內庭 Neiting
“Inner Courtyard” · ST44
Foot Yangming · 44 of 45 · ying-spring
Where. On top of the foot, at the web between the second and third toes, just behind its edge.
For. Toothache, sore throat, nosebleed.
Press. Fingertip pressure, about a minute each foot.
內庭者，水也。在足大指次指外間陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
配 · Pairs with
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Neiting Sits on the Foot
On the dorsum of the foot — the top side, where the skin stretches over the small bones and tendons of the instep — Neiting occupies the narrow groove that separates the second and third toes. The dataset places it precisely: between the two toes, at the junction of the red and white skin, posterior to the toe web margin. Posterior here describes direction, not depth: it means behind the fold where the toes meet the foot, and behind always counts back toward the ankle rather than forward toward the nails. The red-and-white junction is the traditional name for the visible line where skin tones change — the paler skin of the foot’s top giving way to the slightly darker, redder skin that continues around from the sole side of the toes.
What the fingertips meet there deserves gentleness rather than force. Between the toes almost everything lives close to the surface: thin skin, small vessels, the tiny muscles that spread the toes apart, and fine nerve branches that give each toe its own keen report. The groove itself is soft and yielding, and even unhurried fingers can feel the slender tendon lines that rise from the toes toward the instep on either side of it. None of this asks for pressure. A point set in such tender territory answers the lightest touch, and heavy digging between the toes serves no purpose any tradition would recognise.
The closing stretch of the stomach channel makes this little span of anatomy a busy neighborhood. The channel’s final station, Lidui (ST45), rests at the corner of the second toenail that faces the third toe; one station back up the groove sits Neiting; and continuing toward the ankle along the same line lies Xiangu (ST43), in the hollow on the toe-side of the junction where the second and third long bones of the foot meet. Finding any one of the three confirms the others: locate the web, identify the colour change immediately behind it, and the geography of the channel’s last steps falls into place.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably and bring one foot up to rest across the opposite knee, or plant both feet flat and lean forward slightly — whichever lets the toes hang loose. Lay the pads of your index and middle fingers across the web between the second and third toes of that foot. Slide the fingertips barely back toward the ankle — the smallest step past the fold of the web — until they cross the faint line where the skin tone changes. Sweep feather-light from side to side: the groove between the toes should lie under the finger pads, with the rounded tops of the small bones felt on either flank.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressing begins. Compare sides using the same feather-light touch: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away. Let the toes flex gently while the fingers rest in place — the groove moves, and the spot moves with it, confirming that you sit in the valley between structures rather than on top of one. Check the height too: this point sits low on the foot, level with the bases of the toes, nowhere near the middle of the instep. If the finger finds mostly bare bone ridge or the cord of a tendon, ease off and search again half a step nearer the web.
The classic mistakes bracket the target. Search too far forward and the finger lands inside the soft web itself, where the skin folds and pinches unpleasantly; drift too far back and you wander up the instep toward Xiangu’s hollow. The correction is identical in both directions: return to the web fold, take the shortest possible step toward the ankle, and stop at the first change of colour. Repeat the whole search on the other foot — the two sides deserve equal attention, and comparing them teaches the fingers this terrain faster than any diagram could.
Reading the Name: Inner Courtyard
The two characters of the name draw a house in miniature. Nei 內 means inner or inside — the character pictures something enclosed within a boundary. Ting 庭 is a courtyard: the open ground inside the gate of a traditional residence, where guests were received and household life spilled outdoors. Together, Neiting reads as the inner courtyard. Set the image against the foot and it fits neatly: the toe-web margin behaves like a threshold or gate, and the small open ground just inside it — the very depression the dataset locates — becomes the courtyard lying within.
Classical writers favoured architectural names for channel points — gates, courtyards, markets, halls, valleys — and the choices were rarely idle decoration. A courtyard is neither open street nor innermost room: it is the receiving ground just inside the entrance, where whatever arrives is taken in before anything moves deeper into the house. Read against the old indication lists, the image does quiet work: complaints that arrive hot and sudden — a flaring toothache, a burning throat, a nose that will not stop bleeding — are the sort of visitors classical practice brought to this receiving ground between the toes. That is a frame for understanding the tradition’s choices, not a proof of effect, and it is best held lightly, as imagery.
