SP-03 (Tai Bai) Supreme White

What does SP-03 Tai Bai do?

Tai Bai SP-03 is the Yuan-Source point of the Spleen and, at the same time, its Shu-Stream and Earth point — three classifications at one location — and its recorded work is to tonify the Spleen, resolve dampness and damp-heat, harmonise the Spleen and Stomach, and regulate qi. Sacred Lotus sources & references record all of that directly. The triple classification is the whole story of this point: Source points regulate their organ, Shu-Stream points are classically indicated for heaviness and painful joints, and the Earth point of an Earth channel is the point where the channel meets its own element.

• Tonifies the Spleen — the primary recorded action and the Source-point action proper. This is the Spleen channel's own regulating point, reached for when the organ is depleted: poor appetite, loose stools, fatigue after eating, heaviness of the limbs.
• Resolves dampness and damp-heat — the Spleen is described in classical theory as the organ that transforms and transports fluids, and dampness is what accumulates when it fails. SP-03 is one of the channel's principal points for that pattern, and the reason it carries indications from abdominal distension through to heaviness of the whole body.
• Harmonises the Spleen and Stomach — the paired-organ action. The Spleen and Stomach are interior-exterior partners and are treated together more often than any other pair; SP-03 is the Spleen-side Source point at which that is done.
• Regulates qi — for distension, fullness, rumbling and the disordered movement of qi in the abdomen.
• Serves as a diagnostic point — like all Source points, tenderness or a change in the hollow at SP-03 is read as referring to its own channel and organ, so the point is palpated before it is chosen.
• Benefits the sinews and the foot locally — the local action of a point on the inner edge of the foot, and the basis of its recorded use for heaviness, aching and weakness of the leg and foot.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing action record; Spleen channel, Yuan-Source and Shu-Stream & Earth classifications queried directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157); Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties), on the five-shu indications and the mother-child rule; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is SP-03 Tai Bai used for?

Tai Bai SP-03 is used above all for the digestive tract: gastric pain, abdominal distension, constipation, diarrhoea, dysentery, vomiting and rumbling of the intestines — and, characteristically, for the heavy, sluggish, weighted feeling in the body that classical theory attributes to dampness. The indications below are those carried in Sacred Lotus sources & references together with those set out in the standard reference literature. They describe traditional use, not proven treatment. This is a low-hazard point; the reference facts are set out under needling.

• Gastric pain and pain in the epigastrium
• Abdominal distension and fullness
• Borborygmus — rumbling of the intestines
• Diarrhoea, including chronic and undigested-food diarrhoea
• Constipation
• Dysentery
• Vomiting and nausea
• Poor appetite and inability to eat
• Sluggishness and heaviness of the body
• Heaviness, aching and weakness of the leg and foot
• Beriberi — the classical term for the swollen, weak, numb legs of the condition the reference texts record here
• Fatigue that is worse after eating
• Haemorrhoids
• Feverishness with no sweating

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157).

Where is SP-03 Tai Bai, and how is it used in practice?

Tai Bai lies on the inner edge of the foot, in the hollow just behind and below the ball of the big toe — the rounded head of the first long foot bone — on the boundary where the pale skin of the sole meets the darker skin of the top of the foot. Sacred Lotus sources & references give it in both those terms, and the second one is the useful one in practice: that boundary, traditionally called the junction of the red and the white skin, runs the whole length of the inner foot and is where several of this channel's early points sit.

In practice SP-03 is the Spleen channel's general regulating point, and its everyday use is digestive. Where a presentation involves poor digestion, loose stools, bloating after food, heaviness and fatigue, this is the point the Spleen channel offers at the foot, and it is chosen precisely because a Source point can be used whether the channel is depleted or overloaded. It is an easy, comfortable point to reach, it takes moxibustion well, and it is one of the small number of points that a practitioner will palpate diagnostically before deciding to use.

Which points is SP-03 combined with?

