GB-14 (Yang Bai) Yang White

What does GB-14 Yang Bai do?

Yang Bai GB-14 is the Gall Bladder channel's point on the forehead, and Sacred Lotus sources & references classify it as a Meeting Point of the Gall Bladder with the Yang Linking (Yang Wei) Vessel and with the Sanjiao, Stomach and Large Intestine channels. Five pathways converge at one small point above the eyebrow, and that convergence is the whole explanation for its clinical range: it is the crossroads of the yang channels of the forehead, which is why it is reached for in frontal headache and in facial paralysis regardless of which channel the practitioner holds responsible.

• Eliminates wind, benefits the head and alleviates pain — the primary recorded action. "Wind" in this context covers the sudden, moving and superficial: headache that shifts, one-sided facial weakness of abrupt onset, twitching. GB-14 is the forehead point through which it is addressed.
• Benefits the eyes — the second recorded action. The point sits directly above the pupil, immediately over the eye's upper structures, and it is used for eye pain, pain along the bony ridge of the brow, drooping of the upper eyelid and excessive watering.
• Activates the channels of the forehead and face — the consequence of the meeting classification. Because the Sanjiao, Stomach and Large Intestine channels all meet the Gall Bladder here, a single local point reaches the several yang channels that supply the forehead and the muscles of the upper face.
• Meets the Yang Linking vessel — the Yang Wei binds the yang channels together along the outside of the body, and GB-14 is one of the places where the Gall Bladder channel joins it. That classification is shared with several nearby Gall Bladder points on the head and is part of why this region is treated as a unit.
• Restores movement to the upper face — the action behind its standing as the principal point for the forehead in facial paralysis, where the loss of forehead wrinkling and the inability to raise the eyebrow are the signs being treated.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (channel, meeting-point classification, existing action and indication records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212); cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is GB-14 Yang Bai used for?

GB-14 is used above all for frontal headache and for disorders of the forehead, eyebrow region and upper eyelid — including the forehead component of facial paralysis. The indications below are those carried in Sacred Lotus sources & references and set out in the standard reference literature. They describe traditional use, not proven treatment.

• Headache in the frontal region
• Pain of the orbital ridge — the bony rim above the eye
• Eye pain
• Vertigo and dizziness
• Twitching of the eyelids
• Ptosis — drooping of the upper eyelid
• Lacrimation — excessive watering of the eye
• Facial paralysis affecting the forehead, with loss of forehead wrinkling and inability to raise the eyebrow
• Numbness or itching of the forehead and face
• Blurred or dim vision, night blindness

Two clusters run through that list. The local cluster — brow pain, eyelid twitching, ptosis, watering, forehead paralysis — belongs to the point's position above the pupil, over the muscle that raises the eyebrow. The channel cluster — frontal headache, dizziness, wind patterns — belongs to the meeting classification and the several yang channels that converge here. In practice the two overlap constantly, which is why one point covers both.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication and action records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212); cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is GB-14 Yang Bai, and how is it used in practice?

Yang Bai sits on the forehead one cun above the middle of the eyebrow, directly above the pupil when the eyes look straight ahead. One cun above the brow is roughly a thumb's width up from the eyebrow line; taking the pupil as the vertical reference is what fixes it from side to side, and it is why the eyes must be level and looking forward while the point is located. The landmark is easy, which is part of why GB-14 is among the most frequently used points on the face — but the point is directly on the frontal bone, with almost nothing between skin and bone, and that single anatomical fact governs how every text describes needling it.

Which points is GB-14 combined with?

