DU-17 (Nao Hu) Brain's Door

What does DU-17 Nao Hu do?

Nao Hu DU-17 sits on the back of the skull directly above the bony bump you can feel at the base of the head, and its recorded work is to eliminate wind and relieve pain, to benefit the eyes, and to calm the spirit. Sacred Lotus sources & references record those three actions and classify the point two ways: it lies on the Du Mai (Governing Vessel), the great yang midline vessel of the back and head, and it is a Meeting Point of the Governing Vessel with the Bladder Channel. Its name — "Brain's Door" — states its classical significance directly: this is the point the tradition treats as the entrance to the brain.

• Eliminates wind and alleviates pain — the primary recorded action. The occiput and nape are the region classical theory treats as the doorway through which external wind enters the body, and DU-17 shares that territory with Feng Fu DU-16 ("Wind Mansion") an inch and a half below it and Feng Chi GB-20 ("Wind Pool") to either side. All three are named or used for wind; this small area of the back of the head is the classical wind gate.
• Benefits the eyes — the recorded action that looks surprising until the anatomy is considered. DU-17 sits over the back of the skull, and the part of the brain that processes vision lies at the back of the head. The classical texts assigned this point eye indications long before that was known, and the coincidence is one of the more striking in the corpus.
• Calms the spirit and settles epilepsy — the action behind its most prominent indication. Epilepsy is the first condition our own indication record names for this point, and the Governing Vessel's cranial points carry that indication by virtue of the vessel's path into the brain rather than through any organ association.
• Benefits the head and the nape — the local action, for stiffness and pain of the neck and for the inability to turn or bend the head. Because the Governing Vessel runs the length of the spine, a point at its cranial end is used for the neck as a whole.
• Joins the Governing Vessel to the Bladder channel — the meeting-point action. The Bladder channel's own line runs over the occiput just lateral to DU-17, through Yu Zhen BL-09, and the two systems are recorded as meeting here.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing action record; Governing Vessel channel and Bladder-channel meeting-point classification queried directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233); cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is DU-17 Nao Hu used for?

Nao Hu DU-17 is used for epilepsy, for dizziness, and for pain and stiffness of the neck. Those three are the indications carried in Sacred Lotus sources & references, and they are a notably short list — this is a point with a narrow, well-defined traditional range rather than a broad one. The standard reference literature adds the further uses below. All describe traditional use, not proven treatment, and this point carries the classical prohibition and the technique restriction set out under needling.

• Epilepsy and convulsive disorders
• Dizziness and vertigo
• Pain and stiffness of the neck and nape
• Inability to turn or bend the head
• Heaviness of the head
• Headache at the back of the head
• Blurred vision and dimness of sight
• Pain in the eyes
• Swelling and pain of the face
• Hoarseness and loss of the voice
• Goitre and swelling at the front of the neck
• Mania and disturbed spirit
• Insomnia

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233).

Where is DU-17 Nao Hu, and how is it used in practice?

Nao Hu lies on the midline at the back of the head, in the small depression on the upper edge of the external occipital protuberance — the bony bump you can feel in the centre of the back of the skull. Sacred Lotus sources & references give it as two and a half cun above the middle of the posterior hairline, and equivalently as one and a half cun directly above Feng Fu DU-16. Both descriptions point at the same landmark, and the landmark is unusually reliable: the occipital protuberance is one of the few bony prominences on the head that can be felt on almost anyone.

In practice DU-17 is a point of restricted technique and modest frequency. It is used locally for the back of the head and the nape, and it appears in the classical repertoire for epilepsy and for dizziness. Where it has a genuine modern presence is in scalp acupuncture, in which it is not treated as a single point at all but as the centre of a named three-needle group: Naosanzhen, the "brain three needles", is defined in the published clinical literature as Nao Hu DU-17 together with two points one and a half cun to either side of it (Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2007;32(4):260–263, PMID 17907390). That grouping, not the point alone, is how DU-17 most often reaches a patient today.

Which points is DU-17 combined with?

