角孫 Jiaosun
“Horn and Grandson” · TH20
Hand Shaoyang · 20 of 23
Where. Fold the ear forward: the point is just above its tip, inside the hairline.
For. Toothache; stiff neck; a swollen cheek.
Press. A light fingertip touch through parted hair, about a minute each side.
角孫，在耳廓中間，開口有孔按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Jiaosun Sits Above the Ear
The dataset locates Jiaosun in one quiet sentence: on the head, directly above the tip of the ear, within the hairline, found by folding the ear forward so its apex marks the point. Notice what is absent — there is no cun arithmetic here at all. Many channel stations are plotted by proportional measurement, counted outward from midlines and reference bones, but this one belongs entirely to a landmark you carry with you: the pointed top curve of your own ear. The hairline matters too, because the address sits in hair-bearing scalp rather than on the bare skin of the temple below it. Put together, the recipe reads simply: fold the ear forward, let its apex point the way, release, and look for the spot just inside the hairline directly above where the ear tip rests. The point is paired, mirrored left and right.
What lies under the fingertips here is calm country. The covering is scalp — skin, then a firm layer of connective tissue that grips the skull closely — and beneath that, the hard curve of the cranial bone. Unlike the chest points discussed elsewhere on this site, nothing delicate sits within reach of surface contact, and nothing here rises and falls with the breath. The trade-off is different: hair grows densely in this territory, so the search is partly a matter of parting strands rather than hunting for hollows between structures. Sensation differs too. Scalp under gentle pressure tends to report a broad, warm dullness rather than the sharp awareness some limb points give, and many people find light work here quietly relaxing — a small mercy at the end of a long day spent squinting at screens.
The neighbourhood map helps fix the address. Forward along the hairline, the catalogue places Erheliao (TH22) at the posterior border of the temple hairline, ahead of the root of the ear. Behind the ear, two fellow san-jiao stations — Chimai (TH18) and Luxi (TH19) — are measured along the line that runs from Jiaosun itself down behind the ear toward Yifeng (TH17); the higher neighbour, Luxi, stands where the upper and middle stretches of that line meet, and the lower, Chimai, where its middle and lower stretches meet. Across the channel border, the gallbladder record places Shuaigu (GB8) a cun and a half directly above this very spot. As for the channel itself: the san jiao meridian runs from the ring finger up the outer arm to the temple, one of the fire pair of the classical map, twenty-three stations strong — and Jiaosun stands in the head-and-ear stretch of that long ascent.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit comfortably and let the jaw hang loose for a moment — a clenched jaw tightens everything around the ear. Raise your right hand to your left ear and fold it gently forward and up, so the top of the ear tips toward the front and the pointed apex presses against the side of the head. Notice where that apex touches: that contact point is the marker. Now let the ear fall back into place and bring your fingertip to the spot just inside the hairline directly above the ear tip. Part the hair with your fingertip pads until you can feel scalp cleanly under them. Repeat the fold once or twice to confirm the mark does not wander, then swap hands and find its twin on the other side, because the point exists in a matched pair.
A few quiet checks help before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare sides: most people notice a faint, broad awareness at the true spots and little sensation half a finger-width away. Use a mirror if the geometry feels confusing — watching the fold happen makes the apex-to-hairline relationship obvious in a way words cannot quite capture. Keep the nails out of the story entirely; on the scalp, pads do all the work and nails only scratch. Wash hands first, and if the hair has been through wind and tangles, smooth the area down before searching, since a snarl under the fingertip masquerades as anatomy. Some people like to dampen the hair slightly so strands lie flat and stop hiding the ground; that is a matter of comfort, not accuracy.
The classic mistakes are worth naming so they can be dodged. The first is dropping down onto the ear cartilage itself or the skin immediately around the ear opening — that lower territory belongs to other stations of this same channel, recorded at the front and base of the ear. The second is sliding backward behind the rim of the ear toward Luxi and Chimai, whose addresses sit along the line running down behind the ear toward Yifeng. The third is losing height: the spot must remain above the level of the ear tip and inside the hairline, not out on the bare temple skin below it. The fourth is drifting too far toward the crown and confusing the point with the top of the head altogether. When in doubt, fold the ear forward once more and let the apex redraw the map.
