Each of the twelve organs has two points on the trunk assigned to it: a back-shu point beside the spine and a front-mu point on the chest or abdomen. The WHO International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Medicine of 2007 calls the first a transport point (beishu xue 背俞穴), where the qi of an organ is infused, and the second an alarm point, where the qi of an organ is concentrated. All the back-shu points lie on the bladder channel, in the line that runs down the back 1.5 B-cun from the midline; a B-cun is one division of the proportional bone measure that Measuring in cun explains. The front-mu points are spread across four channels and the conception vessel. Difficulty 67 of the Nanjing, the Classic of Difficult Issues, gives the reason for the split: the mu points are on the yin side and the shu points on the yang side because yin disorders move to the yang and yang disorders to the yin.
The Lingshu’s back-shu points
Chapter 51 of the Lingshu, Bei shu, answers a request for the points of the five zang organs that open on the back. It names the great shu of the chest at the end of the zhu bone, the place of Dazhu, and then the lung at the third vertebra, the heart at the fifth, the diaphragm at the seventh, the liver at the ninth, the spleen at the eleventh and the kidney at the fourteenth, each pair three cun apart across the spine. It gives a test for each: press the place, and if a pain inside eases, that is the point. It then says moxibustion may be used there and needling may not, and describes how to supplement or drain with moxa: let the fire die down on its own to supplement, blow on it to drain.
| Organ | Back-shu | Spinal level | Front-mu | Where the front-mu lies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lung | BL13 Feishu | T3 | LU01 Zhongfu | First intercostal space, 6 B-cun lateral to the midline |
| Pericardium | BL14 Jueyinshu | T4 | CV17 Danzhong | Midline, level with the fourth intercostal space |
| Heart | BL15 Xinshu | T5 | CV14 Juque | Midline, 6 B-cun above the centre of the navel |
| Liver | BL18 Ganshu | T9 | LV14 Qimen | Sixth intercostal space, 4 B-cun lateral to the midline |
| Gallbladder | BL19 Danshu | T10 | GB24 Riyue | Seventh intercostal space, 4 B-cun lateral to the midline |
| Spleen | BL20 Pishu | T11 | LV13 Zhangmen | Below the free end of the 11th rib |
| Stomach | BL21 Weishu | T12 | CV12 Zhongwan | Midline, 4 B-cun above the centre of the navel |
| Triple burner | BL22 Sanjiaoshu | L1 | CV05 Shimen | Midline, 2 B-cun below the centre of the navel |
| Kidney | BL23 Shenshu | L2 | GB25 Jingmen | Below the free end of the 12th rib |
| Large intestine | BL25 Dachangshu | L4 | ST25 Tianshu | 2 B-cun lateral to the centre of the navel |
| Small intestine | BL27 Xiaochangshu | First sacral foramen | CV04 Guanyuan | Midline, 3 B-cun below the centre of the navel |
| Bladder | BL28 Pangguangshu | Second sacral foramen | CV03 Zhongji | Midline, 4 B-cun below the centre of the navel |
Spinal levels
The WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region of 2008, the standard the table follows, also gives landmarks for finding the levels, among them these: the most prominent spinous process on the midline of the neck is the seventh cervical vertebra; with the person standing, arms by the sides, a line joining the inner ends of the two spines of the shoulder blades crosses the third thoracic and a line joining their lower tips crosses the seventh thoracic; and a line joining the highest points of the two iliac crests crosses the fourth lumbar.
The same row of points carries four more named for something other than an organ: BL16 (Dushu) at T6, named for the governing vessel; BL17 (Geshu) at T7, for the diaphragm; BL24 (Qihaishu) at L3, for the sea of qi; and BL26 (Guanyuanshu) at L5, for the gate of origin. BL11 (Dazhu) at T1 is the Lingshu’s great shu of the chest.
The old texts count vertebrae from the first below the neck, so the thirteenth is the first lumbar and the nineteenth the second sacral level. The Maijing, the Pulse Classic of Wang Shuhe, which the WHO terminology dates to the third century, gives each organ’s shu point by that count and its mu point by name, for ten organs: lung at the third vertebra with Zhongfu, heart at the fifth with Juque, liver at the ninth with Qimen, gallbladder at the tenth with Riyue, spleen at the eleventh with Zhangmen, stomach at the twelfth with Taicang, kidney at the fourteenth with Jingmen, large intestine at the sixteenth with Tianshu, small intestine at the eighteenth with Guanyuan, and bladder at the nineteenth with Zhongji. Converted from the old count, each of these is at the level the WHO standard gives.
The Zhenjiu jiayi jing of Huangfu Mi, which the WHO terminology dates to 259, adds the triple burner, with its shu at the thirteenth vertebra and Shimen as its mu, and records Taicang as another name for Zhongwan, now CV12. Neither text has a pair for the pericardium. The Leijing tuyi of Zhang Jiebin, the illustrated companion to his Classified Classic (Leijing), which the WHO terminology dates to 1624, lists all twelve organs and supplies it: Danzhong as the pericardium’s mu and Jueyinshu, at the fourth vertebra, as its shu.
Front and back together
The WHO terminology names the pairing of a point on the front of the trunk with the corresponding point on the back as an anterior-posterior point combination. A 2024 data-mining study by Lee and colleagues at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, counted the front-mu and back-shu points prescribed in 421 clinical studies held in the Acusynth database. The front-mu points were prescribed more often for disorders attributed to the fu organs, and the back-shu points more often for those attributed to the zang organs; in a network analysis the two sets were often prescribed together and with other frequently used points.
Needling over the back
The texts that followed the Lingshu did needle these points, and they disagree on how deep. The Zhenjiu jiayi jing gives a depth of three fen, three tenths of a cun, for the lung shu and the heart shu, and forbids moxa on the heart shu, the reverse of the Lingshu’s rule. A 2013 commentary by Stephen Birch, Terje Alraek and Arne Johan Norheim compared the deepest needling that ten texts recommend at BL13, converting each at 2.2 cm to the cun. The figures ran from 0.66 cm in the Zhenjiu jiayi jing and the Zhenjiu dacheng to 3.3 cm in a 1981 English text, and the authors called for safe needling depths to be standardised at points where too deep a needle can cause a pneumothorax, a collapsed lung.
Needling over the chest reports which points the case series implicate, BL13 among them, and how deep imaging studies found the pleura, the lining of the lung, beneath the skin. Three of the front-mu points in the table lie in the spaces between the ribs, and that page covers the chest wall too.
What these sources cannot tell you
The pairing of each point with an organ is a classical attribution. None of the texts cited here measured whether a back-shu or front-mu point relates to its organ more closely than any other point, and the Lee study counted what trials prescribed, not whether the prescriptions worked. The texts also disagree on the details: the Lingshu forbids needling the back-shu points and later texts give depths for them, and the pericardium’s pair appears only in the later lists.
A back-shu or front-mu point in one of AcuiQ’s protocols records that a study used it; What AcuiQ does not do sets out that limit. The influential points, several of which are also on this page, are in Influential and confluent points.