KI-01 (Yong Quan) Gushing Spring, Bubbling Well

What does KI-01 Yong Quan do?

Yong Quan KI-01 is the Jing-Well and Wood point of the Kidney channel of Foot Shao Yin, and it is the lowest point on the human body — which is the whole of its clinical logic. Its defining recorded action is to draw excess downward out of the head, and to descend and anchor yang that has risen. Sacred Lotus sources & references record its actions as descending excess from the head, calming the spirit, and reviving consciousness and rescuing yang. Every one of those follows from position and classification together: a Water-channel point at the very sole of the foot, at the point where the classics say channel qi first wells up out of the ground.

• Descends excess from the head and subdues rising yang — the action KI-01 is reached for above all others. Where the classical picture is of qi, yang or fire having surged upward — a hot, pounding head, dizziness, a red face, ringing ears, a flushed and agitated state — KI-01 is the point at the opposite end of the body used to pull it back down. This is the traditional rationale behind the point's long association with high blood pressure, discussed under research below.
• Calms the spirit — recorded for agitation, restlessness and disturbed sleep. The Kidney channel's course is described as reaching the root of the tongue and connecting to the Heart, and the descending action and the calming action are treated in the classics as the same movement seen from two sides: what comes down, settles.
• Revives consciousness and rescues collapsed yang — the emergency action shared across the whole Jing-Well group, and the one for which KI-01 appears in the classical texts on sudden collapse and windstroke. Loss of consciousness and collapse are medical emergencies requiring immediate emergency medical care; this records what the classical literature describes, not a course of action.
• Clears heat and benefits the throat — the recorded use for a dry or sore throat, a dry tongue and loss of voice, all of them referred to the Kidney channel's described course up the throat to the root of the tongue.
• Nourishes Kidney yin and clears deficiency heat — the pattern behind the classical indication of a hot, burning sensation in the soles of the feet, one of the "five-centre heat" signs (the two palms, the two soles and the chest) that the tradition reads as yin failing to hold yang.
• Benefits urination and regulates the lower burner — the Kidney-organ action, recorded for difficult urination.

One classification is worth stating outright because it is easy to miss. The Kidney is a yin Water channel. On yin channels the Jing-Well point is a Wood point, and Water is the mother of Wood — so by the mother-child rule KI-01 is the draining or sedation point of the Kidney channel, not its tonification point. The channel's tonification point is KI-07 Fu Liu, the Jing-River and Metal point, held here. That single fact explains why KI-01's recorded actions are overwhelmingly about removing and descending excess rather than about building the Kidneys up, and why a point on the Kidney channel is not the first choice for Kidney deficiency.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (channel, Jing-Well and Wood classification, the Kidney five-shu series queried directly, and the existing action record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 336; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 191; Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties), chapter 68, on the five-shu indications; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is KI-01 Yong Quan used for?

KI-01 is used above all for conditions in which something has risen to the head and will not come down — headache, dizziness and blurred vision — and for the acute collapse and loss-of-consciousness presentations that the Jing-Well points as a group are recorded for. The indications carried in Sacred Lotus sources & references are set out below. They describe traditional use, not proven treatment. Loss of consciousness, collapse and convulsions are medical emergencies requiring immediate emergency medical care.

• Headache, particularly at the vertex
• Dizziness and vertigo
• Blurring of vision
• Loss of consciousness and collapse
• Infantile convulsions
• Sore throat
• Dryness of the tongue
• Loss of voice
• A hot or burning sensation in the soles of the feet
• Difficult urination
• Restlessness, agitation and disturbed sleep
• Constipation
• Pain in the sole and heel

A note on what the classical record does and does not say. KI-01 is genuinely well known outside acupuncture — as the "bubbling spring" of foot massage, as a self-applied moxibustion or sole-rubbing practice for sleep, and as a point named in popular writing on blood pressure. Neither high blood pressure nor insomnia appears as a named indication in the traditional record we hold; what appears is the pattern language of rising yang and of a disturbed spirit, which is the frame in which practitioners have long applied the point to both. That is a real distinction, and it is stated here rather than smoothed over, because the modern research on this point — which is unusually substantial for a single acupuncture point — has clustered on exactly those two modern conditions. It is set out honestly further down this page.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 191; Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 336; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is KI-01 Yong Quan, and how is it used in practice?

