywhere near, only tendon, small vessels, and the fine nerves that serve the toes. Because the tendons move and the bones do not, a useful habit is to flex the toes slowly during the search: what slides under your pad is tendon, what stays put is the groove itself, and the groove is the address. Nothing about the spot rewards force; it announces itself to lightness.
Neighbours make the clearest map. Walk up the top of the foot from the gap between the second and third toes, following the same groove toward the ankle. First comes Neiting (ST44), whose record places it between the two toes, at the junction of red and white skin just behind the web margin. Farther along, where the two bone shafts begin converging, the groove dips into Xiangu’s hollow. Still higher, the foot rises to its highest dorsal point between the two great extensor tendons, and there sits Chongyang (ST42), whose record notes the pulse of the dorsal artery beneath. The order fixes the position beyond argument: web, hollow, summit. And the pulse doubles as a signpost — a strong beat under your fingertips means you have already climbed past this point.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Set yourself up comfortably: sit on a chair, rest the left ankle loosely on the right knee or lay the left foot flat with the toes free, whichever lets the top of the foot relax. Find the gap between the second and third toes of the left foot and place your right index finger in it. Slide slowly upward along the top of the foot, keeping to the groove between the two bone shafts, until the shafts merge into one broad meeting under your finger. From that convergence point, step back toward the toes about half a thumb-width and let your pad settle into the shallow hollow that opens between the two diverging bones. That hollow, distal to the junction of the metatarsals, is the recorded seat of Xiangu. Repeat the whole search on the right foot.
Three quiet checks help before any real pressure begins. The movement test: curl and extend the toes slowly — tendon glides across the groove, but the hollow itself stays anchored, confirming you are between bones rather than astride one. The comparison test: touch feather-light on both feet; most people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true hollow and little sensation a finger-width away. The pulse test: if a decided beat pushes against your pad, you have wandered uphill into Chongyang’s territory; ease back down toward the toes and search again a little lower. None of these checks should ever hurt. If light touch alone stings, the finger is probably sitting on the bare ridge of a bone — slide back toward the centre of the groove and let the hollow find you.
Most mislocations reduce to three slips. Landing in the soft web between the toes puts you on Neiting’s doorstep, a full station short. Pressing squarely onto a bone shaft finds plenty of sensation but no point — the address is the trough, never either bank. And sliding past the junction onto the rising instep overshoots toward Chongyang and the ankle. A fourth, quieter slip deserves its own warning: the foot carries several grooves, and each neighbouring space belongs to a different point on a different stretch of channel. Only the second-third space, followed upward from the web to the bone meeting, leads here. When in doubt, return to the toes and walk the groove again, slowly, letting the landmarks arrive in order.
Reading the Name: Sunken Valley
The name is a landscape in two characters. Xian 陷 means to sink, to cave in, to lie hollowed low — dictionaries gloss it as subsiding into a depression. Gu 谷 means valley: the furrowed low ground between raised banks, where water gathers and runs. Read together, Xiangu is the sunken valley, and the location draws the picture precisely: between the two bony ridges of the metatarsal shafts lies a shallow trough whose floor sits lower than its banks, a valley in miniature sunk into the top of the foot. Point names across the channels return constantly to such images — wells, springs, streams, rivers, valleys, seas — and they are rarely decoration. Here, as so often, the name doubles as instruction: search for the low ground between the ridges, never the ridges themselves.
Spoken aloud the name is Xiàngǔ. Dictionaries and TCM references give xian in the fourth tone, a clean falling pitch, and gu in the third tone, the low dip that lifts again at the end — tones worth confirming against a dictionary rather than guessing, a habit this site keeps for every name. Script history adds one quiet footnote: in the older writing system the valley-word gu and the grain-word were distinct characters, and modern simplified Chinese folds the two together; this point’s name belongs to the older, valley-born lineage. Neither footnote changes the practical takeaway. The hanzi pair 陷谷 is short enough to hold at a glance, and like gates, courtyards, and storehouses elsewhere on the channels, it is architecture doing instructional work — the metaphor tells your fingertip where to stop.
Classical commentators read the name two ways at once, and both survive in the dataset this site licenses. One reading is topographical: a hollow between two ridges, matched to the body’s own terrain. The other reaches into the water imagery that runs through the whole naming tradition — because the channels themselves were likened to rivers, their stations were named for the features a river meets on its course. A valley is where a young watercourse gathers depth between confining banks, which makes the name a quiet preview of this point’s formal title, discussed below: the stream point of its channel. Name and category thus tell one continuous story — terrain first, hydrology second, and the searching finger benefits from both.
