瘈脈 Chimai
“The Vessel of Spasms” · TH18
Hand Shaoyang · 18 of 23
Where. Behind the ear, on the bone, a third of the way up the ear’s back curve from the hollow behind the earlobe.
For. Headache; ringing ears.
Press. A light fingertip touch, about a minute each side.
瘈脈二穴，一名資脈，在耳本後雞足青絡脈按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Chimai Sits Behind the Ear
On the head, Chimai claims the rounded ledge of bone behind the ear — the mastoid process — right where the lower stretch of the ear’s rear border begins. The dataset places it at the centre of that bony bump, at the junction of the middle and lower thirds of the line running from Jiaosun (TH20) down to Yifeng (TH17). A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler. This point, though, needs none of that arithmetic — its address is written entirely in landmarks and in proportions. Divide the line behind the ear into three equal parts, and the lower of the two division marks stops right over the centre of the mastoid: that mark is Chimai.
What lies under the fingertips here is honest terrain. The mastoid is solid bone wearing only a thin cushion of skin and soft tissue, so every degree of pressure registers promptly and plainly — force has nowhere to hide, which makes overdoing it nearly impossible to miss. Just ahead of the point runs the shallow groove between the ear cartilage and the bone, where small vessels and nerves thread their way; the opening of the ear canal lies forward and below. None of these residents asks for attention; they ask for restraint. Slow fingers resting lightly on the bone will read this small landscape clearly without ever leaning hard on it.
Chimai belongs to a short ladder of stations flanking the ear’s rear edge. At the bottom waits Yifeng, in the depression behind the earlobe between the mastoid and the angle of the jaw. At the top stands Jiaosun, directly above the tip of the ear within the hairline. The upper division mark on the connecting line hosts Luxi (TH19); the lower one hosts Chimai. Read the ladder downward — Jiaosun, Luxi, Chimai, Yifeng — and four checkpoints hang along the back of the ear like beads on a string. Losing your place mid-search simply means returning to whichever bead you recognise best and counting again.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably and let the jaw and neck go slack; a clenched jaw drapes the whole region in armour. With the opposite hand, find the firm rounded bump behind your earlobe and rest a fingertip on its middle. Prefer the line method instead? Start in the soft hollow behind the lobe — Yifeng’s address — and trace slowly upward along the back rim of the ear for about one-third of the distance toward the top of the ear, where Jiaosun waits. The pad will cross the shallow groove behind the cartilage, climb onto the bone, and settle over the mastoid’s mid-bulge. That settled spot is Chimai.
Two confirmations help before any real pressing begins. First, move: clench and release the jaw gently, or open the mouth slightly — everything belonging to the jaw shifts while the mastoid holds perfectly still, so if your fingertip rides a moving structure you have drifted forward off the bone. Second, compare sides with a feather-light touch: most people notice a faint dull awareness at the true spot, sometimes a whisper of warmth spreading toward the ear, and little sensation a finger-width away. Neither check requires strength; both reward patience.
Common slips are few. Wandering too high lands you near Luxi’s territory at the upper division mark; sliding forward drops you into the soft groove between ear and bone, where the tissues chatter far more than the point ever does; drifting inward brings you against the ear opening itself, which deserves no pressure at all. Hair is the quiet saboteur — a thick curtain mutes every landmark, so tie long hair back and work on bare skin. When in doubt, return to the bump behind the lobe, find its centre once more, and trust the bone.
Reading the Name: the Vessel of Spasms
The name arrives carrying a clinical shiver. Chi 瘈 is a rare character that dictionaries file under the sickness radical — the radical that flags illness — and gloss as spasm: the involuntary drawing, tightening, and twitching of muscle. Mai 脈 means vessel, pulse, channel-line — the roads along which qi and blood were understood to travel. Set together, the pair reads as the vessel of spasms: the station where trouble of the drawing kind was traditionally met. Few labels on the whole route are this literal — no landscape poetry here, just the condition itself written onto the map.
Why would a point behind the ear carry such a name? Because the old records tied this station to exactly those pictures. Classical practice associated the retro-auricular points with sudden drawing and twitching conditions — above all in infants and small children, whose fright-illnesses filled chapters of old paediatric discussions — and the recorded portfolio here still includes infantile convulsions. The name works like a label on a drawer: pull it open and you find the conditions the tradition filed inside. Whatever one makes of that filing system today, name and record agree with each other, and the agreement helps a reader see how the old map was drawn.
Pinyin writes the name Chìmài, with the falling fourth tone on chi and the falling fourth tone again on mai — both syllables descend. The hanzi pair 瘈脈 is compact, though the first character is uncommon enough that many readers meet it here for the first time; dictionaries record an archaic secondary reading besides, but the spasm sense is the one the point-name uses. Many stations along this channel borrow their names from water and landscape — passes, pools, ravines — while this one keeps its eye fixed on the body itself. Like many of the best point names, it doubles as a small set of instructions.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded actions read: headache, deafness, tinnitus, and infantile convulsions. Take the headache first in its own geography. Classical texts draw the san jiao channel climbing from the ring finger up the outer arm, over the shoulder and along the side of the neck, then circling the ear before arriving toward the temple — twenty-three stations strung along that road. Pain of the side of the head and the region behind the ear sat squarely on the route itself, so points along the ear’s border entered such discussions naturally, and Chimai stood among them.