• With Feng Fu DU-16 — an inch and a half below it on the same midline, the "Wind Mansion". The two are the Governing Vessel's pair for the back of the head, sharing wind, neck and spirit indications. It is worth knowing that DU-16 is the more hazardous of the two by a wide margin: it lies over the foramen magnum with the medulla oblongata behind it, whereas DU-17 lies over solid occipital bone.
• With Yu Zhen BL-09 — the Bladder-channel point one and a third cun to either side at the same level, on the other side of the same protuberance. DU-17 is classified as the meeting of the Governing Vessel with the Bladder channel, and BL-09 is the Bladder channel's point in that meeting's immediate neighbourhood.
• With Nao Kong GB-19 — "Brain Hollow", further out to either side on the Gallbladder channel, a Meeting Point of that channel with the Yang Linking Vessel. Nao Hu, Nao Kong and the Bladder line together form the occipital band, and the shared nao — brain — in two of the three names is not accidental.
• With Bai Hui DU-20 and Shen Ting DU-24 — further forward on the same midline, added for epilepsy, dizziness and disturbed spirit. A randomised trial of Jin's three-needle therapy in 60 children with autism spectrum disorder used exactly this grouping: Shen Ting DU-24, Nao Hu DU-17, and bilateral Ben Shen GB-13, Nao Kong GB-19, Xin Shu BL-15 and Zu San Li ST-36, alongside four named scalp-needle clusters (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(9):1259–1264, PMID 40954056).
• With Feng Chi GB-20 — in the hollows either side of the nape below the occiput, the standard local addition for headache at the back of the head, dizziness and eye complaints.
• For epilepsy — the classical grouping is not DU-17-centred. Analysis of 205 acupuncture prescriptions for epilepsy drawn from the classical texts found the commonly used points to be Bai Hui DU-20, Jiu Wei REN-15, Shen Men HT-07, Shen Ting DU-24 and Xin Shu BL-15, with treatment given mainly by moxibustion or moxibustion with needling (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(1):123–130, PMID 39777888). DU-17 is not among the leading five, and saying so is more useful than implying otherwise.

What is a Governing Vessel meeting point with the Bladder channel?

It means that at DU-17 the midline vessel of the back and the great yang channel that runs down either side of it are recorded as converging. The Governing Vessel — Du Mai — runs up the centre of the spine, over the crown and down the forehead to the upper lip, and is described in the classics as the "sea of the yang channels". The Bladder channel of Foot Tai Yang runs in two parallel lines either side of it for the whole length of the back and, on the head, passes over the occiput just lateral to the midline.

Meeting-point classifications like this one are how the tradition records where separate channel systems share territory, and they matter clinically for a simple reason: a point that carries a meeting classification can be used to reach the channel it meets, not only its own. It is worth comparing the length of the lists across our holdings — Bai Hui DU-20 at the crown is recorded as meeting the Bladder, Gallbladder, Sanjiao and Liver channels, and Jing Ming BL-01 at the inner eye meets five channels and three vessels, while DU-17's list has a single entry. The occiput is a narrower crossroads than the crown or the eye.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location, Governing Vessel channel and Bladder-channel meeting classification; the DU-16, DU-20, DU-24, BL-09, GB-19, GB-20 and BL-01 records queried directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233); PMID 17907390; PMID 40954056; PMID 39777888; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is DU-17 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550): At the back of the head on the midline, 1.5 cun directly above Fengfu DU-16, in the depression directly superior to the external occipital protuberance.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 232-233): 2.5 cun directly above the midpoint of the posterior hairline, 1.5 cun directly above Fengfu (DU-16), in the depression on the upper border of the external occipital protuberance.

How is DU-17 Nao Hu needled, and why is it named among the forbidden points?

Stated plainly: DU-17 is one of the small number of points that the classical literature names outright as forbidden to needle, and the modern reference texts respond by recording only one technique here — subcutaneous insertion, the needle laid under the skin along the scalp, never directed into the head. Our own record specifies subcutaneous puncture of 0.3 to 0.5 inch. Directly beneath the point is the occipital bone, which is solid; but the bone is not thick everywhere, and behind it lie the cerebellum and the confluence of the large venous sinuses that drain the brain. The technique restriction exists because of what is on the far side of that bone. Everything below is recorded as neutral reference data describing what the textbooks and the classical and published literature state. It is not instruction, this page does not teach technique, and needling here is carried out only by a qualified, licensed practitioner. It is not a point for self-treatment or untrained hands.