• With Feng Long ST-40 — the Yuan-Luo combination proper to this point. A channel's Source point pairs with the Connecting point of its partner channel, and the Spleen's partner is the Stomach: SP-03, the Source point of the Spleen, with ST-40 Feng Long, the Connecting point of the Stomach. Both are held here, and our ST-40 record states the same pairing from its own side. The mirror pair — SP-04 Gong Sun, the Spleen's Connecting point, with ST-42 Chong Yang, the Stomach's Source point — is the other half of the structure, and reading the two together is the clearest way to see how Yuan-Luo works.
• With Pi Shu BL-20 — the Shu-Yuan combination. BL-20 is the Back-Shu point of the Spleen, confirmed by query in Sacred Lotus sources & references. Source point at the foot with Back-Shu point on the back is the standard structure for treating an organ rather than a channel.
• With Zhong Wan REN-12 and Zu San Li ST-36 — the Front-Mu point of the Stomach on the upper abdomen and the Stomach channel's He-Sea and Earth point at the leg. This is the everyday core of a digestive treatment, and SP-03 is added to it wherever the Spleen side of the pair needs its own Source point.
• With Gong Sun SP-04 and Nei Guan P-06 — SP-04 lies immediately behind SP-03 on the same edge of the foot and is the Spleen's Connecting point and the Confluent point of the Penetrating Vessel; paired with P-06 at the wrist it is one of the four classical Confluent-point couples, and it is the pairing the classical record reaches for most often in the epigastrium. Data-mining of ancient prescriptions for chronic gastritis found the combination of Neiguan P-06 with Gongsun SP-04 to have the strongest association of any pair in the record, with Taibai SP-03 among the special points recurring across all four of the main presenting symptoms (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2020;40(9):1018–1023, PMID 32959601).
• With Da Du SP-02 — the Ying-Spring and Fire point immediately in front of SP-03 on the same channel, and the Spleen's tonification point. The two are named together in the classical record: an analysis of the earliest ancient prescriptions for epigastric pain found that Dadu SP-02 and Taibai SP-03 were selected whenever distension of the chest and abdomen accompanied the pain (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(2):253–261, PMID 39943771). That is an unusually specific confirmation of a traditional pairing from the classical corpus itself.
• With San Yin Jiao SP-06 and Yin Ling Quan SP-09 — the Spleen channel's meeting point of the three leg yin channels and its He-Sea and Water point, the two points added wherever dampness is the pattern being treated.
• With Yin Bai SP-01 — the Jing-Well point at the corner of the big toenail, used for bleeding and for the classical Spleen action of holding the blood in the vessels.

Where does SP-03 sit among the Source points?

Sacred Lotus sources & references hold the full set of twelve Yuan Source points — LU-09 Tai Yuan, LI-04 He Gu, ST-42 Chong Yang, SP-03 Tai Bai, HT-07 Shen Men, SI-04 Wan Gu, BL-64 Jing Gu, KI-03 Tai Xi, P-07 Da Ling, SJ-04 Yang Chi, GB-40 Qiu Xu and LIV-03 Tai Chong. Every one of them lies at or just beyond the wrist or the ankle, and on the yin channels the Source point doubles as the Earth and Shu-Stream point, while on the yang channels it is a separate point in its own right. SP-03 is one of the six on the yin side of that split, alongside LU-09, HT-07, KI-03, P-07 and LIV-03 — and querying our own records confirms it: all six carry the Shu-Stream and Earth classification, and the six yang-channel Source points carry none.

The Source points are set out in the first chapter of the Ling Shu, where they are described as the places at which the original (yuan) qi of each channel lingers and collects. Three practical consequences follow. First, a Source point can be used in either excess or deficiency — it regulates rather than only tonifying or only draining, which makes it a safe general choice when the diagnosis is a channel or an organ rather than a precise pattern. Second, Source points are diagnostic: they are palpated for tenderness, slackness or change, and the finding refers to their own channel. Third, they anchor two structured combinations — the Yuan-Luo pairing, which joins a channel's Source point to the Connecting point of its partner channel (here SP-03 with ST-40 Feng Long), and the Shu-Yuan pairing, which joins the Source point to the organ's Back-Shu point (here BL-20 Pi Shu). Knowing SP-03 is the Source point is what makes those combinations available.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (location, channel, Yuan-Source and Shu-Stream & Earth classifications; the full twelve-point Source set, the Back-Shu and Front-Mu sets and the Spleen five-shu series queried directly, alongside the SP-01, SP-02, SP-04, SP-05, SP-06, SP-09, ST-36, ST-40, ST-42, REN-12, BL-20 and P-06 records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157); Ling Shu (Spiritual Pivot), Chapter 1, on the Source points; PMID 32959601; PMID 39943771; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is SP-03 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184): On the medial side of the foot in the depression proximal and inferior to the head of the first metatarsal bone.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 157): Proximal and inferior to the 1st metatarsophalangeal joint, in the depression of the junction of the red and white skin.