Pinyin renders the name Nèitíng. The first syllable, nèi, carries a falling fourth tone; the second, tíng, rises on the second tone. Spoken aloud, the name dips sharply and then lifts — a step down into the courtyard, then the raising of the eyes back to the main house. Perhaps an accident of phonetics, but a memorable one. The hanzi pair 內庭 is spare enough to learn at a glance, and it joins a large family of point names borrowed from dwellings and landscapes. Holding sound and image together gives the name a handle: the inner courtyard, second station from the end of the stomach channel’s long walk.
Spring Point of the Stomach Channel
The stomach channel is traditionally drawn as one long descent: it begins in the face, travels down the front of the body, and ends at the second toe. Forty-five named stations mark the route, and Neiting stands second from the end — the last stop before the channel closes at the corner of the second toenail. Everything above this point, on the traditional map, belongs to the channel’s long downward conversation between face and foot, which is why a groove between two toes came to be consulted about troubles rooted far above it.
Classical teaching sorts the points near the beginnings and endings of the channels into five families named for water gathering force: well, spring, stream, river, and sea. At the well the flow is a mere trickle beside a fingernail or toenail; at the spring it wells up like water finding the lip of a source; farther along come stream and river, and finally the sea pooled in an elbow or knee bend. Neiting belongs to the spring family — the ying-spring points — the place where a channel’s movement, still young and shallow, first pools enough to be gathered.
Traditional physiology assigned the spring points a characteristic temperament: they are the points practitioners reached for when a complaint carried heat. The stomach channel belongs to the earth phase in the five-phase scheme, so its own spring reads poetically as water stirring within earth — rain finding its way into a field. Weigh the poetry as you like; the historical pattern is easy to see in the record, because the first indications listed for Neiting — toothache, sore swollen throat, nosebleed, febrile disease — are precisely the presentations old texts grouped as heat. The framework is premodern physiology, preserved here as context, not asserted as mechanism.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications fall naturally into three groups. The first gathers at the head and face: toothache, sore swollen throat, nosebleed, and trigeminal neuralgia — a modern clinical label for severe, lightning-like facial pain running along the nerve branches that cross the cheek and jaw — together with febrile disease, the traditional category covering feverish illness. Classical reasoning set these at a foot point through the channel map: a pathway drawn from the face to the second toe let practitioners read trouble at the top of the line as worth consulting near its bottom. The spring-point association with heat lent the same group a second layer of explanation.
The second group concerns digestion: acid regurgitation, diarrhoea, dysentery, and constipation. This is the stomach channel’s home ground, since tradition entrusts it with chief care of digestion, appetite, and the downward movement of food through the body. Acid regurgitation was traditionally read as stomach qi rebelling upward instead of descending; the bowel complaints were sorted among patterns of damp and heat in classical case-thinking. These readings belong to premodern medicine and are offered as such — a window into how the tradition organised its observations, not a promise about outcomes.
The third group is the plainest: pain and swelling of the foot dorsum, the point’s own doorstep. Meeting local discomfort with a local point is the oldest logic in the repertoire. Over all three groups the same honest sentence bears repeating: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, presented for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing the point treats disease. 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.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, the working foot resting across the opposite knee or flat on the floor, toes loose. Support the top of the foot from below with one hand and press the point with the pad of the thumb — or hold it lightly between the index finger above and the thumb below, letting the groove sit in the cradle between them. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, keeping the pressure at the level of pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per foot, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales. Swap sides and keep the two sessions symmetrical.
Quality outranks duration here more than almost anywhere, because the territory is small and sensitive. Warm hands, short nails, and patient circles teach more than force ever will. Some people enjoy the practice after a bath or shower, when the skin is clean and warm and attention lingers easily; others anchor it to brushing the teeth in the evening — an apt pairing given the point’s old friendship with dental complaints, though the pairing is a habit trick, not a treatment schedule. Consistency, lightness, and symmetry remain the entire art of it.
