Bai Lao Hundred Taxations, Hundred Labors

What does Bai Lao do?

Bai Lao is an extra point — it lies on no channel, has no organ relationship, and carries no point category — so what follows is derived from documented clinical use rather than from channel theory. On that basis its recorded work is twofold: it is a local point of the nape used for a stiff and painful neck, and it is the classical point of the "taxation" disorders, the wasting and consumptive conditions the older texts group under lao. The two are held together by the point's position at the back of the neck, above Da Zhui DU-14 and to either side of the midline.

• Relieves stiffness and pain of the neck and nape — the everyday use, and the one with by far the largest modern clinical literature behind it. Bai Lao sits in the muscular mass at the back of the neck and is used for rigidity, aching and restricted turning of the head, and for the presentations grouped in the Chinese literature as cervical spondylosis of the neck type.
• Documented use for the taxation and consumptive disorders — the meaning of the point's name. The classical record uses it for xu lao and lao zhai: chronic depletion from overwork, with the pattern picture of steaming-bone tidal fever, night sweating and spontaneous sweating, wasting and exhaustion. This records documented use, not a mechanism.
• Documented use for scrofula — the chains of hard nodules along the sides of the neck described in the older texts, which appear in the same region the point occupies.
• Documented use for cough and wheezing, including the presentation the classics call whooping cough. Again this records what the point has been used for, not a claim about how it works.

A correction: what an extra point cannot be said to do

The action record previously held here for Bai Lao stated that the point "benefits the Lungs", "stops cough and calms dyspnoea" and "transforms phlegm and dissipates nodules". Those are channel-and-organ mechanism statements, and Bai Lao cannot carry them. A point that lies on no channel has no route by which to reach an organ, no interior-exterior pairing, and no five-element or five-shu classification to act through. To say an extra point "benefits the Lungs" is to borrow the language of the channel system for a point that stands outside it. The claims have been removed, and this is said openly rather than quietly edited, because the underlying uses are real and the reader should not be left with less than they came for. The points that genuinely carry each of those actions, all held in Sacred Lotus sources & references, are these:

• Benefiting the Lungs — BL-13 Fei Shu, the Back-Shu point of the Lungs, on the upper back beside the third thoracic vertebra. It is the point the tradition uses to reach the Lung organ from the back, and it lies a short distance below Bai Lao. LU-09 Tai Yuan, the Source and Shu-Stream point of the Lung channel at the wrist, is that channel's principal supplementing point.
• Stopping cough and calming wheezing by descending Lung qi — BL-13 Fei Shu again, with REN-17 Shan Zhong on the breastbone, which our records classify as the Hui-Meeting Point of the Qi and a Point of the Sea of Qi. Where phlegm is the picture, ST-40 Feng Long, the Connecting point of the Stomach channel, is the classical choice.
• Transforming phlegm and dissipating nodules — GB-21 Jian Jing at the crest of the shoulder, whose record in this library carries exactly that action, and SJ-10 Tian Jing, the He-Sea and Earth point of the Sanjiao at the elbow, the point most associated with dissolving nodules.
• Clearing deficiency heat, steaming-bone fever and night sweating — KI-03 Tai Xi, the Source point of the Kidney channel, and HT-06 Yin Xi, the Xi-Cleft point of the Heart channel, which is the classical point for night sweating.

None of this diminishes Bai Lao. It has been used for consumptive disorders and for the neck for centuries, and the modern research described further down this page is genuinely about this point. What it does not have is a channel-theory mechanism, and stating that accurately is the point of the correction.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (extra-point status, absence of channel and of any point category confirmed by direct query, the existing action record, and the BL-13, LU-09, REN-17, ST-40, GB-21, SJ-10, KI-03 and HT-06 records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 569; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is Bai Lao used for?

Bai Lao is used above all for the stiff, painful neck, and classically for the wasting and consumptive conditions its name refers to. The indications carried in Sacred Lotus sources & references are set out below. They describe traditional use, not proven treatment.