The technique the texts record

• Sacred Lotus sources & references record subcutaneous puncture of 0.3 to 0.5 inch, with moxibustion applicable. Note what is absent: no perpendicular insertion and no depth beyond half an inch are recorded at this point at all. Subcutaneous — sometimes called transverse or horizontal — means the needle runs flat beneath the skin, parallel to the surface of the skull, not toward it.
• Deadman & Al-Khafaji (p. 550) and Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233) record transverse insertion in a comparable range, and both note the classical prohibition attached to this point. Our records and both published references converge on the same restriction — which is worth noting in itself, because for most points the sources differ on depth and here they do not.
• Moxibustion is recorded as applicable, and several classical sources treat moxa as the preferred method at points where needling was prohibited. Where a point carries an old prohibition on the needle, the historical record often shows moxa taking its place.
• The angle is the whole of the safety content. As at Feng Fu DU-16 below it, direction matters more than depth here. Laid flat under the scalp, the needle is separated from the brain by the full thickness of the occipital bone. Directed at the skull, it is not travelling toward bone everywhere along this midline — which is the point of the restriction.

The classical prohibition — reported as what it is

The Su Wen chapter on forbidden needling (Ci Jin Lun) contains a direct statement about this point: needling the head at Nao Hu so that the needle enters the brain causes immediate death. That sentence is among the most frequently quoted lines in the classical safety literature, and it is the reason DU-17 appears on the traditional lists of forbidden points alongside a small number of others. It is recorded here as a classical statement in a classical text — which is exactly what it is. It is not a modern case report, it is not an epidemiological finding, and it is not evidence that a death has occurred at this point in the documented era. The classics did not have a mechanism for reporting cases; what they had was prohibition, and this is one.

What the prohibition does establish is that the hazard at the back of the head was recognised very early, and recognised specifically at this location. The modern texts have not repeated the prohibition, but they have kept its practical content by recording only a subcutaneous technique.

What lies beneath — the anatomy that the prohibition is about

• Honest limit, stated first. No imaging or cadaveric study measuring a safe needling depth at DU-17 specifically could be located. The occipital midline points have not been measured individually the way DU-16 and DU-15 immediately below have. No figure is transferred to this point from elsewhere, and every measurement below is labelled with the point at which it was taken.
• The occipital bone. DU-17 sits on the upper border of the external occipital protuberance, and at the protuberance itself the bone is at its thickest on the back of the skull. That is the essential difference between this point and Feng Fu DU-16 an inch and a half below, which sits over the foramen magnum — the large opening through which the brainstem passes, where there is no bone at all.
• The cerebellum. Immediately inside the occipital bone at this level lies the cerebellum, the part of the brain that coordinates movement and balance, separated from the cerebrum above it by a sheet of tough membrane. That relationship is what the classical prohibition names in its own language.
• The confluence of the venous sinuses. The internal occipital protuberance — the counterpart of the bump on the inside of the skull — is where the large dural venous sinuses that drain blood from the brain meet. It lies directly deep to the landmark that defines DU-17. This is a genuinely notable anatomical fact about the point: the surface bump that makes it easy to find corresponds to a major venous junction on the other side of the bone.
• The occipital nerves and vessels. The greater occipital nerve and the occipital artery run over the back of the skull to either side of the midline. They are the structures a needle in the scalp layer is actually near, and they are why the region is tender and why bleeding and bruising are the ordinary, minor events recorded here.
• For comparison — the point below has been measured. A CT study of 41 adult volunteers grouped by build measured the needling depth at Fengfu GV-16, giving safe perpendicular depths of 27.73 ± 3.45 mm in the thin group, 30.78 ± 2.90 mm in the moderate group and 33.39 ± 4.27 mm in the heavier group, and proposed a working figure of no more than about 75 per cent of the measured dangerous depth (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2008;28(1):47–48, PMID 18257190). Those figures are DU-16's, not DU-17's, and they are recorded here for one reason only: to show how narrow the margin is on this part of the head, at a point where the technique recorded is perpendicular. At DU-17 the recorded technique is not perpendicular at all.
• No single agreed safe depth exists for any point. Two systematic reviews of the safe-depth literature — 33 studies in the first, 47 in the second — both concluded that measured depths for the same point differ greatly between subject groups and measuring methods, and that "safe depth" has never been standardised (J Altern Complement Med 2011;17(3):199–206, PMID 21417806; Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2013;2013:740508, PMID 23935678).