Yong Quan is on the sole of the foot, in the hollow that appears in the ball of the foot when the toes are curled under — roughly a third of the way back from the base of the toes toward the heel, in the furrow between the second and third long bones of the foot. Sacred Lotus sources & references hold two location records for it, one describing the junction of the front third and back two-thirds of the line from the web of the second and third toes to the heel, and one describing the space between the second and third metatarsal bones; they describe the same depression from two directions and neither has been altered here. Curling the toes is the practical way to find it: the hollow appears, and is usually the most tender spot on the sole.

Which points is KI-01 combined with?

• With KI-03 Tai Xi — the Source point of the same channel at the inner ankle. This is the standard within-channel pairing and the one that balances KI-01's draining, descending character against a point that genuinely supplements the Kidneys. Where KI-01 pulls down, KI-03 anchors.
• With LIV-03 Tai Chong — the Liver Source point on the top of the foot, the classical partner for rising yang, headache and irritability. Liver yang rising and Kidney yin failing to hold it are described as two halves of one pattern, and this pair addresses both ends of it.
• With DU-20 Bai Hui — the point at the crown of the head with the point at the sole of the foot: the highest and the lowest points on the body used as a single top-and-bottom axis. This is the pairing used in the animal research described below and is the most literal expression of KI-01's descending role.
• With DU-26 Shui Gou and P-09 Zhong Chong — the classical emergency group for collapse and loss of consciousness, in which KI-01 appears alongside the Governing Vessel point below the nose and the Jing-Well point of the Pericardium.
• With SP-06 San Yin Jiao and P-06 Nei Guan — the combination that turns up most consistently in the modern literature on KI-01, both in the resuscitation trials and in the historical analysis of acupoint-application prescriptions for high blood pressure.
• With HT-07 Shen Men — the Heart Source point, the standard partner where the intention is described as calming the spirit and settling sleep; the two appear together in the association-rule analysis of acupressure for sleep quality cited below.
• Among its category peers — KI-01 is one of the twelve Jing-Well points, and by the mother-child rule it is the draining point of the Kidney channel rather than its tonification point. The Kidney five-shu series held here completes the set: KI-02 Ran Gu (Ying-Spring, Fire), KI-03 Tai Xi (Shu-Stream, Earth, and the Source point), KI-07 Fu Liu (Jing-River, Metal, and the tonification point) and KI-10 Yin Gu (He-Sea, Water). The channel's Connecting point is KI-04 Da Zhong and its Xi-Cleft point KI-05 Shui Quan.

Which twelve Jing-Well points does this site hold, and why is KI-01 the odd one out?

Sacred Lotus sources & references hold all twelve Jing-Well points — one at the end of each of the twelve regular channels — and KI-01 is the only one of the twelve that is not at the corner of a nail. Every other Jing-Well point sits at the base of a finger or toe nail; Yong Quan sits on the sole of the foot, well back from the toes. The element rule holds across the set regardless: on the six yin channels the Jing-Well point is a Wood point, and on the six yang channels a Metal point. The twelve, as our own records classify them:

• LU-11 Shao Shang (Lung) — Wood. LI-01 Shang Yang (Large Intestine) — Metal.
• ST-45 Li Dui (Stomach) — Metal. SP-01 Yin Bai (Spleen) — Wood.
• HT-09 Shao Chong (Heart) — Wood. SI-01 Shao Ze (Small Intestine) — Metal.
• BL-67 Zhi Yin (Bladder) — Metal. KI-01 Yong Quan (Kidney) — Wood. The exception: alone among the twelve it is not at a nail corner but on the sole of the foot.
• P-09 Zhong Chong (Pericardium) — Wood. SJ-01 Guan Chong (Sanjiao) — Metal.
• GB-44 Zu Qiao Yin (Gall Bladder) — Metal. LIV-01 Da Dun (Liver) — Wood.