• Rigidity and pain of the neck and nape
• Restricted turning of the head
• Scrofula — chains of hard nodules in the neck
• Cough
• Asthma and wheezing
• Whooping cough
• The taxation and consumptive disorders — chronic depletion from overwork
• Steaming-bone tidal fever
• Night sweating and spontaneous sweating

Two of these deserve a word of context. The first is scrofula, which in the classical texts describes visible chains of hard swellings along the sides of the neck. The second is the taxation group, lao, which covers chronic exhaustion and wasting and which the older literature also applies to pulmonary consumption. Neither term maps onto a single modern diagnosis, and this record does not attempt to translate them into one. What is worth noting is that the one modern trial to use Bai Lao for something other than the neck used it as an adjunct in pulmonary tuberculosis — the closest modern counterpart to lao zhai — which is described honestly under research below.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 569; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is Bai Lao, and how is it used in practice?

Bai Lao lies at the back of the neck, two cun above Da Zhui DU-14 and one cun out to either side of the midline — so it is a paired point, one on each side, sitting in the muscle of the nape rather than on the midline itself. Sacred Lotus sources & references hold the location record and it has not been altered here. In practice it is found by locating the prominent bone at the base of the neck when the head is bent forward, dropping into the hollow below it for DU-14, measuring two cun up the midline, and then one cun out to each side. It is worth noting in passing that our own DU-14 record carries a naming flag worth carrying over: the correct pinyin for DU-14 is Da Zhui (Great Hammer), which is not the same as Da Zhu BL-11 (Great Shuttle), a different point one level lower and further out to the side.

Which points is Bai Lao combined with?

• With DU-14 Da Zhui — the point Bai Lao is measured from, two cun below it on the midline, and its most constant partner. DU-14 is the great meeting point of the six yang channels with the Governing Vessel; pairing an extra point of the nape with the channel point immediately below it is the standard arrangement, and every one of the neck trials described below used the two together.
• With GB-20 Feng Chi and BL-10 Tian Zhu — the local points at the base of the skull, added above Bai Lao to cover the whole nape. This grouping, with GB-12 Wan Gu and SJ-16 Tian You, was the point set used in one of the published cervical trials.
• With SI-15 Jian Zhong Shu — the point beside the spine at the base of the neck, named alongside Bai Lao in two of the neck-pain trials.
• With LI-04 He Gu — the Source point of the Large Intestine channel in the web of the thumb, the standard distal partner for anything in the head and neck. The single-point-against-multiple-point imaging study described below compared Bai Lao alone against Bai Lao with LI-04.
• With Ding Chuan — the other extra point of this region, held here, lying half a cun to one cun to either side of DU-14 and therefore just below and inboard of Bai Lao. The two are the nape's pair of extra points and are used together in the respiratory literature; a dog-days moxibustion study for allergic rhinitis selected exactly this combination.
• With BL-13 Fei Shu and BL-43 Gao Huang Shu — the upper-back points, joined to Bai Lao in the classical arrangement for consumptive and taxation disorders, and used together in the tuberculosis trial described under research.
• With Hua Tuo Jia Ji — the paravertebral extra points held here, which run down either side of the spine and which Bai Lao effectively continues upward into the neck.

What kind of point is an extra point?

Extra points — qi xue, "curious" or "extraordinary" points — are points recorded in the classical and modern literature that do not lie on any of the fourteen channels. They accumulated over centuries from clinical observation rather than from the channel system, and the consequences are consistent across the whole group. They have no channel, no interior-exterior partner and no organ relationship. They carry none of the categories that structure channel points: no five-shu classification, no Source, Connecting or Xi-Cleft status, no Back-Shu or Front-Mu role, no Confluent or Meeting-Point status. Sacred Lotus sources & references confirm by direct query that Bai Lao holds none of these.

What extra points have instead is a narrow, well-documented job and, usually, a name that states it. That is a genuine strength rather than a deficiency — but it means their recorded actions must be built from documented use, which is what has been done here, and not from channel theory borrowed from points that do have it. Bai Lao is a good example of the type: two clear uses, a name that explains one of them, and a location defined by reference to a channel point rather than by a channel of its own. The extra points held in this library nearest to it are Ding Chuan in the same region, Hua Tuo Jia Ji running down the spine, and Luo Zhen on the back of the hand, which shares Bai Lao's neck indication from a distance.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location record, extra-point status and absence of any category confirmed by direct query, and the DU-14, BL-10, BL-11, BL-13, BL-43, GB-12, GB-20, SJ-16, SI-15, LI-04, Ding Chuan, Hua Tuo Jia Ji and Luo Zhen records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 569; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is Bai Lao located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 569): At the back of the neck, 2 cun superior to Dazhui (DU-14), 1 cun lateral to the midline.