A Stream Point on the Foot Yangming Channel
Beyond its place in the count, Xiangu holds a formal title: it is the stream point — the shu point — of the stomach channel. The five transport points sort each channel’s first locations into an ascending series borrowed from landscape: well, spring, stream, river, and sea. Qi, in the traditional picture, behaves like water — emerging barely at the toenail wells, trickling at the springs, gathering body where the streams run, widening at the rivers, pooling wide at the seas near elbow and knee. The licensed catalogue marks the ladder on this channel plainly: Lidui (ST45) at the corner of the second toenail holds the well, Neiting (ST44) behind the toe web holds the spring, and Xiangu owns the stream — the widening middle of the journey.
Tradition attached a temperament to each stage. Classical teaching describes stream points as places where the flow has gathered enough volume to matter, and generalised classical guidance reached for them when complaints felt heavy, settled deep, or came and went with time — an association that lends context to entries like swelling and intermittent gut sounds on this point’s record, without turning association into promise. One structural detail completes the picture. On the yin channels of the arms and legs, the stream station doubles as the source point, where an organ’s own qi pools; on yang channels the source office moves one station upstream. The stomach channel runs along the foot’s dorsal aspect as the foot yangming, and accordingly its catalogue gives the source office to Chongyang (ST42), one step back toward the ankle. Neighbouring points share a groove yet hold different posts.
Wider context rounds out the picture. The stomach channel descends the front of the body from the face to the second toe — the route description this site’s own meridian record carries — and Xiangu sits near the far end of that long descent, in the stretch where the channel gathers itself before reaching its final station at the toenail. In five-phase thinking the stomach belongs to the earth phase, and its interior-exterior partner, the spleen channel, shares the same phase; the pairing shaped how classical writers reasoned about digestion across the two lines. None of this framework asks to be believed as physiology. Presented as the tradition’s own map, it explains why a point on the foot could be discussed alongside the face, the eyes, and the belly in the old literature at all.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The licensed record lists four indications: facial swelling and edema, red swollen eyes, swelling and pain of the foot dorsum, and borborygmus with abdominal pain. Framed throughout as what classical practice reached for rather than as promised results, the list divides neatly by reasoning. The face and eye entries ride the channel map. Classical texts describe the stomach channel setting out in the facial territory before descending the front of the trunk, so discomfort surfacing at the route’s upper end was traditionally approached at stations far downstream along the same line. Facial puffiness and red, irritated eyes sat in that upstream territory, and this foot-side station stood within reach of the shared route.
The belly entry rides the organ link. This being the stomach’s own channel, classical practice read borborygmus — the audible gurgling of gas and fluid moving through the gut — and accompanying abdominal pain as the organ’s traffic sounding at a window on its surface line; points along the channel were where that traffic could be addressed, in the period’s idiom. The foot entry rides the plainest rule of all: the nearest good point serves the nearest complaint. Swelling and pain on the foot dorsum sit literally underfoot here, which made the point a natural local candidate regardless of any grander theory. Three logics — distant, organic, local — overlap in one small record, and together they show how the old system thought rather than what it achieved.
Honesty requires the other half of the paragraph. These are traditional uses, recorded for cultural and historical understanding; they are not claims that pressing Xiangu treats disease. Where modern research has examined self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and dependent on context, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Practical routing matters more than hope. New or rapidly spreading facial swelling, eye pain accompanied by changed or clouded vision, abdominal pain that is severe, worsening, or joined by fever, and bowel habits that change persistently all belong with a doctor promptly — some of them urgently. A grumbling, audible belly on an ordinary day sits in gentler territory, but even there the honest scope of a fingertip routine is comfort and attention, nothing more categorical.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, set up gently. Sit with the foot supported and the toes free to move, wrap the fingers of one hand around the forefoot to hold it steady, and place the pad of the opposite thumb — pads, never tips, nails, or tools — in the hollow. Begin with contact alone through three slow breaths, then add small circles, letting the skin travel lightly over the tissue beneath. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or faint warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to two minutes per foot, once or twice daily, timed to unhurried exhales. Finish by repeating everything on the other foot, keeping the sessions symmetrical — the points come as a pair, and so should the attention.
Foot points tempt people toward too much force in odd ways: the sole feels tough, so the whole foot gets treated as armour, yet the dorsum is thin-skinned and bone-backed and wants the opposite handling. Aim deliberately lighter than feels decisive, especially where tendon crosses the groove. Warm your hands first on cold days, because chilled tissue guards itself. Give the practice a quiet setting rather than a screen, and let it double as a pause in the day — contact settling on the inhale, gentle circling riding the long way out. People who keep such routines attach them to existing habits: taking off outdoor shoes in the afternoon, an evening foot-wash, the stretch before bed. Regularity, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask of anyone.