The consequence of that exception is practical rather than theoretical. The eleven nail-corner points are shallow, are characteristically pricked to bleed, and are used for a few seconds. KI-01 lies under the thickest skin on the body, in a region of dense sensory innervation, and it is therefore the one Jing-Well point that is as often moxaed, pressed or rubbed as needled — including by people on themselves, which is how the point acquired a public reputation the other eleven never did.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (both location records, point categories, the full twelve Jing-Well point set queried directly, the Kidney five-shu series, and the KI-03, KI-04, KI-05, KI-07, KI-10, LIV-03, DU-20, DU-26, P-06, P-09, SP-06 and HT-07 records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 336; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 191; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is KI-01 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 336): On the sole of the foot, between the second and third metatarsal bones, approximately one third of the distance between the base of the second toe and the heel, in a depression formed when the foot is plantar flexed.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 191): On the sole, in the depression when the foot is in plantar flexion, approximately at the junction of the anterior one-third and posterior two-thirds of the line connecting the base of the 2nd and 3rd toes and the heel.

How is KI-01 Yong Quan needled in the textbooks?

Reference record only — this sets out what the standard texts document, not instruction for a reader. Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.3 to 0.5 inch at KI-01, with moxibustion noted as applicable. Deadman & Al-Khafaji record a comparable shallow perpendicular range at the same site. It is one of the shorter recorded depths in the repertoire, and the reason is straightforward: there is very little between the skin of the sole and the bones of the foot.

• Angle documented: perpendicular into the depression that appears when the toes are curled.
• Depth documented: approximately 0.3 to 0.5 inch.
• Moxibustion: documented as applicable, and unusually prominent at this point — a large share of the published clinical work on KI-01 uses moxibustion rather than needling.
• Non-needle methods: acupoint application (a herbal paste held against the sole), acupressure and massage of the sole are all documented methods at this point in the reference and research literature, and they are what most of the modern KI-01 studies actually tested.
• Sensation: the reference literature records KI-01 as one of the sharpest points on the body. That is a property of the tissue, not a sign of anything having gone wrong.

Safety reference — the measured anatomy, and the honest bottom line. KI-01 carries no cavity or organ hazard whatever. There is no thoracic, abdominal or cranial structure within reach of it; none of the pneumothorax caution that governs points over the chest and upper back applies, and none of the depth-and-direction caution that governs the points over the foramen magnum applies either. It is, in hazard terms, one of the safest points on the body, and saying so plainly is more useful than a vague warning.

What does bound the recorded depth is entirely local, and it has been measured. A cadaveric dissection study at two Korean universities examined KI-01 against the four-layer structure of the sole in six bodies and reported that the point lies in both the superficial and the deep layers of the plantar foot, immediately adjacent to the medial and lateral plantar nerves, and that stimulation there engages the muscle spindles and nerve fibres involved in balance and upright locomotion. The authors also recorded that the exact position of the point differs between men and women, reflecting differences in foot shape (Kim SH et al., Medicina (Kaunas) 2024;60(4):535, PMID 38674181, PMC11051973, DOI 10.3390/medicina60040535). A separate neural-tracing study in rats mapped the innervation of the KI-01 region to the L3–L5 dorsal root ganglia, which is the segmental basis of the same picture (Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2013;38(5):375–9, PMID 24308184). The practical consequences are the ones a reader would expect from that anatomy: the point is very tender, a radiating sensation into the sole and toes is ordinary, and the plantar skin is thick enough that the recorded depth is short.

Standing on the treated foot is noted in the reference literature as briefly uncomfortable after treatment at this point, which is a matter of comfort rather than of safety. Pregnancy: our sources record no pregnancy contraindication for KI-01. That caution attaches to LI-04 He Gu, SP-06 San Yin Jiao, GB-21 Jian Jing and the lower-abdominal and sacral points, and it should not be transferred here by assumption. Standard clean-needle practice applies, and moxibustion carries its own ordinary burn precautions. Acupuncture and moxibustion are carried out only by a qualified, licensed practitioner; this record documents the literature and is not a technique guide.

Risk in proportion. A meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies estimated serious acupuncture-related adverse events at approximately 1 per 10,000 patients, with about half of all recorded events being bleeding, pain or flare at the needle site (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268). The two clinical studies of herbal application at KI-01 cited below reported adverse-event rates of 0.98 per cent and 2.0 per cent, all minor.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 336; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 191; PubMed PMID 38674181 (PMC11051973); PMID 24308184; PMID 34489268; PMID 23046294; PMID 23265082 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Yong Quan mean?