How is Bai Lao needled, and what is documented about the nape region?

Reference record only — this sets out what the standard texts document, not instruction for a reader. Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.5 to 0.8 inch at Bai Lao, the point being taken bilaterally. The recorded range is short, and the reason is regional: this is the back of the neck, where the reference literature bounds depth at every point rather than at a few.

The angle and depth the texts record

• Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.5 to 0.8 inch.
• Deadman & Al-Khafaji (p. 569) record a comparable shallow range at the same site.
• Moxibustion and warm needling are prominent at this point in the published clinical literature — several of the neck trials described below used direct moxibustion, seed-sized moxa cones or warm needling at Bai Lao rather than needling alone, and one used intradermal needles.
• What lies beneath. One cun lateral to the midline in the nape places the point over the muscular mass at the back of the neck — the trapezius superficially, then splenius capitis and cervicis and semispinalis, with the lamina of a cervical vertebra as the floor. The greater and third occipital nerves and the deep cervical vessels run in this region. That is why the recorded depth is short: it is the depth at which the needle remains within the muscular layer.

The regional consideration, stated accurately and not overstated

Bai Lao is in the nape, and the nape is the region in which the neurosurgical literature records the small number of serious acupuncture injuries to the central nervous system. But Bai Lao is not one of the points that hazard is about, and this record does not pretend otherwise. The two points over which the risk genuinely concentrates are DU-16 Feng Fu and DU-15 Ya Men, both held in this library and both documented there in full. They lie on the midline, at and just below the base of the skull, directly over the foramen magnum — the opening through which the brainstem becomes the spinal cord. For those two points every standard text records not only a bounded depth but an explicitly prohibited direction of insertion.

Bai Lao is neither on the midline nor at that level. It sits one cun to the side of the midline and two cun above Da Zhui DU-14 — that is, low in the nape, well below the base of the skull, with the bony lamina of a cervical vertebra between the point and the spinal canal rather than an opening. The foramen-magnum hazard does not apply here, and importing it would be inaccurate in a way that helps no one: it would misdescribe this point and, worse, dilute a caution that genuinely belongs to two others.

The honest limit of what we could source: we could not locate any published case report naming Bai Lao as the point at which an injury occurred. Nor could we locate an imaging or cadaveric study measuring a safe needling depth at this specific point, as exists for DU-15 and DU-16. What is recorded above is what is documented — a short bounded depth in the standard texts, and the anatomical layers that depth corresponds to. That is stated without adding to it.

The regional literature, for completeness

What is on record for the neck region generally is worth knowing, and is set out here as context rather than as a statement about this point. Two large systematic reviews of the Chinese-language adverse-event literature place traumatic central-nervous-system injury among the small number of genuinely serious events on record: one reviewed 115 articles reporting 479 adverse events including 14 deaths (Zhang J et al., Bull World Health Organ 2010;88(12):915–921C, PMID 21124716, PMC2995190), and a companion review covering 1956 to 2010 identified 1,038 cases across 167 articles with 35 deaths, of which fainting and pneumothorax dominated (He W et al., J Altern Complement Med 2012;18(10):892–901, PMID 22967282). Both attribute the events chiefly to improper technique and conclude that they were largely avoidable. Two cases of cervical spinal cord injury from direct needle penetration during acupuncture around the neck have been reported from a regional trauma centre; neither patient made a complete recovery (Korean J Neurotrauma 2025;21(4):323–8, PMID 41220883). None of these names Bai Lao.