How is SP-03 Tai Bai needled?

Stated plainly: SP-03 is a low-hazard point. It lies on the inner edge of the foot with the first long foot bone immediately behind it, there is no body cavity, no organ and no great vessel in the needle path, and the depth our records carry — perpendicular 0.3 to 0.5 inch — is an ordinary foot depth rather than a bounded safety figure. Everything below is recorded as neutral reference data describing what the textbooks and the published literature state. It is not instruction, this page does not teach technique, and needling is carried out only by a qualified, licensed practitioner.

The angle and depth the texts record

• Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.3 to 0.5 inch, with moxibustion applicable. That is the standard figure across the small points of the foot, and it is not accompanied by any caution in our record — which is itself the informative fact, given how many points in this library are.
• Deadman & Al-Khafaji (p. 184) and Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157) record a comparable perpendicular range at this point. Neither attaches a hazard caution of the kind both attach to the thoracic, abdominal, orbital and occipital points.
• Moxibustion is recorded as applicable and is commonly used here, particularly for the cold, weak, chronically loose-stooled presentation the point is chosen for.
• For comparison within our own holdings: the 0.3–0.5 inch recorded at SP-03 is the same order as the figures our records give at the neighbouring foot points, and it is bounded by the bone rather than by any structure that could be injured. Contrast the 0.3–0.5 inch oblique figure at the chest points such as SP-21, where the same number exists for an entirely different reason.

What actually lies beneath

• Bone, tendon and a small artery. The needle passes through skin and the thin subcutaneous tissue of the foot's inner border onto the shaft and head of the first metatarsal bone, with the tendon of abductor hallucis running close by and the small branches of the medial plantar artery and nerve in the vicinity. Bone lies immediately deep to the point, which is what bounds the insertion physically.
• The ordinary events are minor. Bruising and brief local soreness are what the reference literature records at points of this kind; the foot's inner border is a well-vascularised area and small bruises are the commonest finding. A meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies found that about half of all recorded acupuncture adverse events across the whole repertoire were bleeding, pain or flare at the needle site (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268).
• Honest limit. We could not source any published case report of injury at SP-03, and no imaging study measuring a safe depth at it. None is needed in the way it is at the thoracic, abdominal and cranial points: bone lies behind the point and there is no cavity to enter. Where a point is low-hazard, the useful thing is to say so plainly rather than to import a warning from elsewhere.

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, placing it among the safer treatments in medicine (PMID 34489268). Systematic reviews of the Chinese case literature reach the same conclusion about where the events cluster: they concentrate at points over the chest, the abdomen, the neck and the orbit, and are attributed chiefly to improper technique (He W et al., PMID 22967282; Zhang J et al., Bull World Health Organ 2010;88(12):915–921C, PMID 21124716, PMC2995190). SP-03 is not in that group, and the accurate summary is that it is one of the straightforward points of the repertoire.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record; the SP-02, SP-04 and SP-21 needling records queried directly for comparison); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157); PMID 34489268; PMID 22967282; PMID 21124716 (PMC2995190) — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Tai Bai mean?

Tai Bai means "Supreme White" — tai, supreme, great or utmost, and bai, white. Sacred Lotus sources & references translate it exactly that way; "Great White" and "Most White" are the other renderings in circulation, and all describe the same thing. Two readings of the name are current in the reference literature, and both are worth knowing because they explain different things about the point.

• The literal reading. The point sits on the boundary of the pale skin of the sole and the darker skin of the top of the foot — the junction of the red and the white skin. It is on the whitest ground on the whole inner border of the foot, and the name is simply describing where to look.
• The astronomical reading. Tai Bai is also the classical Chinese name for the planet Venus, the brightest object in the night sky after the moon. Several points of the repertoire carry star and planet names, and a Source point — the place where a channel's original qi collects — is the kind of point that attracts one.