Yong Quan means "Gushing Spring" or "Bubbling Well" — yong, to well up, surge or gush, and quan, a spring of water. The image is exact on three levels at once, which is why this is one of the most admired point names in the canon. Geographically, a spring rises where water breaks out of the lowest ground, and KI-01 is the lowest point on the body. Elementally, the Kidney is the Water organ, and this is its first point. And in five-shu terms, jing — the character used for the Jing-Well class — is the character for a water well, describing the place where channel qi first bubbles up out of the ground at the end of a limb. Yong Quan is the point at which all three readings coincide: the Water channel's own well, at the body's lowest point, where the spring rises.

Other renderings of the name include "Bubbling Spring" and "Gushing Fountain"; all describe the same image. The Kidney channel keeps the water imagery going as it climbs: KI-02 Ran Gu is "Blazing Valley", KI-05 Shui Quan is "Water Spring", KI-06 Zhao Hai is "Shining Sea" and KI-10 Yin Gu is "Yin Valley" — a watercourse read from its source upward, all of them held in Sacred Lotus sources & references.

Why does the Jing-Well classification matter at KI-01?

The five-shu points run from the tip of each limb inward, and the classics assign each a stage in the flow of channel qi: Jing-Well where it wells up and begins, Ying-Spring where it glides, Shu-Stream where it pours, Jing-River where it flows freely, He-Sea where it enters the deep. The Nan Jing attaches an indication to each stage, and the Jing-Well point's is fullness below the Heart — the oppressed, blocked feeling in the upper abdomen and chest. As with the other eleven, that classical indication sits some way from how the point is actually used, and the honest account of Jing-Well practice is that it is about acute conditions: these are the points where yin and yang channels turn into one another, they are the most superficial and densely innervated points on the body, and they are the group most closely associated with pricking to bleed. Collapse, high fever and convulsions follow from those three features.

KI-01 shares that emergency repertoire but adds something none of the others has: altitude. It is the only Jing-Well point on the sole, and therefore the lowest point on the body. Where the other eleven are used for what is acute, KI-01 is additionally used for what is high — a point at the bottom to draw down what has gone to the top. The tradition treats this as the same principle that makes DU-20 Bai Hui at the crown the point for what has sunk. The two are used together as an axis, and that pairing is the reason the animal research on this point is built on GV20-and-KI1 rather than on KI-01 alone.

Is there research on KI-01 Yong Quan?

KI-01 has more point-specific research behind it than most individual acupuncture points, and it has clustered on three things: blood pressure, sleep, and consciousness after cardiac arrest. None of it establishes clinical effectiveness, and the strongest studies are small and unblinded — but they genuinely concern this point rather than a whole protocol, which is rarer than it should be.