What the case literature documents — and, precisely, what it does not

• Injuries in this region are documented. A neurosurgical review retrospectively studied 26 patients with cervical or brain injuries from acupuncture needles. Embedded needles were the commonest cause (15 patients, 57.7 per cent) and broken needles the second (11 patients, 42.3 per cent); five cases followed self-acupuncture. Sixteen patients developed symptoms more than thirty days after the event, and of 21 who underwent surgical removal ten showed recovery, while none of the conservatively treated patients improved. The authors' conclusion was that embedded-needle acupuncture and self-acupuncture are extremely dangerous (Miyamoto S et al., World Neurosurg 2010;73(6):735–741, PMID 20934166). The series concerns the cervical region and the brainstem, and does not name DU-17.
• Deaths — what the record does and does not show. Deaths following acupuncture are recorded in the aggregate reviews of the Chinese case literature: a systematic review of 115 Chinese-language articles reporting 479 adverse events found 14 deaths (Zhang J et al., Bull World Health Organ 2010;88(12):915–921C, PMID 21124716, PMC2995190), and a companion review of 1,038 cases across 167 articles from 1956 to 2010 recorded 35 deaths across the series, attributing the events chiefly to improper technique and judging most avoidable (He W et al., J Altern Complement Med 2012;18(10):892–901, PMID 22967282). Both reviews aggregate by complication rather than by point, so neither attributes a death to Nao Hu or to any named point.
• What we will not claim. Despite an extensive search, we could not source a published case report naming DU-17 as the point at which a fatal or disabling injury occurred, and no such claim is made here — notwithstanding the classical text's own statement, which is reported above as a classical statement and not as a case. Our DU-16 and DU-15 records reached the same conclusion about their own points and stated the same limit. The accurate summary for DU-17 is this: the classical literature prohibits needling into the head at this location, the modern texts record only a subcutaneous technique, the anatomy behind the bone is the cerebellum and a major venous junction — and the published case record does not contain an injury attributed to this named point.

Risk in proportion

A meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies estimated serious adverse events in acupuncture 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). Two things are true together, and both belong here: needled as the texts record it — flat, under the scalp, over the thickest part of the occipital bone — DU-17 is not a dangerous point; and it carries one of the oldest explicit prohibitions in the literature, which is about what happens when it is not needled that way.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233); Su Wen (Basic Questions), Ci Jin Lun — on forbidden needling; PMID 18257190 (measured DU-16); PMID 21417806; PMID 23935678; PMID 20934166; PMID 21124716 (PMC2995190); PMID 22967282; PMID 34489268 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Nao Hu mean?

Nao Hu means "Brain's Door" — nao, the brain, and hu, a door or single-leaf doorway. Sacred Lotus sources & references translate it exactly that way. The name is not decorative. In classical anatomy the brain was understood to be reached from behind, and this point on the occipital midline was taken to be its threshold — the doorway a needle must not pass through, which is precisely what the Su Wen's prohibition says. The name and the prohibition are the same statement in two forms, and reading them together is the quickest way to understand the point.

The nao element recurs across this small region. Nao Kong GB-19 — "Brain Hollow" — sits out to either side on the Gallbladder channel, and Yu Zhen BL-09 — "Jade Pillow" — sits between them on the Bladder line, named for the part of the head that rests on a pillow. Three points within a few centimetres of one another, two of them named for the brain and one for the bone that shelters it: the naming shows how clearly the classical authors understood what was under this part of the skull.

Why is DU-17 counted among the forbidden points?

Because the classical literature says so explicitly, in a chapter devoted to the subject. The Su Wen's Ci Jin Lun — the "Discourse on Prohibitions in Needling" — lists locations at which needling was held to cause grave harm, and Nao Hu is among them, with the stated consequence of entering the brain there being immediate death. Only a handful of points in the entire repertoire carry a prohibition of that directness; Jiu Wei REN-15, held in this library, is another, and our record for it sets out the same kind of old warning attached to a very different anatomy.

What is worth understanding is how the modern literature has handled these prohibitions. It has not repeated them as prohibitions — DU-17 is a needled point in contemporary practice, and in scalp acupuncture a frequently needled one. What it has done instead is keep the practical content by restricting the technique: the reference texts record subcutaneous insertion only. The old prohibition and the modern restriction are the same safety judgment, arrived at with different tools and expressed with different confidence. That is the most instructive thing about the forbidden-point tradition generally, and this point is its clearest example.