The colour is also the Spleen's own. In five-phase correspondence, white belongs to Metal and yellow to Earth, so the name is not a phase reference to this channel's element; readers sometimes assume it is. The Spleen channel's colour associations are yellow, and the whiteness in this name is the skin of the foot and the planet, not the phase.

Is SP-03 the Spleen channel's tonification point?

No — and working out why from first principles is the most useful thing on this page. SP-03 carries three classifications, and each answers a different question. Separating them is what makes the reasoning stick.

The first layer is the five-shu position. Sacred Lotus sources & references hold the complete Spleen five-shu series, and it was queried directly rather than taken from any summary:

• Jing-Well — Yin Bai SP-01, at the corner of the big toenail. Wood.
• Ying-Spring — Da Du SP-02, in front of the ball of the big toe. Fire.
• Shu-Stream — Tai Bai SP-03, behind it. Earth. This page. Also the channel's Yuan-Source point.
• Jing-River — Shang Qiu SP-05, at the inner ankle. Metal.
• He-Sea — Yin Ling Quan SP-09, below the inner knee. Water.

On yin channels the five-shu run Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water from the extremity inward; on yang channels they run Metal, Water, Wood, Fire, Earth. The Shu-Stream point of a yin channel is therefore always the Earth point, and it is always also the Yuan-Source point — which is why SP-03 holds three classifications at once. Shu-Stream points are classically indicated for heaviness of the body and pain in the joints, and that classical indication is visible in this point's own record.

The second layer is the element, and this is where the tonification question is settled. The Spleen is a yin channel of the Earth phase. Now apply the rules:

• In the generating cycle, Fire produces Earth and Earth produces Metal. So the mother of Earth is Fire and the child of Earth is Metal.
• Under the mother-child rule, a channel is supplemented through its mother point and drained through its child point. On the Spleen channel that gives: tonification (mother) point — SP-02 Da Du, the Ying-Spring and Fire point; sedation (child) point — SP-05 Shang Qiu, the Jing-River and Metal point.
• SP-03 is neither. Earth on an Earth channel makes it the horary or self point — the point where the channel meets its own element. Among the twelve horary points it is one of only two that is also the channel's Yuan-Source point, the other being KI-03 Tai Xi on the Kidney channel, whose Shu-Stream and Earth classification our records also carry. That is what makes SP-03's position in the system unusual: Source point, Shu-Stream point, Earth point and horary point, all at one hollow on the foot.

The distinction students most often get wrong is assuming that "the Spleen tonification point" must be the Spleen's Source point, because Source points tonify. It does not follow. A Source point regulates; the tonification point is defined by the mother element, and on this channel that is Fire, which sits at SP-02. Our LU-09, HT-07, KI-03, LIV-03 and P-07 records set out the same rule from their own side, and every one of them arrives at it the same way: five-shu position gives the classical indication, the element's relationship to the channel gives the tonification-sedation role, and the two coincide only by arithmetic.

Is there research on SP-03 Tai Bai?

SP-03 has more point-specific research than most points of its kind, and unusually the strongest single study is a brain-imaging study of this point alone rather than a multi-point trial.

