Touqiaoyin

What is GB11?

GB11 (Touqiaoyin) is a Gall Bladder channel point on the side of the head, just behind and above the bony bump behind the ear.

Its pinyin name, Touqiaoyin, is usually translated as "Head Portal Yin" or "Head Orifice Yin". In classical thinking, the "portals" are the sense openings of the head: the ears, eyes, nose and mouth. GB11 belongs to a run of Gall Bladder points that curve around and behind the ear, and tradition links the whole group to the head, the ears and the side of the neck.

Texts list GB11 for one-sided headache, ear pain, ringing in the ears, hearing trouble, stiff neck and sore throat. It is taught in standard point curricula, but it is rarely a first-choice point in practice. Practitioners usually reach for better-known neighbours such as GB20 or GB12 instead.

The honest verdict on the evidence is short. There is no controlled human research testing finger pressure on GB11 for anything. What exists is tradition, teaching convention and a small, weak general literature on acupressure for headache that does not single out this point. That is not the same as proof that it works, and it is not proof that it fails either. It simply means we do not know.

Two things are worth saying once, clearly, because they apply to everything below. First, the fact that a point has been named and used for centuries is not evidence that it produces an effect. Second, long tradition is not evidence that it is safe for you. Safety depends on your own skin, bones, implants, infections and recent surgery, and those are covered in the cautions further down.

Used sensibly, GB11 is low-risk self-care: a few seconds of gentle fingertip pressure on an area you can reach yourself. Treat it as comfort and routine, not as treatment, and keep using whatever medical care you already rely on.

Where is GB11 and how do you find it?

GB11 sits behind the ear, above and behind the mastoid process — the hard bony bump you can feel just behind your earlobe.

• Find the mastoid bump first. Put a fingertip just behind your earlobe and press gently. The rounded lump of bone you feel there is the mastoid process, and it is your main anchor.
• Find the lower marker. Slide your finger to the back and slightly below that bump, into the small hollow behind it. That hollow is GB12, the lower end of the line you are going to use.
• Find the upper marker. Now move up and back from the top of your ear, roughly 5 cm (about two thumb-widths) above the ear tip and slightly behind it, onto the side of the skull. That area is GB9, the upper end of the line.
• Trace the curve between them. Draw an imaginary curved line down the side of the head, from the upper marker to the hollow behind the mastoid. Follow the natural shape of the skull rather than a straight line.
• Land on GB11. GB11 is on that curve, where the upper two-thirds meet the lower one-third. In practice that is a little above and behind the top edge of the mastoid bump, under the hairline.

Expect bone, not a deep dip. Over most of this area the skull is close to the surface, with only skin, a thin muscle layer and hair above it. A tiny shallow change in texture or a slightly tender spot is all you are looking for.

Both sides of the head have a GB11. Tradition describes the point as paired, and self-care usually treats both sides in turn.

If you cannot locate it confidently, do not hunt for it with hard pressure. Stay with the landmark you are sure of — the mastoid bump — and work gently just above and behind it. This page describes finger pressure only, and nothing here involves needles.

How do you apply pressure to GB11?

1. Get set up. Wash your hands and sit down somewhere you can lean back. Push your hair aside so your fingertip meets skin, not a knot of hair.
2. Place the pad of one finger. Use the flat pad of your middle or index finger, not the nail or a knuckle. Rest it on the spot above and behind the mastoid bump.
3. Press lightly. Aim for about 3 out of 10 pressure — firm enough to feel, light enough that you could hold a conversation. The skull is right under your finger, so there is nothing to gain from digging.
4. Hold or circle. Either hold steady for 30 to 60 seconds, or make small slow circles that move the skin over the bone rather than dragging across it. Breathe slowly the whole time.
5. Do the other side. Repeat on the matching spot on the opposite side of your head. Many people use both thumbs or both middle fingers at once, which is fine if you can stay gentle.
6. Keep sessions short. One to three rounds per side, once or twice a day, is plenty. A session of a few minutes is enough; longer is not better.

Stop straight away if you feel sharp pain, pins and needles, dizziness, or if a headache gets worse while you press. Stop too if the skin becomes sore, red or tender to touch afterwards.

Lighten the pressure further if your scalp is sensitive, if you bruise easily, or if you take blood-thinning medicine (drugs that make bleeding and bruising more likely). Children and older adults with thin skin need a very light touch indeed.

Give it a fair but limited trial. If a week or two of regular use changes nothing, that is useful information. Move on, and do not escalate the pressure to force a result.

What is GB11 traditionally used for?

• One-sided headache. Classical texts list GB11 for pain over the temple and side of the head, which is the territory the Gall Bladder channel is said to cover. No trial has tested GB11 by itself. Small, short, unblinded studies of general acupressure for tension-type headache report modest benefit, but they use other points and cannot be stretched to cover this one.
• Ear pain and ringing in the ears. Tradition groups GB11 with the points that circle the ear and uses it for earache, tinnitus (ringing or buzzing with no outside source) and reduced hearing. Human evidence for this specific point is absent. Tinnitus trials using acupuncture overall have been small and mixed, and none isolate GB11.
• Stiff neck and sore upper neck muscles. The point sits near where the neck muscles attach to the skull, so gentle pressure there often feels good. That is a plausible local comfort effect, not a demonstrated channel effect. Nothing more should be read into it.
• Throat and jaw complaints. Older texts also name GB11 for sore throat, toothache and stiffness of the tongue. These are traditional indications only, with no modern human research behind them.
• Fever and general head heaviness. Some classical lists include febrile illness and a heavy, foggy head. Treat these as historical records of how the point was used, not as a reason to delay care for an actual fever.

