HT-05 (Tong Li) Connecting Li

What does HT-05 Tong Li do?

Tong Li HT-05 is the Luo-Connecting point of the Heart Channel of Hand Shao Yin, and it is the tradition's classic point for the tongue and for speech — for a stiff tongue, for sudden loss of voice, and for aphasia after stroke. That reputation is not arbitrary. The classical account of the Heart's connecting vessel is that it branches off at this point, runs up along the channel and enters the root of the tongue — so a point at the wrist is given a tongue indication because a named pathway is said to run there.

• Benefits the tongue and restores speech — the defining recorded action, and the one HT-05 is best known for: stiffness of the tongue, inability to speak, sudden loss of voice, and speech loss following a stroke.
• Calms the spirit — the Heart-channel action, recorded for palpitations, fright, anxiety, sadness and insomnia. In Chinese medicine the Heart houses the spirit, and speech is understood as the spirit's outward expression, which is why the two actions belong together at this point rather than being two unrelated claims.
• Regulates the Heart rhythm — recorded for palpitations and for an irregular or racing heartbeat.
• Connects with the Small Intestine channel — the Luo action proper. The connecting vessel that leaves the channel here crosses to the Heart's interior-exterior partner, which is why HT-05 also carries a small group of Small Intestine indications such as frequent or difficult urination.
• Activates the channel and alleviates pain — the local action, for pain and restricted movement of the wrist and elbow along the channel.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (channel, Luo-Connecting and Heavenly Star classifications, existing action record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 165); Ling Shu (Spiritual Pivot), Chapter 10, on the connecting vessels; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is HT-05 Tong Li used for?

Tong Li HT-05 is used above all for disorders of speech and the tongue — aphasia, a stiff tongue, sudden loss of voice — and for palpitations and disturbances of the spirit. 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.

• Aphasia — loss of speech, classically after a stroke
• Stiffness or rigidity of the tongue
• Sudden loss of voice; hoarseness
• Sore throat
• Palpitations
• Irregular or racing heartbeat
• Anxiety, fright and sadness
• Insomnia and excessive dreaming
• Dizziness and blurring of vision
• Frequent or difficult urination
• Uterine bleeding
• Pain in the wrist and elbow

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 165).

Where is HT-05 Tong Li, and how is it used in practice?

Tong Li lies on the inner side of the wrist, one cun above the wrist crease, on the thumb side of the tendon of flexor carpi ulnaris — that is, one cun proximal to Shen Men HT-07. The tendon is the landmark: it stands out clearly when the wrist is bent against resistance, and the Heart channel runs along its radial edge. Four Heart points sit in a short row along that edge, which is why they are located from one another rather than independently.

Which points is HT-05 combined with?

• With Lian Quan REN-23 — the classic speech combination, and the one the modern literature has confirmed is the dominant clinical practice. REN-23 sits above the voice box at the root of the tongue and is the local point; HT-05 is the distal point on the channel whose connecting vessel is said to reach the same place. A retrospective analysis of the Chinese trial literature on acupuncture for aphasia found Lian Quan REN-23 to be the most frequently selected point and Tong Li HT-05 the second across 37 randomised trials (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2016;36(4):431–6, PMID 27352512).
• With Ya Men DU-15 — "Mute's Gate", the Governing Vessel point in the nape whose name is itself a speech indication. REN-23, HT-05 and DU-15 together are the core of the classical aphasia prescription.
• With Jin Jin and Yu Ye — the paired extra points under the tongue, held in this library, classically pricked for tongue stiffness and speech loss.
• With Xuan Zhong GB-39 — a pairing that has been imaged rather than merely asserted: two independent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies stimulated HT-05 with GB-39 and looked for activation in the language areas of the brain (PMID 26129898; PMID 28868952).
• With Shen Men HT-07 and Nei Guan P-06 — for palpitations, anxiety and insomnia, the standard spirit-calming group on the inner forearm.
• With Wan Gu SI-04 — the Yuan-Luo combination. Each Connecting point is classically paired with the Yuan-Source point of its partner channel, and for HT-05 that partner is SI-04, the Source point of the Small Intestine. The mirror pairing is SI-07 Zhi Zheng, the Small Intestine's Connecting point, with HT-07 Shen Men, the Source point of the Heart. Reading those two pairs side by side is the clearest way to see how the structure works.
• Method — Sacred Lotus sources & references record moxibustion as applicable at this point.

Where does HT-05 sit among its category peers?

Sacred Lotus sources & references hold the complete set of fifteen Connecting points: the twelve channel Luo points — LU-07 Lie Que, LI-06 Pian Li, ST-40 Feng Long, SP-04 Gong Sun, HT-05 Tong Li, SI-07 Zhi Zheng, BL-58 Fei Yang, KI-04 Da Zhong, P-06 Nei Guan, SJ-05 Wai Guan, GB-37 Guang Ming and LIV-05 Li Gou — together with REN-15 Jiu Wei, the Connecting point of the Conception Vessel, DU-01 Chang Qiang, the Connecting point of the Governing Vessel, and SP-21 Da Bao, the Great Connecting point of the Spleen. Four of the twelve — LU-07, P-06, SJ-05 and SP-04 — also carry a Confluent-point classification for an extraordinary vessel; HT-05 does not, which makes it one of the cleaner illustrations of what the classification does on its own. Within its own channel, HT-05 sits between Ling Dao HT-04 (Jing-River and Metal point) above and Yin Xi HT-06 (Xi-Cleft point) below, with Shen Men HT-07 (Shu-Stream, Earth and Yuan-Source point) at the crease — four different classifications in a row barely two inches long.