The deafness-and-tinnitus pair follows the same logic. The channel’s head course wraps around the ear, and classical practice met complaints of the ear — ringing, blockage, failing hearing — largely at the points gathered around the ear itself. Old records habitually grouped these ear troubles together because the traditional frame saw them as neighbouring disturbances of one shared territory rather than separate diseases. That is presented here as traditional reasoning about the body’s pathways, not as anatomy and not as promise: it explains why this point appears in such lists, nothing more.
The last indication deserves a solemn note. Infantile convulsions in the old records gathered sudden twitching, drawing, and fright-conditions of babies and small children under one heading, and the point-pairings attached to them belong to a former century’s framework of understanding. Today, any convulsion, seizure, or unexplained episode of unresponsiveness in a child — or an adult — is emergency medicine, with no self-care substitute and no delay. And the standing honesty of these pages applies throughout: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, shoulders heavy, head held easily upright. Curl your index and middle fingers together and lay the pads — never the tips — on the spot, letting the weight of the hand do the arriving. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles across the bone-covered surface, aiming for a pleasant dullness or a mild spreading 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. Swap hands and repeat on the other side, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing buys nothing and may leave the area behind the ear grumbling all day. Warm cold hands before starting, because chilled tissue guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the minutes double as a pause: eyes softened, jaw released, inhale through the nose, lean the pressure in gently as the breath leaves. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after washing the face, during an afternoon break — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the region feels less guarded, perhaps the ears seem quieter while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds genuinely listening to your own head. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — digging harder, lingering longer, or pressing through pain to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or simply stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point enters the record quietly: the licensed dataset carries no caution entry for it at all. Absence of a recorded warning is not a licence for enthusiasm — it is silence, and silence deserves a conservative reading. The practical picture argues for gentleness regardless: the mastoid wears only thin padding, the groove behind the ear hosts small vessels and nerves, and the ear canal sits close by. Everything the region asks of home practice fits into one sentence — stay on the surface of the bone, and let lightness be the whole technique.
Practical rules follow. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools — and skip the point entirely over broken, irritated, or freshly pierced skin, during any active ear infection or discharge, and for some weeks after ear surgery unless a clinician clears ordinary touching. After any head injury, set new point practices aside until proper assessment has happened. A sudden sharp or electric streak means stop at once and do not try again that day; dull warmth may be welcome, electricity never is. Pregnant readers, and anyone managing chronic illness or taking regular medication, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a longer pressing session — for sudden changes in hearing, ear discharge with fever, severe or unusually worsening headache, or any convulsion in a person of any age, which belongs in emergency hands immediately. Persistent tinnitus or hearing loss belongs with a licensed practitioner for proper assessment, whether medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. Behind the ear runs some of the body’s most delicate wiring; the safest gift Chimai offers most people is a slow, kindly acquaintance with the landmark — touched lightly and put down willingly.
Chimai, whose name reads as the vessel of spasms, rests on the rounded bone behind your earlobe — the mastoid process — about a third of the way up from Yifeng toward Jiaosun. Classical practice reached for it when headache, ringing ears, or failing hearing troubled someone; old records add infantile convulsions. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Chimai without measuring anything in thirds?
- Use the bump as the whole map. Behind each earlobe sits a firm, rounded knob of bone — the mastoid process — easy to feel through the skin. Rest a fingertip on the middle of that knob and you have arrived at the location the dataset describes; the thirds language simply encodes the same spot as a proportion along the line between two named neighbours.
- Is pressing Chimai myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held on the bone-covered surface is generally reasonable self-care: the mastoid puts solid bone directly under thin skin, so honest pressure stays superficial almost by nature. Respect the neighbours — keep away from the ear canal opening, and from deep work in the groove behind the cartilage. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation ends the session immediately.
- What did classical practice use Chimai for?
- The traditional record lists headache, deafness, tinnitus, and infantile convulsions. Classical theory read the head-and-ear items through the san jiao channel’s course circling the ear, and the last through the old framework of childhood fright-conditions. These are documented frameworks for understanding the body, offered for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a point behind the ear carry a name about spasms?
- Because the name files the drawer honestly. Chi means spasm — the drawing and tightening of muscle — and mai means vessel or channel-line, so the label reads as the vessel of spasms, matching the old association with sudden twitching conditions, especially in children. The tradition often named points for the work they were asked to do; this one kept the job description in its title.
- My ears ring now and then — can Chimai replace seeing someone about it?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Sudden changes in hearing always deserve prompt professional assessment, and tinnitus that persists or worsens belongs with a licensed practitioner. Gentle daily self-care can live alongside proper evaluation — downstairs and upstairs in the same building — but 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, channel pathway, and classical indication context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for TH18 Chimai — 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/th18/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/th18/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/th18/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "TH18",
"name": {
"en": "Chimai",
"gloss": "The Vessel of Spasms",
"zh-Hant": "瘈脈",
"zh-Hans": "瘈脉"
},
"channel": {
"id": "TH",
"order": 18,
"of": 23
},
"location": {
"text": "Behind the ear, on the bone, a third of the way up the ear’s back curve from the hollow behind the earlobe."
},
"for": [
"headache",
"ringing ears"
],
"press": {
"text": "A light fingertip touch, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Tongren Shuxue Zhenjiu Tujing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/th18",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}