Reading the Name: Horn and Grandson
The characters sketch the geography in miniature. Jiao 角 means horn or angle — the word for the pointed crowns of animals and for the corners where lines meet. Commentators have long read it here as the angular prominence of the ear itself: when the ear folds forward, its upper edge juts out like a little horn, and it is exactly beneath that jut that the point waits. Sun 孫 means grandson, the youngest generation — and in the naming habits of the tradition, the word also carries the sense of small offshoots, the fine sub-branches a great channel sends out the way a family sends out descendants. Read together, the name gestures at a small, junior station tucked under the ear’s horn-like apex — modest company beside the grander landmarks around it.
That imagery fits how classical texts describe the channel system generally: great trunks running their mapped courses, fed and drained by finer branchings that reach places the trunk never visits. Head points named for humble relationships — children, grandchildren, corners and crevices — tend to mark precisely such byways, and the tradition treated them as useful doors onto the deeper traffic of the channel all the same. There is a quiet lesson in the naming habit itself. A reader who knows that gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses, horns, and grandsons recur across the point names already holds half a map: the names encode what each station was thought to overlook. Jiaosun tells you before you ever press it that this is a small, precise address defined by an angle of the ear — which is, sure enough, exactly how the dataset finds it.
Pinyin renders the name Jiǎosūn. Check the tones letter by letter and they hold up: jiǎo is spelled j-i-a-o with a caron over the a, marking the third tone, the dipping contour that falls and then rises again; sūn is spelled s-u-n with a macron over the u, marking the first tone, held high and level throughout. The hanzi pair 角孫 is short enough to memorise at a glance — seven strokes and ten, among the plainer addresses on the head. Like many channel points named for architecture and kinship alike, the metaphor does honest work here: it says the tradition saw this spot not as an isolated dot but as a relation — something small and junior attached, with real duties, to a much larger structure just below it.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indication list runs: mumps, optic neuritis, toothache, swelling of the cheek, stiff neck, cloudy vision, and jaw tightness with inability to chew. Framed as tradition rather than promise, this is a classic head-district portfolio. Classical practice worked by territory: a station on the head, in the ear-and-cheek neighbourhood, belonged to the disorders of that neighbourhood — swellings, pains, and stiffnesses of cheek and jaw, complaints of the teeth, and disturbances of what the eyes report. Swelling of the cheek and toothache sit naturally together in old records because dental trouble was long understood to announce itself as facial puffiness. Jaw tightness with inability to chew describes the locked, guarded feeling that keeps the mouth from opening comfortably. Cloudy vision renders the older idea of the world seen as through a haze.
Two entries deserve a modern aside, offered plainly. Mumps — the swollen-cheek illness of childhood memory, known in Chinese records as zha sai — is understood today as a contagious viral illness, and anyone with painful swelling around the ears or jaw, especially alongside fever, needs proper medical assessment rather than a self-care routine. Optic neuritis likewise names a condition of the eye’s nerve pathway, and any change in vision — blurring, dimming, pain with eye movement — belongs promptly with a clinician. These entries appear here because the licensed dataset records them as the point’s historic portfolio, valuable as cultural history; they are not suggestions for home treatment. Toothache, meanwhile, still argues for a dentist first. What remains reasonably within a wellness frame is the gentler end of the list — a stiff neck, a tired jaw, the ordinary heaviness of a long day — approached, as tradition approached it, lightly and without promises.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified practitioner. 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; hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, shoulders heavy, jaw unclenched. Part the hair and rest the pads of your index or middle fingers on the twin spots. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the scalp glide subtly over the skull beneath. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or gentle warmth — pleasant being the operative word. 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. Work both sides symmetrically rather than favouring whichever hand reached first, and finish by smoothing the hair back down and taking one slow breath before returning to your day.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; grinding force teaches the body nothing and irritates a scalp that only asked for kindness. Warm cold hands before beginning — chilled fingers make tense recipients. Choose a quiet corner over a screen, because a minute of scalp attention doubles as a pause for the eyes and breath, which suits this point’s eye-and-jaw neighbourhood nicely. People who keep routines often anchor them to existing habits: after washing the face at night, during the afternoon lull, just before bed. Consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions have always asked for, and a point this easy to find rewards even a casual keeper.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the jaw sits less tightly, perhaps the eyes feel less strained while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds caring for a corner of yourself nobody else sees. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or more often to force a result the practice was never designed to deliver. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or simply close the day’s practice early. The point will be there tomorrow, exactly where your folded ear leaves it.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a caution in its licensed record, and it deserves prominence here. The dataset states it directly: do not apply moxibustion at this point, classical literature recording that doing so causes sores. Whatever one makes of the old observation, its home translation is simple and absolute — no heat belongs on this spot. That rules out the warming herb sticks used professionally, and by extension any domestic stand-in: heated pads, warmed oils massaged in at the point, hot-water bottles rested against the side of the head, infrared gadgets aimed at the hairline. Gentle warmth elsewhere on the body is one thing; this particular address, by the plain instruction of its own record, stays cool. If a warming practice is part of your routine generally, choose another point for it and leave Jiaosun to fingertip work alone.