What does the Heavenly Star classification add?

Sacred Lotus sources & references also record HT-05 as one of Ma Dan-yang's Heavenly Star points, a set of twelve points singled out by a Song-dynasty physician as sufficient for the great majority of complaints. The full set held here is LU-07 Lie Que, LI-04 He Gu, LI-11 Qu Chi, ST-36 Zu San Li, ST-44 Nei Ting, HT-05 Tong Li, BL-40 Wei Zhong, BL-57 Cheng Shan, BL-60 Kun Lun, GB-30 Huan Tiao, GB-34 Yang Ling Quan and LIV-03 Tai Chong. It is a list of workhorses, and HT-05's presence on it is the plainest statement of how highly the tradition rates this small point.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (both location records, the Luo-Connecting and Heavenly Star classifications, the full fifteen-point Connecting set, the twelve Yuan-Source points, the twelve Heavenly Star points and the HT-04, HT-06, HT-07, SI-04, SI-07, REN-23, DU-15, GB-39, P-06 and Jin Jin Yu Ye records, all queried directly in the live point records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 165); PMID 27352512; PMID 26129898; PMID 28868952; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is HT-05 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216): On the radial side of the tendon of flexor carpi ulnaris, 1 cun proximal to Shenmen HE-7.
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 165): When the palm faces upward, the point is on the radial side of the tendon of m. flexor carpi ulnaris, 1 cun above the transverse crease of the wrist.

How is HT-05 Tong Li needled in the textbooks?

Reference record only — this documents what the standard texts state, not instruction for a reader. Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.3 to 0.5 inch at HT-05, with moxibustion noted as applicable. Deadman & Al-Khafaji record a comparable shallow range at this point.

• Angle documented: perpendicular.
• Depth documented: approximately 0.3–0.5 cun — a shallow point, because there is little tissue between the skin and the bone at the front of the wrist.
• Moxibustion: documented as applicable.

What lies beneath the point

This is a low-hazard point, and it is worth saying so directly rather than attaching a generic warning. HT-05 lies on the front of the forearm just above the wrist, between the flexor carpi ulnaris tendon and the ulna. There is no lung, no body cavity, no viscus and no great vessel within reach of the recorded depth, and the standard references attach no special prohibition to it. It carries none of the anatomical exposure of the points over the thorax, the upper back or the neck. The structures that are present are the ulnar artery and the ulnar nerve, which run deep to the tendon a little to the little-finger side of the point — which is why the texts specify the radial (thumb-side) edge of the tendon as the location, and why a sharp electrical sensation down to the little finger is a recognised occurrence at this and the neighbouring Heart points.

No pregnancy contraindication is recorded for HT-05 in our sources or in the standard reference literature; on the hand and forearm that caution attaches to LI-04 He Gu. Standard clean-needle practice applies. For context rather than alarm: a meta-analysis of prospective clinical studies estimated serious adverse events from acupuncture at approximately 1 per 10,000 patients and around 8 per million treatments, and concluded that acupuncture is among the safer treatments in medicine (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268). Those events cluster at a small number of anatomically exposed points, and HT-05 is not among them.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record, both location records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 165); PMID 34489268 — verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Tong Li mean?

Tong Li means "Connecting Li" — tong, to connect, penetrate or pass through, and li, the interior, the inside, or a measure of distance. Sacred Lotus sources & references translate it exactly that way, and the ambiguity of the second character is deliberate rather than a defect. Read one way the name says connecting inward — which is precisely what a Connecting point does, sending a branch from the surface channel through to the interior and across to its paired channel. Read the other way it says connecting a distance — which is what this point does clinically, reaching from the wrist all the way to the tongue. The tong character is the giveaway in either reading: it is the character that marks this out as the Heart's Connecting point, and the name and the classification say the same thing.

Why does the Luo-Connecting classification matter at HT-05?

The Connecting or Luo points are where a channel throws off a branching vessel that crosses to its interior-exterior partner. Choosing a Luo point is the classical way to treat two paired channels with one needle, and it is also the way to treat a channel's own superficial branch. The Ling Shu sets out the fifteen connecting vessels, describing for each one the course it takes and the symptoms that arise when it is in excess or deficiency — and the description of the Heart's connecting vessel is the reason this page exists in the form it does. That vessel is said to separate from the channel at Tong Li, ascend along the channel, enter the Heart, and continue to the root of the tongue and on to the eye. The classical symptom pairing attached to it is equally specific: fullness of the chest and the diaphragm when the vessel is in excess, and inability to speak when it is deficient.

