Kongzui

What is LU6?

LU6 (Kongzui) is a point on the Lung channel of the forearm, on the thumb side, roughly two-thirds of the way from the wrist crease up to the elbow.

In classical acupuncture LU6 is the xi-cleft or "accumulation" point of the Lung channel. Xi-cleft points were reserved for sudden, sharp or acute problems rather than slow-burning ones. For LU6 that meant abrupt coughing fits, wheezing, a voice that had gone, and bleeding linked in old texts to the Lung.

Its name is usually translated as "Collection Hole" or "Maximum Opening". Every modern acupuncture curriculum teaches it, and it appears in the standard point lists, so its traditional standing is solid.

Traditional standing is not evidence that a point works, and it is not evidence that pressing it is safe for you. Those are two separate questions, and the rest of this page keeps them separate.

The honest verdict on evidence: there is essentially no human research on finger pressure at LU6 for any condition. Where LU6 appears in studies, it is usually one needled point inside a larger formula for asthma or cough, which makes it impossible to say what LU6 itself contributed. Acupressure research in general is small, unblinded and short-term, and LU6 does not even have that much.

This page describes self-applied finger pressure only. Nothing here involves needles, heat or anything that breaks the skin.

So treat LU6 as a comfort and self-care habit with a long history, not as a treatment. It is cheap, portable and low-risk on healthy skin. It is not a substitute for an inhaler, antibiotics, or an assessment when breathing or bleeding is the problem.

Where is LU6 and how do you find it?

LU6 sits on the thumb side of the inner forearm, about one thumb-width above the midpoint between the wrist crease and the elbow crease.

• Turn the arm palm-up. Rest the forearm on a table or your lap, palm facing the ceiling, elbow relaxed and slightly bent.
• Mark the two ends. The lower end is the crease at the base of the palm, on the thumb side. The upper end is the crease at the front of the elbow, also toward the thumb side. In the classical system that whole span is 12 cun.
• Find the halfway point. Place a fingertip midway between those two creases, staying on the thumb-side edge of the forearm rather than the middle.
• Move up one thumb-width. LU6 lies 7 cun above the wrist crease, so step one thumb-width (about 2 cm) toward the elbow from that midpoint. On an average adult forearm that is roughly 14 to 15 cm above the wrist crease.
• Settle onto muscle, not bone. Slide your fingertip a few millimetres toward the palm side until you leave the hard ridge of the radius bone and land on the softer muscle just beside it.

You are looking for a spot that feels slightly more tender or "full" than the skin either side of it when you press in. Tenderness is a useful landmark, not proof you have found anything.

Forearm lengths vary a lot, so proportion beats centimetres. If your forearm is short, your thumb-width is usually smaller too, and the two scale together.

Do not confuse LU6 with its neighbours. LU5 is much higher, right at the elbow crease beside the biceps tendon. LU7 is much lower, roughly one and a half thumb-widths above the wrist crease. LU6 is the one well up the forearm, clearly past halfway.

How do you apply pressure to LU6?

1. Get comfortable first. Sit down with the forearm supported, palm up. Working on an unsupported arm makes you tense the shoulder and press unevenly.
2. Locate and check. Find LU6 as described above, then look at the skin. Skip the session if there is a cut, rash, burn, bruise or fresh scar there.
3. Use the opposite thumb. Lay the pad of your thumb on the point, not the nail edge. Your fingers wrap around the back of the forearm for support.
4. Press slowly inward. Build pressure over two or three seconds until you feel a firm, dull ache — around 3 or 4 out of 10 on a discomfort scale. It should never be sharp.
5. Hold, then release. Hold steady for 30 to 60 seconds, breathing normally. Some people prefer small circles instead; either is fine, as long as the skin moves with your thumb rather than dragging under it.
6. Repeat a few times. Two or three holds per arm, then switch sides. A whole session takes under five minutes.
7. Space it out. Once or twice a day is plenty. There is no evidence that longer or harder does more, and both raise the chance of bruising.

Stop immediately and do not go back to it if you get sharp pain, pins and needles, numbness travelling into the hand, or any new weakness in the fingers. Nerves run through the forearm, and pressure should never produce electric or tingling sensations.

Stop too if the skin stays red or sore for more than an hour afterwards, or if a bruise appears. That means the pressure was too heavy for your tissue.

Keep nails short, hands clean and jewellery off the wrist. If your hands are weak or arthritic, use the knuckle of a bent index finger rather than the thumb, and keep the pressure light.

What is LU6 traditionally used for?

• Sudden cough and wheeze. As the Lung channel's xi-cleft point, LU6 was the classical choice for cough or breathlessness that came on abruptly. Human evidence for finger pressure at LU6 doing anything for cough or asthma is absent; trials in asthma have used needling at multiple points at once, so LU6 cannot be credited on its own.
• Coughing up blood. Old texts list LU6 for hemoptysis, because xi-cleft points were associated with acute bleeding. There is no modern evidence for this, and coughing blood always needs a doctor the same day. Treat this as history, not advice.
• Sore throat and lost voice. Tradition pairs LU6 with a throat that has suddenly closed up or a voice that has gone hoarse. No controlled human study has tested acupressure at LU6 for either.
• Chest tightness. Practitioners often use LU6 for a gripping, constricted feeling in the chest. New or unexplained chest tightness needs medical assessment first, because the causes range from anxiety to heart and lung disease.
• Forearm and elbow aching. Pressing a tender spot in a muscle often eases local aching for a while, whatever label you give the spot. This is the most plausible short-term effect of working LU6, and it is modest and temporary.
• A few minutes of calm. Sitting still, breathing slowly and applying steady pressure is relaxing for many people. That benefit comes from the ritual as much as the location, and it is a reasonable reason to do it.