Risk in proportion. A meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies estimated serious acupuncture-related adverse events at approximately 1 per 10,000 patients and around 8 per million treatments, with about half of all recorded events being bleeding, pain or flare at the needle site, placing acupuncture among the safer treatments in medicine (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268). At Bai Lao specifically, local soreness and bruising are the ordinarily documented occurrences; moxibustion at this point carries its own ordinary burn precautions, and the hair of the nape is a practical consideration noted in the reference literature. Standard clean-needle practice applies. Acupuncture and moxibustion are carried out only by a qualified, licensed practitioner; this record documents the literature and is not a technique guide.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record, and the DU-14, DU-15 and DU-16 records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 569; PubMed PMID 21124716 (PMC2995190); PMID 22967282; PMID 41220883; PMID 34489268 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Bai Lao mean?

Bai Lao means "Hundred Taxations" or "Hundred Labours" — bai, a hundred, used in Chinese as it is in English to mean "very many" rather than exactly one hundred, and lao, labour, toil, exertion, and by extension the exhaustion that follows it. The name is a statement of what the point is for, and it names a whole classical disease category rather than a symptom. Lao in medical usage covers the xu lao — depletion or taxation disorders — the conditions the tradition attributes to overwork, chronic strain and prolonged depletion, and lao zhai, the wasting consumptive illness of which pulmonary tuberculosis is the closest modern counterpart. "The hundred taxations" is therefore the whole family of exhaustion illnesses, and Bai Lao is the point named after them.

The name is also rendered "Hundred Labors", "Hundred Toils" and "Hundred Overstrains". Bai is used the same way in other point names held in Sacred Lotus sources & references — DU-20 Bai Hui, "Hundred Convergences", at the crown of the head where many channels are said to meet, and Bai Chong Wo, "Hundred Insect Burrow", an extra point on the thigh — in each case meaning "a great many" rather than a count.

Why is Bai Lao sometimes called Jing Bai Lao, and what are its codes?

Because the name needs a location attached to it. The modern research literature writes this point in three ways — "Bailao (EX-HN 15)", "Neck-Bailao (EX-HN 15)" and "Jingbailao (EX-HN 15)" — jing meaning neck. All three appear in the published trials cited below and all refer to the same paired point in the nape. The reference literature records that bai lao was used in some older sources as an alternative name for Da Zhui DU-14 on the midline just below, which is the most likely reason the extra point came to be specified as the neck Bai Lao.

Two coding systems will be met. The point is EX-HN 15 in the standard modern extra-point numbering, where HN stands for head-and-neck; it is M-HN-30 in the older lettered scheme, in which M denotes a miscellaneous (extra) point. Both identify the same point, and a reader meeting either can treat them as equivalent.

Is there research on Bai Lao?

Bai Lao has a genuinely point-specific modern research literature, which is unusual for an extra point — but it is almost entirely Chinese-language trial work on one condition, chronic neck pain from cervical spondylosis, and the quality limitations of that literature apply throughout. None of it establishes clinical effectiveness. What follows is what actually names this point.