Is there research on DU-17 Nao Hu?

The honest answer is that DU-17 has no point-specific research at all. Every study we could verify that names it uses it as one point in a multi-point protocol, and in most of them it is not even used as a single point but as the centre of a three-needle scalp cluster. Nothing in that literature is attributable to DU-17 itself, and saying so is more useful than presenting protocol trials as though they were about this point.

• The "brain three needles" — how DU-17 usually reaches a patient. A randomised trial of 40 children with cerebral palsy compared rehabilitation training alone with rehabilitation plus warm-reinforcing needling, and defined the scalp cluster Naosanzhen explicitly as Nao Hu GV-17 with two further needles one and a half cun to either side of it, used alongside Bai Hui GV-20, Zu San Li ST-36, Qu Chi LI-11, Huan Tiao GB-30, Yin Ling Quan, San Yin Jiao SP-06 and named scalp zones (Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2007;32(4):260–263, PMID 17907390). The value of this citation is the definition, not the result: it establishes what Naosanzhen means and confirms that DU-17 is its anchor.
• Autism spectrum disorder — a randomised trial naming this point. Sixty children were randomised to game therapy alone or to game therapy plus Jin's three-needle therapy. The acupoints used included Shen Ting GV-24, Nao Hu GV-17 and bilateral Ben Shen GB-13, Nao Kong GB-19, Xin Shu BL-15 and Zu San Li ST-36, with scalp needles retained for an hour; over six months the combined group improved more on the childhood autism rating scale, the autism behaviour checklist and a developmental assessment scale (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(9):1259–1264, PMID 40954056). A single-centre unblinded trial of a whole protocol.
• Where the point ranks in the autism literature. An analysis of thirteen published articles on acupuncture for autism counted how often each point appeared. GV-17 was the second most frequently used point in that literature, appearing four times, behind only the extra point EX-HN1 and level with P-06 (Abo Almaali HMM et al., J Acupunct Meridian Stud 2017;10(6):375–384, PMID 29275793). The authors' own conclusion was that the point selections need further investigation through clinical trials — which is exactly the state of the evidence at DU-17.
• An honest negative from the classical record. Epilepsy is the first indication our own record carries for this point. But an analysis of 205 acupuncture prescriptions for epilepsy drawn from the classical texts found the commonly used points to be Bai Hui DU-20, Jiu Wei REN-15, Shen Men HT-07, Shen Ting DU-24 and Xin Shu BL-15 — DU-17 is not among them (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(1):123–130, PMID 39777888). The traditional indication is real and is carried in the reference texts; it simply was not a high-frequency choice in the classical prescription record, and that is worth recording as it stands.

What is missing should be said plainly: there is no randomised trial of DU-17, no sham-controlled study of it, no imaging study measuring safe depth at it, and none of its traditional indications has been tested at this point specifically.

How does DU-17 compare with the points around it?

Feng Fu DU-16 lies one and a half cun below on the same midline and is the point most often confused with it — and the distinction is a safety distinction, not merely a positional one. DU-16 sits over the foramen magnum, where there is no bone between the needle and the brainstem, and it is the most safety-constrained point in the canon; DU-17 sits over the thickest part of the occipital bone. Both carry old warnings; only one of them has a hole behind it. Ya Men DU-15, lower still on the nape, is in DU-16's class for the same reason. Qiang Jian DU-18 lies one and a half cun above DU-17 on the vault of the skull, Hou Ding DU-19 above that, and Bai Hui DU-20 at the crown — a run of midline points in which DU-17 marks the boundary between the vault and the nape. Yu Zhen BL-09 is its Bladder-channel neighbour to either side, and Nao Kong GB-19 and Feng Chi GB-20 are the Gallbladder-channel points further out. All are held in Sacred Lotus sources & references. For readers wanting the calming and spirit-settling effect that DU-17 carries as a secondary action, Bai Hui DU-20 and Shen Ting DU-24 are the Governing Vessel's principal points for it and carry none of this point's technique restriction.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, translation, channel, meeting-point classification, and the DU-15, DU-16, DU-18, DU-19, DU-20, DU-24, BL-09, GB-19, GB-20 and REN-15 records queried directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 550); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (pp. 232–233); Su Wen (Basic Questions), Ci Jin Lun — on forbidden needling; PMID 17907390; PMID 40954056; PMID 29275793; PMID 39777888 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.