Across all of these, the pattern is the same: a long traditional record and almost no point-specific human testing. Anyone telling you LU6 clears asthma or stops bleeding is going well beyond what is known.

If a symptom is new, worsening, or stopping you sleeping or working, the useful next step is a clinician, not a longer press.

Are there tips for using LU6 effectively?

• Find it before you need it. Locate LU6 calmly on a quiet day and note where it falls on your own forearm. Hunting for a point while you feel unwell is frustrating and usually inaccurate.
• Use proportion, not a ruler. Measure with your own thumb-width against your own forearm. Borrowed centimetre figures from a video will be wrong for most arms.
• Let tenderness guide the last step. Once you are in the right region, explore a centimetre in each direction and settle on the spot that answers back. That small search matters more than decimal precision.
• Stay off the bone ridge. If your thumb is on something hard and unyielding, you have drifted onto the radius. Slide slightly toward the palm side onto softer tissue.
• Pair it with slow breathing. Pressing on a long exhale is more comfortable and makes the session feel useful even on days when nothing much changes.
• Do both arms. The point exists on each side. Working both takes an extra two minutes and keeps the habit balanced.
• Warm the arm first. Cold, tense forearm muscles feel sore under pressure. A warm shower or a minute of gentle rubbing makes the session more tolerable.
• Keep it short and regular. A few minutes most days beats one long grinding session. Long heavy pressure mainly produces bruises.
• Write down what happens. Note the date, what you felt, and whether anything changed by evening. After two weeks you will have honest information about whether it is worth continuing.
• Keep it alongside your usual care. If you use a preventer inhaler, take medication, or have a treatment plan, carry on with it unchanged. Acupressure sits on top of that, never in place of it.

What do people get wrong with LU6?

• Expecting a cure. This is the biggest one. No acupressure point cures asthma, infection, or bleeding, and anyone promising that is selling something.
• Landing on the wrong point. LU7 sits low near the wrist and LU5 sits right in the elbow crease. LU6 is well up the forearm, about one thumb-width past the halfway mark. Many videos show the wrist and call it LU6.
• Pressing on the radius bone. Jamming the thumb into the hard bony ridge hurts and achieves nothing. The point sits on the muscle just beside it.
• Going far too hard. People assume more pressure means more effect. It mainly means bruises, sore skin and a habit you abandon after three days.
• Pressing through tingling. Pins and needles or numbness spreading into the hand means you are compressing a nerve. That is a signal to stop, not to push on.
• Delaying real care. Using LU6 instead of a reliever inhaler during an asthma attack, or instead of calling a doctor about coughed-up blood, is genuinely dangerous. The traditional indications are not a licence to wait.
• Working on damaged skin. Pressing over a graze, burn, rash or fresh scar risks pain and infection for no possible benefit.
• Ignoring what is in the arm. A cannula, PICC line or dialysis fistula in the forearm rules the arm out entirely. Check before you press.
• Mistaking tenderness for diagnosis. A sore spot on the forearm tells you about that muscle, not about your lungs. It is a landmark, nothing more.
• Giving up after one try. Any effect is likely to be small and gradual. If you want to judge it fairly, give it two weeks of short daily sessions and keep notes.

What does the research on LU6 actually say?

No useful human research on finger pressure at LU6 was found for any condition. That is the honest headline, and it is the same answer for most individual acupuncture points.

Where LU6 does appear in the literature, it is as one needled point inside a multi-point formula, usually in trials of acupuncture for asthma, chronic cough or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (long-term lung disease that narrows the airways). Those studies needle several points at once. Even when a trial reports a benefit, there is no way to work out whether LU6 contributed anything, because it was never tested alone.

That matters because acupressure and acupuncture are not interchangeable. A trial that needled LU6 tells you nothing reliable about what your thumb does to the same patch of skin.

The wider acupressure evidence base is also weaker than it looks. Most trials are small, run for a few weeks, and cannot blind participants — people know whether they are being pressed. Outcomes are usually self-reported, which is exactly where expectation has most influence. Across the field, the clearest exception is PC6 for nausea, which has real controlled trials behind it. LU6 has nothing comparable.

So what should you take from the absence? Not that LU6 does nothing — untested is not the same as disproved. It means nobody can honestly tell you how likely it is to help, how much, or for how long.

In practice, that argues for modest expectations and a short trial of your own. Keep it gentle, keep notes, and keep every prescribed treatment exactly as it is. If your breathing, cough or voice is getting worse, the evidence-based move is to see a clinician rather than to press harder.