For fingertip acupressure the practical rules follow from the setting. Skip the point entirely whenever the scalp there is broken, spotty, freshly shaved-irritated, or sunburned, and whenever glands or tissues around the ear are swollen, tender, or hot — those are findings to have looked at, not pressed on. Set the practice aside during feverish illness or an active ear infection. Pressure stays light and strictly superficial; sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once, and lightheadedness — occasional with head-point work — means sit quietly and finish for the day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with a neurological or dermatological condition affecting the head, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. Anyone recently treated around the ear or temple should wait until their clinician clears ordinary touching of the area.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt professional care — not a pressure routine — for swelling around the ears or jaw especially with fever, any change in vision, toothache, a jaw that will not open or closes in a new way, headache that is sudden or severe, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, Western or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The safest gift Jiaosun offers most people is a small daily acquaintance with their own head — tended kindly, kept cool, and never mistaken for a clinic.
Jiaosun sits high on the side of the head, directly above the tip of the ear within the hairline — a spot the tradition finds by folding the ear forward so its apex marks the place. Classical practice reached for it when cheeks swelled, teeth ached, jaws gripped tight, or sight grew dim. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently at home.
Cautions from the classical sources
- No moxibustion — classical texts say it raises sores.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Jiaosun when thick hair covers the whole area?
- Let the ear do the navigating. Fold it forward so the apex presses the side of the head, note the contact point, then release and part the hair at the spot just inside the hairline directly above the ear tip. Fingertip pads — never nails — separate the strands until scalp is cleanly felt. Dampening the hair slightly helps stubborn strands lie flat, but the fold-forward test alone pins the position regardless of hairstyle.
- Why is warming this point discouraged when other points welcome it?
- Because the licensed record says so for this specific address: the dataset cautions against applying moxibustion here, citing classical literature that reports it causes sores. The editorial layer echoes that instruction rather than second-guessing it, and the sensible home version covers every heat source, professional or improvised. Other points on this site suit warming practices better; this one is kept for light fingertip contact only.
- What did classical practice use Jiaosun for?
- The traditional record lists mumps, optic neuritis, toothache, swelling of the cheek, stiff neck, cloudy vision, and jaw tightness with inability to chew — a typical head-district set gathered around the ear, cheek, teeth, and eyes. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context. Several of the listed conditions call for prompt professional care today, whatever the old portfolio said.
- Why does folding the ear forward locate the point so reliably?
- Because the dataset defines the point by that very gesture: directly above the tip of the ear, within the hairline, found by folding the ear forward so its apex marks the spot. Ear cartilage is a personal landmark that scales perfectly to its owner — no measuring tape improves on it. Folding turns a description into a demonstration, and repeating the fold twice confirms the mark holds steady before any pressing begins.
- Can pressing Jiaosun replace seeing a dentist about my toothache?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and toothache signals something a dentist should examine — decay, gum trouble, or a grumbling joint all hide behind the same ache. Think of the two as different floors of one building: gentle scalp work lives downstairs as everyday care, and clinical assessment keeps the upstairs room you visit when symptoms persist or worsen. 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 and san-jiao channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for TH20 Jiaosun — 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/th20/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/th20/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/th20/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "TH20",
"name": {
"en": "Jiaosun",
"gloss": "Horn and Grandson",
"zh-Hant": "角孫",
"zh-Hans": "角孙"
},
"channel": {
"id": "TH",
"order": 20,
"of": 23
},
"location": {
"text": "Fold the ear forward: the point is just above its tip, inside the hairline."
},
"for": [
"toothache",
"stiff neck",
"a swollen cheek"
],
"press": {
"text": "A light fingertip touch through parted hair, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/th20",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}