• With Yu Yao — the closest partner. Yu Yao is the extra point in the centre of the eyebrow, directly below GB-14 and on the same vertical line through the pupil. The two are the forehead's local pair, used together for supraorbital pain, brow-ridge headache and the forehead in facial paralysis. Sacred Lotus sources & references record Yu Yao's own combination with GB-14 and Zan Zhu BL-02 for frontal headache and supraorbital pain, and with GB-14, Si Bai ST-02 and Jing Ming BL-01 for a drooping eyelid. Because the two lie a cun apart on one line, the reference literature describes GB-14 being needled transversely downward toward Yu Yao when the whole brow region is the target.
• With Zan Zhu BL-02 — the point at the inner end of the eyebrow, on the Bladder channel. GB-14 and BL-02 are the standard pair for frontal headache and pain along the brow ridge, covering the region from its inner corner outward.
• With Qian Zheng, ST-04 Di Cang, ST-06 Jia Che and ST-07 Xia Guan — the facial-paralysis group. Qian Zheng is the extra point in front of the earlobe named for pulling the face back to its correct position; the record held here for it names GB-14 Yang Bai among its regular partners, and the two cover the upper and lower halves of the affected face between them.
• With He Gu LI-04 — the distal point for the face on the Large Intestine channel, whose own channel meets the Gall Bladder at GB-14. Local points on the face with LI-04 on the hand is the oldest structure in facial treatment.
• With Feng Chi GB-20 — the Gall Bladder point at the base of the skull, added where wind is the pattern being treated; GB-14 at the front of the head and GB-20 at the back are the channel's two principal head points.
• With Tou Wei ST-08 and Yin Tang — added across the forehead for headache spanning the whole front of the head: ST-08 at the corner of the forehead, Yin Tang between the eyebrows, GB-14 above the pupil.
• Method — Sacred Lotus sources & references record moxibustion as applicable at this point.

Why is GB-14 the standard point for the forehead in facial paralysis?

In peripheral facial paralysis the forehead is the region that most reliably distinguishes the presentation — the affected side loses its forehead wrinkling and the eyebrow cannot be raised. GB-14 sits over exactly that territory, above the pupil in the belly of the muscle that raises the brow, and it is the only major channel point that does. Its meeting classification adds the rest of the argument: the Stomach, Large Intestine and Sanjiao channels, which supply the face and are the channels most implicated in facial paralysis in channel theory, all meet the Gall Bladder here. That is why the point recurs in practically every published prescription for the condition, and why the data-mining analysis described under research finds Di Cang ST-04 with Yang Bai GB-14 to be one of the two highest-frequency point pairs at every stage of treatment.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location, meeting-point classification, and the Yu Yao, Qian Zheng, BL-02, GB-20, ST-08, LI-04 and Yin Tang point records queried and read directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212); cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is GB-14 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432): On the forehead, 1 cun superior to the middle of the eyebrow, directly above the pupil when the eyes are looking straight ahead.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 212): On the forehead, directly above the pupil, 1 cun directly above the midpoint of the eyebrow.

How is GB-14 Yang Bai needled in the textbooks?

Stated plainly as documented fact: GB-14 lies on the forehead directly over the frontal bone, and the reference texts therefore record only shallow subcutaneous and transverse insertion at this point — never deep perpendicular insertion. Sacred Lotus sources & references record subcutaneous insertion of 0.3 to 0.5 inch, with moxibustion applicable. The reason is anatomical rather than cautionary: there is skin, a thin layer of tissue and the muscle that raises the eyebrow, and then bone. A needle directed perpendicularly at any depth simply meets the skull. Everything below is neutral reference data describing what the standard texts record; it is not instruction, and this page does not teach technique. Needling is carried out only by a qualified, licensed practitioner.