Keep expectations sized to the practice. Across a week or two you may notice the area feeling less guarded, the groove reading more familiar under your thumb, or simply enjoy ninety seconds of attended stillness in a busy day; every one of those outcomes sits inside acupressure’s honest scope. What sits outside it is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, particularly over a groove that aches afterwards. Soreness that outlasts the session is feedback, and the right response is less, not more. Curiosity that pulls toward force is the signal to return to gentleness or close the day’s practice altogether; the valley is not improved by being stamped on.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Reassuring geography first: nothing vital lies beneath this spot. Under the skin sit the extensor tendons, the two metatarsal shafts, small vessels, and the fine nerves serving the toes — no organs, no cavities — which places foot-dorsum points among the calmer locations for purely surface work. The licensed dataset records no specific cautions for Xiangu, and this page echoes that empty record faithfully, exactly as the catalogue stores it. An absence of recorded cautions is not an invitation to enthusiasm, though. Feet carry the whole body all day, meet the world shoe-first, and collect more small injuries than almost any other part; a conservative margin suits them naturally.
Practical limits follow. Skip the point whenever the skin there is broken, blistered, peeling, or inflamed — cuts, athlete’s foot flares, insect bites, and eczema all qualify. Set the practice aside after any recent injury to that foot: sprains, stubbed or fractured toes under healing, tendon trouble, or an arthritis flare in the joints of the forefoot. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation ends the session immediately, that day. Anyone pregnant, and anyone managing chronic illness — particularly conditions that reduce circulation or sensation in the feet — does well to consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point routine at all, because individual circumstances outrank any general page.
And the frame around everything: this page is educational. Acupressure is comfort self-care — not diagnosis, not treatment, and never a substitute for the professionals whose job is precisely the symptom you may be hoping to quiet. Of the situations this record touches, swelling deserves the sharpest routing: new swelling of one foot or lower leg, swelling with breathlessness or chest discomfort, or swelling after an injury belongs in prompt medical assessment, not in a pressure routine. Slower complaints — a tired, achy forefoot at day’s end, a quietly gurgling belly — can begin, sensibly, with gentleness and a little curiosity. The safest gift this sunken valley offers most people is a better acquaintance with their own feet, treated kindly.
Xiangu, the Sunken Valley, waits in the shallow groove along the top of the foot where the second and third long bones draw together. Classical practice reached for it amid facial swelling, red irritated eyes, sore swollen foot tops, and a rumbling, unsettled belly. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How is Xiangu different from Neiting (ST44), its neighbour toward the toes?
- They share one groove but hold different posts. Neiting sits at the web margin between the second and third toes, where the red and white skin meet, holding the spring station; Xiangu sits farther back, in the hollow distal to the junction of the two metatarsal shafts, holding the stream station. Classical records list overlapping interests for both, but this guide concerns only gentle self-palpation and surface pressure at Xiangu — locating it correctly is the skill the page teaches, and the web-versus-junction distinction is what separates arriving from missing by one full station.
- Why would a point on the foot carry face and eye indications in the old records?
- Channel logic. In the classical map, the stomach channel sets out in the face and travels down the front of the body all the way to the second toe, so the surface route was treated as a live line connecting foot to face. Facial swelling and red, irritated eyes appearing at a foot-side point expresses that correspondence, not an anatomical discovery. It is a coherent framework within its own era’s physiology — presented here to help readers understand the record, not as a claim about outcomes.
- The dataset records no cautions for Xiangu — does that mean anything goes?
- It means the licensed sources store an empty caution list for this point, which this page echoes verbatim; it does not mean the point is exempt from ordinary care. Surface contact stays gentle, tools stay unused, and broken, blistered, or inflamed skin, recent foot injury, and any sharp or radiating sensation all suspend the practice outright. Empty-record points receive conservatism, not enthusiasm — the feet earn it especially, given how much work they do and how quietly they accumulate small injuries.
- Is Xiangu safe to use during pregnancy?
- Prudence first: check with a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice while pregnant. Xiangu’s own record says nothing specific about pregnancy — which is exactly why an individual answer should come from someone who can see the whole picture rather than from a general page. Guidance covering a whole channel is the sensible course, and it applies equally before combining points or extending sessions beyond the gentle rhythm described here.
- My feet sometimes swell after long days — should I be pressing Xiangu?
- Size the response to the situation. Everyday tiredness at the end of a long, upright day is ordinary territory where a gentle routine may simply sit alongside rest, elevating the feet, and comfortable shoes. But new, one-sided, persistent, or worsening swelling is a symptom asking for assessment — particularly with breathlessness, chest discomfort, or a recent injury — and that calls for a clinician promptly, not pressure. Even in the ordinary case the honest expectation is comfort and attention; if nothing shifts over a reasonable stretch, take that as information and bring it to a licensed practitioner.
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, stream-point theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for ST43 Xiangu — location, point class, actions, and the (empty) 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/st43/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st43/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st43/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST43",
"name": {
"en": "Xiangu",
"gloss": "Sunken Valley",
"zh-Hant": "陷谷",
"zh-Hans": "陷谷"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 43,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "On top of the foot, in the dip just in front of where the second and third long foot bones meet."
},
"for": [
"A puffy face",
"red",
"sore eyes",
"an aching top of the foot"
],
"press": {
"text": "Fingertip pressure into the dip, about a minute each foot.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st43",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}