• A brain-imaging study of SP-03 by itself. Fifteen healthy right-handed volunteers were scanned by resting-state functional MRI after sham and after real acupuncture at Taibai SP-03, and the changes in two measures of regional brain activity were compared. Real needling at SP-03 was followed by reduced regional homogeneity in the visual cortices of both sides, and by changes in the postcentral gyrus and superior parietal lobule; the authors' summary was that the areas most affected were the bilateral visual-related cortices together with the unilateral somatosensory and parietal areas (Wang F et al., Brain Behav 2021;11(4):e02057, PMID 33560579, PMC8035461). State the limits precisely: fifteen healthy volunteers, a single session, an explorative design, and a physiological measurement rather than a clinical outcome. It establishes that needling this point is followed by measurable and reproducible changes in brain activity; it establishes nothing about treating any condition.
• The classical record names this point, twice, with real specificity. Researchers at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences data-mined the earliest recorded ancient prescriptions for epigastric pain. The high-frequency base points were Zhongwan REN-12, Shangwan REN-13, Zusanli ST-36, Neiguan P-06, Gongsun SP-04, Pishu BL-20 and Weishu BL-21, with the recurring combination forms including Back-Shu with Front-Mu and Front-Mu with Yuan-Source. Within that record one association is directly about this page: Da Du SP-02 and Tai Bai SP-03 were selected whenever distension of the chest and abdomen accompanied the epigastric pain (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2025;45(2):253–261, PMID 39943771). Separately, an analysis of ancient acupuncture literature for chronic gastritis found five-shu points to be the most frequently used class of special point, with Taibai SP-03 among the points recurring across all four main presenting symptoms — stomach ache, vomiting, belching with acid regurgitation, and epigastric fullness (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2020;40(9):1018–1023, PMID 32959601).
• Trials that include the point. A randomised trial of 60 patients with type-2 diabetic peripheral neuropathy tested a prescription built on the Ying-Spring, Shu-Stream and lower He-Sea points — Neiting ST-44, Xiangu ST-43, Dadu SP-02, Taibai SP-03 and Zusanli ST-36 among others — added to basic treatment, and reported greater improvement in symptom and neurological scores and in pain than basic treatment alone, with no change in the inflammatory marker measured (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2021;41(8):866–870, PMID 34369696). It is a small, single-centre, unblinded, multi-point study; nothing in it is attributable to SP-03 alone, though it is a rare example of a trial built explicitly on the five-shu categories this point belongs to.
• Measurement studies that include the Source points as a class. Work measuring the electrical resistance of the skin at all twelve Yuan-Source points has repeatedly included SP-03 among the points whose readings changed significantly with disease state — for example in a study of 116 patients with intracranial tumours before and after surgery against 60 healthy controls (Zhen Ci Yan Jiu 2010;35(1):52–55, PMID 20458908). These are observational measurement studies of the Source points as a set, not tests of treatment at this point.
• What is not here. We could locate no randomised controlled trial in which SP-03 is the only point treated, and no sham-controlled clinical trial of it. The brain-imaging study is the closest thing to a study of this point in isolation, and it is a physiological study in healthy volunteers.

How does SP-03 compare with the points around it?

Da Du SP-02 lies immediately in front on the same border of the foot and is the Ying-Spring and Fire point — the Spleen's tonification point, and the one to choose where the intention is specifically to supplement rather than to regulate. Gong Sun SP-04 lies immediately behind and is the Spleen's Connecting point and the Confluent point of the Penetrating Vessel; it is the busier point of the two in modern practice, and where SP-03 regulates the Spleen, SP-04 reaches the Stomach channel and the abdomen through a different route. Yin Bai SP-01 at the toenail is the Jing-Well and Wood point, used for bleeding and for acute presentations. Shang Qiu SP-05 at the inner ankle is the Jing-River and Metal point and the channel's sedation point. San Yin Jiao SP-06 above the inner ankle is the meeting point of the three leg yin channels and the most-used point of the whole channel. Yin Ling Quan SP-09 below the knee is the He-Sea and Water point and the principal point for dampness. Across on the neighbouring channel, Chong Yang ST-42 is the Stomach's Source point and Feng Long ST-40 its Connecting point — SP-03's Yuan-Luo partner. And Tai Xi KI-03 at the inner ankle is the point most closely comparable to SP-03 in the whole repertoire: Source point, Shu-Stream point, Earth point and horary point of its own yin channel, exactly as this one is. All are held in Sacred Lotus sources & references.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, translation, channel, Yuan-Source and Shu-Stream & Earth classifications, the complete Spleen five-shu series with element assignments, the twelve-point Source set, and the SP-01, SP-02, SP-04, SP-05, SP-06, SP-09, ST-40, ST-42, KI-03, LU-09, HT-07, LIV-03, P-07 and BL-20 records queried directly); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 184); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 157); Ling Shu (Spiritual Pivot), Chapter 1, on the Source points; Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties), on the five-shu indications and the mother-child rule; PMID 33560579 (PMC8035461); PMID 39943771; PMID 32959601; PMID 34369696; PMID 20458908 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.