• Blood pressure — the clearest point-specific strand. One hundred and two people with hypertension aged 39–55 had both soles treated with a Chinese herbal fomentation applied to Yong Quan, one 24-hour session daily for three days, with 24-hour ambulatory blood-pressure monitoring before and after. Daytime systolic and diastolic pressure fell significantly; 24-hour and night-time pressures did not change, and the adverse-event rate was 0.98 per cent (J Altern Complement Med 2012;18(12):1168–71, PMID 23046294, DOI 10.1089/acm.2011.0679). The same group ran a companion study in 51 participants, validating the ambulatory measurements against intra-arterial radial recordings in a ten-person subgroup, and reported daytime reductions of 6.0 mmHg systolic and 4.8 mmHg diastolic, with a 2.0 per cent adverse-event rate (J Acupunct Meridian Stud 2012;5(6):305–9, PMID 23265082). These are single-arm, unblinded, single-centre studies of a herbal preparation held against the sole, and the effect was confined to daytime. They are the best point-specific evidence KI-01 has, and that is a statement about how thin this literature is as much as about how good they are.
• Blood pressure — what practitioners actually prescribed. An analysis of 117 articles containing 191 acupoint-application prescriptions for hypertension found Yong Quan KI-01 the single most frequently used point in the entire body of work, most often paired with SP-06 San Yin Jiao, REN-08 Shen Que or P-06 Nei Guan (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2020;40(5):565–9, PMID 32394668). That documents prescribing practice, not effect — but it establishes that KI-01's popular reputation for blood pressure is a real feature of the clinical literature and not an internet invention.
• Sleep. A review of the Chinese clinical literature on moxibustion at KI-01 for insomnia retrieved 27 papers including 14 randomised controlled trials, and reported that the number was rising. Its most useful finding is a limitation: very few studies used moxibustion at KI-01 as a treatment on its own, most combining it with acupuncture or massage, and the moxibustion was usually performed by the patient or a family member (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2018;38(5), PMID 29797920). Separately, an association-rule analysis of the acupressure-for-sleep literature placed KI-01 among the ten most frequently selected points, alongside HT-07, SP-06 and P-06, and identified the combination of HT-07 with KI-01 as one of its strongest rules (Evid Based Complement Alternat Med 2021;2021:1399258, PMID 34630604). Again: what was prescribed, not what worked.
• Consciousness and resuscitation. A positron-emission-tomography study compared neuronal activation during acupuncture at Yong Quan against sham points in patients with disorders of consciousness (Neural Regen Res 2014;9(5):500–1, PMID 25206845, PMC4153502) — a short report in a small and unusual population, but a point-specific imaging comparison. At the clinical level, a systematic review and meta-analysis of acupuncture added to conventional cardiopulmonary cerebral resuscitation pooled seven randomised trials and 411 participants who had achieved return of spontaneous circulation; KI-01 was one of the five main points used, with P-06, DU-26, DU-20 and SP-06. Glasgow Coma Scale scores were higher in the acupuncture arms at days 3, 5 and 7, but the authors rated the certainty of the evidence as very low (Integr Med Res 2023;12(1):100925, PMID 36865050, PMC9971281). The point's emergency reputation has also reached the mainstream resuscitation literature as commentary — a letter in Resuscitation discussing K1 Yongquan and delayed return of circulation (2010;81(4):505–6, PMID 20083334) and a proposal to slot a Yongquan manoeuvre into the resuscitation sequence (World J Crit Care Med 2013;2(3):17–20, PMID 24701412). Both are commentary and proposal, not trial evidence, and are recorded here as such.
• Anatomy and mechanism. The cadaveric dissection of KI-01 and the rat neural-tracing study described under needling (PMID 38674181; PMID 24308184) are the closest thing this point has to a mechanistic foundation, and both concern innervation rather than effect. Electroacupuncture at DU-20 with KI-01 has been used extensively in transgenic mouse models of Alzheimer's disease, reporting changes in hippocampal synaptic proteins and amyloid handling (for example Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2020;45(4), PMID 32333537; Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2015;40(2), PMID 25845217). Animal work on a two-point combination; it does not transfer to human practice.

The fair summary is that KI-01 is one of the few points with a genuine point-specific research literature, that the blood-pressure strand is the strongest and is still only two small unblinded studies of a herbal application, that the sleep and resuscitation strands document what practitioners choose rather than what works, and that the classical record itself names neither hypertension nor insomnia. The site does not claim that KI-01 treats high blood pressure, insomnia, headache or loss of consciousness.

How does KI-01 compare with the points around it?

KI-03 Tai Xi is the point KI-01 is most often confused with in intention, and they are near opposites: KI-03 is the Source and Shu-Stream point at the inner ankle, the Kidney channel's principal supplementing point, whereas KI-01 is its draining point. If the question is Kidney deficiency, KI-03 is the point; if the question is something risen that must come down, KI-01 is. KI-02 Ran Gu, the Ying-Spring and Fire point on the inner border of the foot, is the channel's heat-clearing member and the closer comparison for throat heat and night sweating. LIV-01 Da Dun, the Liver channel's Jing-Well point, sits at the corner of the great toenail and is the nail-corner Wood point of the foot that KI-01 would otherwise resemble. Shi Mian — "Lost Sleep" — is an extra point held here on the sole of the heel, and it is the one most often muddled with Yong Quan in popular writing about sleep: it lies further back, at the centre of the heel rather than in the ball of the foot, is on no channel, and carries no category. And DU-20 Bai Hui at the crown of the head is not a neighbour at all, but KI-01's constant partner at the opposite pole of the body.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, both location records, point categories, the full twelve Jing-Well point set queried directly, the Kidney five-shu series, and the KI-02, KI-03, KI-05, KI-06, KI-07, KI-10, LIV-01, DU-20, HT-07, P-06, SP-06 and Shi Mian records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture, p. 336; Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion, p. 191; Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties) on the five-shu indications; PubMed PMID 23046294, 23265082, 32394668, 29797920, 34630604, 25206845, 36865050, 20083334, 24701412, 38674181, 24308184, 32333537, 25845217, 34489268 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.