Treat the minutes as a small ceremony of attention rather than a session of repair. Across weeks you may notice the area feels less tender to the touch, or simply that a ninety-second pause spent attending to your own feet has become a habit worth keeping. Every outcome in that range belongs honestly to self-acupressure. What does not belong is escalation: pressing harder, longer, or sharper to force a result the practice never promised. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness — or set the practice down for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record attaches no special caution to this point. Unlike some high-risk sites on the chest or neck, the groove between the second and third toes holds no deep hazard for purely surface-level self-care. What the location does demand is proportion: thin skin, small vessels, and delicate joints all live close to the surface there, so every rule of gentle practice applies twice over. Fingertip pads only — no knuckles, elbows, or tools; nothing pressed through pain; and nothing at all over broken, blistered, or inflamed skin, including during an active athlete’s-foot flare.
A few situations call for advice before beginning. Anyone with reduced sensation in the feet — dulled feeling is common in conditions such as diabetes and peripheral neuropathy — should ask a clinician first, because the warning signals of too much pressure arrive late or not at all. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. Poor circulation, recent foot injury or surgery, and skin conditions on the toes each argue for the same pause. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation during practice means stopping at once, and bruising after a session means the pressure exceeded what this small territory welcomes.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Severe or lasting toothache belongs with a dentist promptly; a sore throat that worsens or persists, a nosebleed that recurs, fever, blood in the stool, or a lingering change in bowel habit each call for a licensed clinician, not a pressure routine. Think of the two as neighbors: daily comfort practice lives on one side of the wall, professional medicine on the other, each keeping its own hours. The safest gift the inner courtyard offers most people is a slower, kinder acquaintance with their own two feet.
Neiting, the Inner Courtyard, sits on top of the foot in the groove between the second and third toes, just behind the fold of the web. Classical practice reached for this small point when toothache flared, the throat burned, or feverish illness ran hot. This guide walks through finding it by touch, reading its name, and pressing it gently at home.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Neiting without measuring anything?
- Use the toes themselves as the map. Find the web between the second and third toes, then slide the fingertip the smallest possible step back toward the ankle and stop at the first line where the skin tone changes. That colour junction, sitting in the groove between the toes, is the spot the dataset describes. Traditional proportional measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in different words.
- Is pressing a point between the toes actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle pad pressure on intact skin is ordinary self-care, and the licensed record attaches no special caution to this site. The area is simply delicate, so lightness matters more than usual. Skip the point over cuts, blisters, or inflamed skin, stop at once on sharp or electric sensation, and check with a clinician first if sensation in the feet is reduced or circulation is poor.
- Why does a point on the foot appear in old lists about teeth and throats?
- Because of the channel map. The stomach channel is traditionally drawn beginning in the face and ending at the second toe, so the whole line reads as one connected territory. A complaint at the top of the line could be consulted near the bottom of it, and the reverse — a way of thinking often summarised as addressing the upper through the lower. Add the spring-point association with heat complaints, and toothache, sore throat, and nosebleed land squarely in this point’s traditional portfolio.
- What did classical practice use Neiting for?
- The recorded indications cover several clusters: face-and-head complaints including toothache, sore swollen throat, nosebleed, and trigeminal neuralgia; feverish illness under the old febrile-disease heading; digestive complaints including acid regurgitation, diarrhoea, dysentery, and constipation; and, locally, pain and swelling of the foot dorsum. These are traditional frameworks documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Can pressing Neiting take the place of seeing a dentist or doctor?
- No. Self-acupressure is comfort practice, not diagnosis or therapy. A severe toothache needs a dentist quickly; a sore throat that will not settle, recurring nosebleeds, fever, or persistent changes in digestion need proper assessment. Let the point practice keep its own lane — a small daily ritual of attention — while symptoms that persist or escalate travel the road to a licensed clinician.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License), complateXwInfo.json — dataset witness mirrored in content/catalog/stomach.ts for the ST44 location, indications, and ying-spring point class.
- 02WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008) — nomenclature conventions followed by the in-house English wording of the catalogue entry.
- 03A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition, five-shu point categories, and stomach-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/st44/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st44/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st44/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST44",
"name": {
"en": "Neiting",
"gloss": "Inner Courtyard",
"zh-Hant": "內庭",
"zh-Hans": "内庭"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 44,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "On top of the foot, at the web between the second and third toes, just behind its edge."
},
"for": [
"toothache",
"sore throat",
"nosebleed"
],
"press": {
"text": "Fingertip pressure, about a minute each foot.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st44",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}