• Angle documented: subcutaneous and transverse only. Deadman & Al-Khafaji (p. 432) describe transverse insertion, including transverse insertion directed downward toward the eyebrow — toward the extra point Yu Yao — and transverse insertion directed to either side along the forehead depending on the region being treated. Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212) records subcutaneous insertion. The two agree.
• Depth documented: 0.3 to 0.5 inch in the record held here, running under the skin rather than into it. Depth at this point is a horizontal distance, not a vertical one.
• What lies beneath. Skin and subcutaneous tissue, the frontalis muscle — the sheet of muscle that raises the eyebrow and wrinkles the forehead — and immediately deep to it the periosteum and the frontal bone. Running through the region are the supraorbital and supratrochlear nerves and vessels, emerging from the upper rim of the orbit below the point and passing upward across the forehead. The frontal sinus, an air space within the frontal bone above the brow, lies behind that bone; it is not reachable by a transverse subcutaneous needle, and the transverse angle is why the question does not arise.
• What actually happens at this point in practice. The forehead is well supplied with small vessels and the tissue over the bone is thin, so bruising is the characteristic event here — visible, on the face, and slow to settle. Bleeding and bruising at the needle site are the most frequently recorded acupuncture adverse events of any kind; a meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies found that roughly half of all recorded events were bleeding, pain or flare at the site, and estimated serious adverse events at approximately 1 per 10,000 patients (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268). The reference literature notes the cosmetic significance of this on the face.
• Not an orbital point — and the distinction matters. GB-14 is one cun above the eyebrow, over solid bone, and carries none of the hazard attaching to the points inside or on the rim of the eye socket. The genuinely hazardous ophthalmic points are the ones needled beside or behind the eyeball, where inadvertent ocular perforation from acupuncture has been reported in the ophthalmic literature (JAMA Ophthalmol 2022;140(6):e221452, PMID 35708617). The records held here for those points reflect it. At GB-14 the constraint is simply the bone.
• Moxibustion — recorded as applicable.
• No single agreed safe depth exists for any acupuncture point. Two systematic reviews of the safe-depth literature — 33 studies in the first, 47 in the second — concluded that depths measured for the same point vary greatly with the subject group and the measuring method, 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). At a point where the texts record transverse insertion over bone, the practical consequence is small; the principle holds across the whole set of records.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212); PubMed PMID 34489268; PMID 35708617; PMID 21417806; PMID 23935678 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Yang Bai mean?

Yang Bai means "Yang White" — yang, the yang aspect, and bai, white or bright. Sacred Lotus sources & references translate it exactly so. The usual reading takes both characters positionally: the forehead is the yang surface of the head, uppermost and outermost, and bai — white, clear, bright — describes both the openness of that surface and the clarity the point is credited with restoring to the head and the eyes. A secondary reading connects bai to the point's eye action, brightness being the standard metaphor for vision across the point names of this region. Either way the name is a description of the forehead as a yang territory, and GB-14 is the Gall Bladder channel's station on it.

Why does the meeting-point classification matter at GB-14?

A meeting point is one where two or more channels or vessels are recorded as crossing, and needling it is understood to reach all of them. Sacred Lotus sources & references classify GB-14 as a Meeting Point of the Gall Bladder with the Yang Linking (Yang Wei) Vessel and with the Sanjiao, Stomach and Large Intestine channels — five pathways at one point above the eyebrow. That is a dense convergence even by the standards of the head, and it has three practical consequences.

• It explains the range. The Stomach channel of Foot Yang Ming and the Large Intestine channel of Hand Yang Ming are the yang ming channels of the face; the Sanjiao channel of Hand Shao Yang is the Gall Bladder's own paired hand channel. Facial paralysis, facial pain and frontal headache are attributed to those channels in various combinations, and GB-14 reaches all of them without the practitioner having to decide first.
• It links GB-14 to the Yang Linking vessel. The Yang Wei binds the yang channels along the outside of the body. Sacred Lotus sources & references record several nearby Gall Bladder head points as meeting it too — Ben Shen GB-13, Tou Lin Qi GB-15, Mu Chuang GB-16 and Feng Chi GB-20 — so the whole front-and-side of the head forms one Yang Wei territory. The vessel is opened distally from Wai Guan SJ-05, its Confluent point on the forearm, which is the structural reason SJ-05 appears in head and face prescriptions.
• It is why one local point does so much. Points with several meeting channels tend to be the ones that survive in every prescription for their region, and GB-14 is a clear case: the modern data-mining analysis of point selection for facial paralysis finds it in one of the top two point pairs at every stage of treatment.

Is there research on GB-14 Yang Bai?

There is no trial that isolates GB-14, and it would be misleading to present one. What the literature does show, unusually clearly for a local point, is how consistently GB-14 is selected — and that comes from a large analysis of the published prescriptions rather than from a trial.