The useful summary is that GB11 has a tidy, consistent traditional role around the head and ear, and essentially no point-specific human evidence. For comparison, the strongest acupressure finding in the whole literature is PC6 for nausea, which has repeated controlled trials behind it. GB11 is nowhere near that level, and saying otherwise would be dishonest.

Use it, if you want, as a gentle self-care habit alongside proper diagnosis and treatment for headaches, ear problems or neck pain.

Are there tips for using GB11 effectively?

• Anchor on bone you can feel. Find the mastoid bump behind your earlobe before anything else. Working up and back from a landmark you are sure of beats poking around under the hair.
• Stay light over the skull. There is no soft hollow to sink into here. Light, slow pressure that moves skin over bone is more comfortable and no less useful than hard pressing.
• Do both sides. Pressing the matching spot on each side feels more balanced and takes seconds longer. It also stops you overworking one tender area.
• Part the hair first. Pressing through a thick hair bundle means you mostly press hair. Clear a path with your other hand so your fingertip sits on scalp.
• Pair it with a neck stretch. Slow chin tucks or a gentle ear-to-shoulder stretch afterwards may do more for a stiff neck than the point work alone. Keep both movements gentle.
• Time it, do not chase it. Set a limit of 30 to 60 seconds a side. People who press until something happens usually end up with a sore scalp.
• Keep a simple note. Jot down your headache or tinnitus level before and after for a week or two. Honest notes tell you faster than guesswork whether this is worth your time.
• Use it while calm, not mid-crisis. A quiet two minutes sitting down is a reasonable routine. A severe, sudden or unusual headache is a reason to seek help, not to press harder.
• Keep your usual treatment going. If you have prescribed migraine medicine, hearing care or physiotherapy, carry on with it. Acupressure sits alongside that, never in place of it.
• Check your skin afterwards. Redness that fades in a few minutes is normal. Lingering soreness or bruising means you used too much pressure and should ease off next time.

What do people get wrong with GB11?

• Expecting a cure. This is the biggest one. GB11 is a traditional comfort point with no trial evidence behind it, and treating it as a fix for migraine, deafness or tinnitus leads to disappointment and delayed care.
• Confusing it with GB20 or GB12. GB20 sits much lower, in the hollow between the big neck muscles at the base of the skull. GB12 is the dip right behind the mastoid bump. GB11 is higher and further back than both, on the curve between the ear and the upper side of the head.
• Pressing far too hard. Bone is millimetres under your fingertip here. Hard pressure gives a bruised, tender scalp, not a stronger effect.
• Using a fingernail. A nail concentrates force into a tiny patch of thin skin and can scratch or break it. Use the flat pad of the finger.
• Working over an infected or painful ear. If the area behind the ear is hot, red, swollen or throbbing, pressing it is the wrong move. That picture can mean infection and needs a doctor, not self-care.
• Pressing a swollen lymph gland. Small tender lumps behind the ear are often glands. Rubbing them hard does nothing useful, and a lump that persists for weeks should be examined.
• Ignoring new or one-sided hearing symptoms. Sudden hearing loss or new ringing in one ear is a medical matter, sometimes an urgent one. Do not spend two weeks on acupressure first.
• Going too long, too often. Ten minutes a side does not beat one minute. Over-long sessions mostly produce scalp soreness that then gets blamed on the point.
• Dragging across dry skin and hair. Scrubbing back and forth irritates the scalp. Move the skin gently over the bone instead.
• Reading tradition as proof. That GB11 appears in centuries of texts tells you it was used, not that it works. Keep that distinction in mind when a video claims otherwise.

What does the research on GB11 actually say?

No useful human research on GB11 was found. There are no controlled trials, and no published studies of any design that test finger pressure on this point on its own for headache, tinnitus, ear pain or neck stiffness.

What exists instead is indirect and weak. Gall Bladder channel points around the head and neck sometimes appear inside multi-point acupuncture protocols used in migraine and tension-headache trials. Those trials needle several points at once, which is what the researchers chose to do. Even where such a study reports benefit, it cannot tell you what any single point contributed, and it says nothing at all about self-applied finger pressure. GB11 is rarely named in those protocols anyway.

The wider acupressure literature has the same limits across most points. Studies tend to be small, run for a few weeks, and are hard to blind, because a participant usually knows whether someone is pressing on them. Expectation and attention can produce real short-term changes in symptoms like pain. That makes modest positive results difficult to interpret.

It is worth naming the contrast. PC6 and nausea is the clearest case in the whole field, with repeated controlled human trials supporting a genuine effect, including in pregnancy sickness and after surgery. That is what decent point-specific evidence looks like. GB11 has nothing resembling it.

So the practical reading is this. If you press GB11 and your neck feels looser or a headache eases a little, that is a real experience, and gentle local pressure near the muscle attachments at the base of the skull may well be part of it. It is not a demonstrated channel effect, and it should not shape decisions about treating an ear problem or a recurring headache.

If better research appears, this page will say so. Until then, honest reporting means stating the gap rather than filling it with borrowed findings from other points.