• The imaging study, and the reason it matters most. Forty-nine patients with cervical spondylosis of the neck type were randomised to acupuncture at Bai Lao alone or at Bai Lao with LI-04 He Gu, with 19 healthy people as controls, and were scanned by resting-state functional MRI before and after treatment. Regional homogeneity in the supplementary motor area was raised in patients compared with controls at baseline; both treatment groups showed reductions in the pain-matrix regions afterwards, and only in the two-point group did the change correlate with neck-pain questionnaire scores (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2015;35(10):1005–9, PMID 26790206). This is the most valuable study on the point precisely because it included a single-point arm — Bai Lao on its own — which very little acupuncture research does. Its conclusion, honestly reported by its authors, favoured the multi-point treatment over the single point.
• Neck pain, the main trial group. One hundred and eleven patients with chronic neck pain from cervical spondylosis were randomised across treatment programmes all built on Bai Lao, variously combined with SJ-03 Zhong Zhu, direct moxibustion at Da Zhui DU-14, intradermal needling at Bai Lao and needling at SI-15 Jian Zhong Shu, with the Northwick Park Neck Pain Questionnaire as the outcome (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2012;32(9):769–75, PMID 23227676). A second trial randomised 145 patients with neck pain across acupuncture, moxibustion and combined groups at a point set including Bai Lao and Da Zhui, reporting short- and long-term improvement in neck-pain and pain questionnaire scores, best with the combined seed-sized moxa treatment (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2014;34(4):325–8, PMID 24946627). A third randomised 81 patients to warm needling at neck points including Neck-Bailao, GB-20, BL-10, GB-12 and SJ-16, with or without additional lumbar points (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2016;36(11):1147–51, PMID 29231297). A fourth analysed factors predicting response in 106 patients treated at Da Zhui, Jingbailao and Jian Zhong Shu, reporting effective rates of 75.5 per cent against 52.8 per cent (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2009;29(3):173–6, PMID 19358495). Together these establish that Bai Lao is a standard component of the Chinese cervical-spondylosis protocols. They are unblinded, use soft composite outcomes, and none isolates the point.
• The taxation indication, in its modern form. One hundred patients with pulmonary tuberculosis on standard antituberculous therapy were randomised to receive additional moxibustion at a point set led by Bailao (EX-HN 15) with BL-13 Fei Shu, BL-43 Gao Huang Shu, REN-06 Qi Hai, LU-01 Zhong Fu, REN-17 Shan Zhong, REN-04 Guan Yuan and ST-36 Zu San Li. The moxibustion group showed greater radiographic absorption of lesions, higher sputum conversion and higher CD3+, CD4+/CD8+ and natural-killer-cell measures after three months (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2013;33(4):299–302, PMID 23819226). This is worth recording for one reason above all: it is a modern trial using Bai Lao for the lao zhai indication its name refers to, which is a striking continuity across many centuries. It is also an unblinded add-on trial of an eight-point protocol in which Bai Lao's individual contribution cannot be identified, and it does not show that Bai Lao treats tuberculosis.
• Other uses in the literature. A randomised study of dog-days moxibustion plaster therapy for allergic rhinitis selected three high-frequency points by pattern differentiation, Ding Chuan and Bai Lao among them (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2014;34(10):967–71, PMID 25543425) — the two nape extra points used together, as described under practical use above. More recently, a randomised trial of bloodletting at gua sha marks combined with acupuncture for acute-phase cervical spondylotic radiculopathy included the point in its protocol (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2026, PMID 41558700).

The fair summary is that Bai Lao has more point-specific research behind it than most extra points, that it is concentrated almost entirely on chronic neck pain, that the one study to test the point in isolation found the single point less effective than the combination, and that its classical taxation indication has exactly one modern trial behind it in which the point was one of eight. The site does not claim that Bai Lao treats neck pain, cervical spondylosis, scrofula, cough or tuberculosis.

How does Bai Lao compare with the points around it?

DU-14 Da Zhui is the landmark Bai Lao is measured from, two cun below on the midline: the meeting point of the six yang channels with the Governing Vessel, a Point of the Sea of Qi, and the great classical point for fever and for releasing the exterior — a channel point with a systemic repertoire that Bai Lao, having no channel, does not share. Ding Chuan is the closer comparison, being the other extra point of the region: it lies half a cun to one cun to either side of DU-14, its name means "Calm Dyspnoea", and it belongs primarily to the respiratory literature where Bai Lao belongs primarily to the neck literature — and its own record in this library had to be corrected for exactly the same kind of inherited channel-theory language corrected here. BL-10 Tian Zhu and GB-20 Feng Chi sit higher, at the base of the skull, and are the channel points of the upper nape. DU-15 Ya Men and DU-16 Feng Fu are higher again on the midline, over the foramen magnum, and are the two points of this region carrying a genuinely serious safety record — a record that, as set out under needling, does not extend to Bai Lao. And Luo Zhen, the extra point on the back of the hand, shares Bai Lao's neck indication entirely from a distance. All are held in Sacred Lotus sources & references.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, location record, extra-point status and absence of any point category confirmed by direct query, and the DU-14, DU-15, DU-16, DU-20, BL-10, BL-13, BL-43, GB-20, LU-01, REN-04, REN-06, REN-17, ST-36, SI-15, LI-04, Ding Chuan, Bai Chong Wo, Hua Tuo Jia Ji and Luo Zhen records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 569; PubMed PMID 26790206, 23227676, 24946627, 29231297, 19358495, 23819226, 25543425, 41558700 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.