• Point-selection analysis across 1,695 studies — the most informative finding for this point. A data-mining study retrieved the literature on acupuncture for peripheral facial paralysis published between 2012 and 2021 across five Chinese databases and PubMed, extracting 124 acupoints used a total of 5,456 times across 1,695 articles, and analysed selection by stage of illness, pattern and symptom. Across every stage of treatment, the channel most used was the Stomach channel of Foot Yang Ming, and the high-frequency point pairs at every stage were Di Cang ST-04 with Yang Bai GB-14 and Di Cang ST-04 with Jia Che ST-06. The symptom associated with the greatest frequency of point use was "forehead wrinkles becoming shallow or disappearing" (Wang S, Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2023;43(12):1457–1464, PMID 38092550). This does not show that GB-14 works; it shows what practitioners and trialists actually do, extracted systematically from a very large body of literature — and it corroborates the classical account of the point exactly.
• Multicentre randomised trial in which GB-14 is a main point. Eighty-nine patients with intractable facial paralysis were randomised across several centres to ordinary or "characteristic" acupuncture manipulation, with the same main points in both arms — Yang Bai GB-14, Quan Liao SI-18, Ying Xiang LI-20, Shui Gou DU-26, Di Cang ST-04, Cheng Jiang REN-24, Tai Yang, Jia Che ST-06, Feng Chi GB-20 and He Gu LI-04 — three times a week for ten weeks, assessed by two facial-recovery scales and by infrared thermography. Both arms improved and the "characteristic" manipulation arm improved more; thermographic temperature differences between the affected and unaffected sides changed significantly in the frontal and ocular areas by the second course, and at the mouth corner only by the third. No safety incidents were recorded (Xie HY et al., Chin J Integr Med 2025;31(9):773–781, PMID 40707804). Because GB-14 was given to every participant, the trial says nothing about the point in isolation — but the forehead being the region to change first, in a protocol whose forehead point is GB-14, is at least consistent.
• Penetration needling from GB-14, documented in a case report. A published case of Bell's palsy treated with a combination of manual acupuncture, penetrating needling and electroacupuncture records penetrating needling given at GB-14 directed toward Yin Tang, alongside ST-07 directed toward other facial points (Med Acupunct 2023;35(6), PMID 38162550). It is a single case and carries no weight as evidence; it is noted here only because it documents the transverse-penetration technique at this point in the indexed literature. Note that the direction recorded in that report is toward Yin Tang between the eyebrows, not toward Yu Yao directly below — both directions are described in the reference texts, and the target depends on the region being treated.

The honest summary: GB-14's standing rests on its classification, its position and an exceptionally consistent record of clinical selection. There is no point-specific trial, and none should be implied.

How does GB-14 compare with the points around it?

Yu Yao is its nearest neighbour and its constant partner — the extra point in the centre of the eyebrow, one cun directly below GB-14 on the same line through the pupil. It carries no channel and no classification; GB-14 carries five converging pathways. When a reader finds a prescription naming one, the other is usually close by. Zan Zhu BL-02 lies at the inner end of the same eyebrow on the Bladder channel, and Si Zhu Kong SJ-23 at its outer end on the Sanjiao channel — the three eyebrow-level points, inner, middle and outer, each on a different channel. Tou Lin Qi GB-15 is the next Gall Bladder point upward, at the hairline on the same vertical line, and the two are sometimes confused because both are "above the pupil"; GB-15 is at the hairline, GB-14 one cun above the brow. Yin Tang sits on the midline between the eyebrows. Tou Wei ST-08 is out at the corner of the forehead. And Qian Zheng, the extra point in front of the earlobe, is GB-14's counterpart at the other end of the face in facial-paralysis treatment — the record held here for Qian Zheng names GB-14 among its partners.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, translation, meeting-point classification, and the Yu Yao, Qian Zheng, BL-02, SJ-23, GB-13, GB-15, GB-16, GB-20, ST-08, SJ-05 and Yin Tang point records queried and read directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 432); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 212); PubMed PMID 38092550; PMID 40707804; PMID 38162550 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.