SI-19 (Ting Gong) Auditory Palace

What does SI-19 Ting Gong do?

SI-19 is the principal local point for the ear, and a meeting point of three channels — the Small Intestine, San Jiao and Gall Bladder. All three reach the ear, and SI-19 is where they converge at its opening.

• Benefits the ears — the action our own record leads with; deafness, tinnitus and discharge are its core indications
• Calms the spirit — from the Small Intestine’s paired relationship with the Heart

Three points share the ear’s opening, and they are stacked vertically. This library holds all three: SJ-21 Er Men is the highest, SI-19 Ting Gong the middle, and GB-02 Ting Hui the lowest — each in front of the ear, one above the other, each on a different channel. They are used more or less interchangeably for ear complaints, and choosing between them is usually a matter of which channel the practitioner is treating rather than a difference in local effect.

The distal partner. Our record for SJ-03 Zhong Zhu on the back of the hand notes that the San Jiao channel is the classical ear channel and that SJ-03 is its distal ear point. Local and distal together — SI-19 or its neighbours at the ear, SJ-03 at the hand — is the standard classical pairing for hearing complaints.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (channel, category and action records; SJ-21, GB-02 and SJ-03 queried from our own data), cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is SI-19 Ting Gong used for?

SI-19 is used for hearing loss, ringing in the ears, ear discharge, jaw-joint problems and toothache. Our own indication record is reproduced here in full.

• Deafness and hearing loss
• Tinnitus
• Ear discharge (otorrhoea)
• Restricted movement of the jaw joint (temporomandibular)
• Toothache

The jaw and tooth indications follow from the position rather than the channel. SI-19 sits directly over the temporomandibular joint — which is why the mouth must be open to locate it, and why jaw dysfunction is on the list. A point that moves when the jaw moves is going to be used for the jaw.

An honest note on the ear indications. Sudden hearing loss and ear discharge are conditions requiring medical assessment — sudden sensorineural hearing loss in particular is treated as an urgent presentation in conventional medicine, where time to treatment matters. This record describes classical use and is not a suggestion that assessment be delayed.

How it is combined. With SJ-17 Yi Feng behind the earlobe — the two together surround the ear from front and back. With SJ-21 Er Men and GB-02 Ting Hui, its immediate neighbours. With SJ-03 Zhong Zhu or SJ-05 Wai Guan distally. With ST-06 Jia Che and ST-07 Xia Guan for the jaw. All held here.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (indication record; the ear and jaw points queried from our own data), cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is SI-19 Ting Gong located, and why is the mouth open?

SI-19 is in front of the ear, in the depression between the middle of the tragus and the jaw’s condyle — and our own record specifies that the mouth must be OPEN to locate it. That instruction is not incidental: with the mouth closed, the condyle of the mandible fills the space and there is no depression to find.

• Between the middle of the tragus and the condyloid process of the mandible
• Mouth open — the condyle moves forward, opening the hollow
• SJ-21 Er Men sits above it, GB-02 Ting Hui below it — all three located the same way

This is a genuinely unusual locating method, and worth flagging for that reason. Most points are found by proportional measurement or by a fixed bony landmark. SI-19 is found by asking the patient to move — the same category of method as the raised arm that opens the hollow at SI-12 Bing Feng, or the flexed knee that defines SP-10 Xue Hai in some sources. Where a location depends on a posture, the posture is part of the location.

On the name. “Ting Gong” means Auditory Palace or Palace of Hearing. Ting (hearing) also opens the name of its neighbour GB-02 Ting Hui, Auditory Convergence — the two names together describe what this small stretch of the face is for.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location and translation records, retained unchanged, including the open-mouth requirement; SJ-21, GB-02 and SI-12 queried from our own data).

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 247): With the mouth open, this point is located in the depression between the middle of the tragus and the condyloid process of the mandible.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 173): Anterior to the tragus and posterior to the condyloid process of the mandible, in the depression formed when the mouth is open.

How is SI-19 Ting Gong needled?

The standard texts record perpendicular insertion to roughly 0.5–1.0 inch, WITH THE MOUTH OPEN. What follows is a neutral record of what the reference literature documents, not instruction for a reader.

• Angle and depth as recorded: perpendicular, 0.5–1.0 inch, with the mouth open.
• The open mouth is part of the recorded technique, not only of locating it. With the mouth closed the mandibular condyle occupies the space; the depression exists only while the jaw is open.
• Our own record does not state moxibustion as applicable here, and none is asserted — unlike SI-05 and SI-08 on the same channel, where our record does.
• Regional anatomy: the superficial temporal artery and vein run just anterior to the ear in this region; the auriculotemporal nerve accompanies them, and branches of the facial nerve emerge from the parotid gland below and in front. The external acoustic meatus lies immediately behind the point.

Hazard, stated proportionately. The considerations here are vascular and neural rather than cavity-related: this is a vascular part of the face, and the facial nerve’s branches are in the region. Our record for SJ-17 Yi Feng, behind the earlobe, documents the facial nerve as it exits the stylomastoid foramen and states plainly that no measured safe-depth study exists for that point. The same is true here. No study measuring a safe depth at SI-19 could be located, and no figure is borrowed from a neighbour. No case report naming SI-19 as the site of an injury was located, and none is asserted.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (needling record including the open-mouth requirement, retained unchanged; SJ-17's facial-nerve documentation queried from our own data), cross-referenced against multiple online sources; regional anatomy from standard anatomical description.

Is there research on SI-19, and what should a reader know?

SI-19 appears frequently in trials for tinnitus and sudden hearing loss — but always as one point in a protocol, typically alongside SJ-17, SJ-21, GB-02 and a distal point. No trial isolates it. As throughout this library, a study that includes a point in a protocol is not evidence about that point.

That caveat carries real weight here, because tinnitus has a reasonable volume of acupuncture trials and SI-19 is in most of them. The temptation to read a protocol result as an SI-19 result is strong precisely because the point is so consistently present. This library draws the same line on ST-35 for knee osteoarthritis and on ST-08 and GB-08 for headache.

A structural point worth carrying away. The three points at the ear’s opening — SJ-21 above, SI-19 in the middle, GB-02 below — sit within a couple of centimetres of each other on three different channels. When a trial names “the ear points” it usually means some combination of these three, and results attributed to one of them in a secondary source should be checked against what the trial actually used.

A note on searching for it. “SI 19” and “Tinggong” searches return protocol trials and, as repeatedly found throughout this library, unrelated material matched on the code or on a surname — one published abstract in this field prints Tianzong, which is SI-11, under the code “ST 11”. Any claim attached to this point should be checked against what a study actually used and measured.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (classification and indication records; the ear-point group and the SI-11 miscoding queried from our own data).