That is why a point on the wrist carries a tongue indication. It is not an analogy or a coincidence of names — it is a claimed anatomical pathway, stated in the classic, and the whole of HT-05's speech reputation rests on it. Whether one accepts the pathway or not, the reasoning is explicit and traceable, which is more than can be said for many point indications.

What is the Yuan-Luo pairing for HT-05?

Each of the twelve channel Connecting points is classically paired in use with the Yuan-Source point of its partner channel, a structure called the Yuan-Luo combination: the Source point treats the primarily affected channel and the Connecting point of its partner is added to draw in the paired channel. Sacred Lotus sources & references hold all twelve Yuan-Source points, and for the Heart and Small Intestine the two pairs are:

• HT-05 Tong Li (Heart's Connecting point) with SI-04 Wan Gu (Small Intestine's Source point) — used when the Small Intestine is the primarily affected channel.
• SI-07 Zhi Zheng (Small Intestine's Connecting point) with HT-07 Shen Men (Heart's Source point) — used when the Heart is the primarily affected channel.

Both points and both partners are held in this library, and both have their own records here. The two pairs are exact mirrors of each other, which makes them the standard teaching example of the structure.

Is there research on HT-05 Tong Li?

HT-05 is unusual among small distal points in having genuinely point-specific brain-imaging work aimed squarely at its traditional claim — that it affects speech. The results are suggestive rather than conclusive, and the studies are small.

• Imaging, single point, with sham and laterality tested. Ten healthy volunteers were scanned during acupuncture at five conditions: right Tong Li HT-05, right HT-05 with Xuan Zhong GB-39, right HT-05 sham, left HT-05, and left HT-05 with GB-39. Only stimulation of the right HT-05 produced activation of multiple regions across both hemispheres closely related to the language areas, with a laterality index of 0.0952 favouring the left-hemisphere language regions. The authors concluded the point might be useful in aphasia after cerebral infarction (Liu S et al., J Int Med Res 2017;45(6):1961–75, PMID 28868952, PMC5805221). Ten subjects is a small sample, and the finding that only one side worked is the kind of result that needs replication before it means anything — but the design did include a sham condition at the same point, which is rare.
• Imaging, the paired protocol, with a non-point control. Fifteen healthy subjects underwent two scanning sessions in random order: electroacupuncture at bilateral HT-05 and GB-39, and electroacupuncture at bilateral non-points. The point condition produced significantly greater fullness, heaviness, numbness, soreness and throbbing — the sensations described as de qi — and multi-voxel pattern analysis distinguished the two conditions in somatosensory and language-related cortex. The authors concluded that needling HT-05 and GB-39 may modulate language function through a distributed brain network (Xiao J et al., Chin J Integr Med 2016;22(11):846–54, PMID 26129898).
• Where HT-05 ranks in clinical practice. A meta-analysis and point-frequency analysis of the Chinese randomised-trial literature on acupuncture for aphasia included 37 trials with 1,260 patients in the acupuncture arms and 1,238 controls; the pooled odds ratio favoured acupuncture added to speech rehabilitation and medication (OR 3.82, 95% CI 3.01–4.85). The point-frequency analysis ranked Lian Quan REN-23 first and Tong Li HT-05 second across the whole literature (PMID 27352512). A narrative review of the same field independently listed HT-05 among the ten most frequently used points for post-stroke aphasia (Sun Y et al., J Tradit Chin Med 2012;32(3):314–21, PMID 23297549). Neither is evidence that HT-05 works; both are evidence that the tradition's claim about it is acted on at scale.
• A recent trial including the point. Fifty-six patients with post-stroke aphasia were randomised to speech rehabilitation and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or to the same plus an acupuncture protocol including Tong Li HT-05, Lian Quan REN-23, Feng Chi GB-20 and the speech areas; Western Aphasia Battery scores improved more in the acupuncture arm (Zhongguo Zhen Jiu 2023;43(1):25–8, PMID 36633235). A multi-point protocol, so it measures the protocol and not the point.

The honest summary: two small imaging studies report language-area activation from needling this point, one of them with a same-point sham; the clinical literature uses HT-05 heavily for aphasia but always inside a protocol. There is no adequately powered randomised trial isolating HT-05 for aphasia or for anything else, and none of its Heart indications — palpitations, insomnia, anxiety — has been tested at this point specifically. This site does not present the protocol trials as though they were about this point.

How does HT-05 compare with the points around it?

Four Heart points lie in a row along the same tendon edge, and they are easily confused. Shen Men HT-07 at the wrist crease is the Shu-Stream, Earth and Yuan-Source point and the channel's great spirit-calming point — the busiest of the four. Yin Xi HT-06, half a cun above the crease, is the Xi-Cleft point, used for acute conditions and for night sweating. Tong Li HT-05, one cun above, is the Connecting point and the speech point. Ling Dao HT-04, one and a half cun above, is the Jing-River and Metal point. Half a cun separates each from the next, and each carries a different classification — this short stretch of wrist is the standard example used to show that classification, not position, decides what a point is for. Elsewhere, Lian Quan REN-23 is HT-05's local counterpart at the tongue itself, and Ya Men DU-15, "Mute's Gate", is the third member of the classical speech group. Zhi Zheng SI-07 on the outer forearm is HT-05's exact mirror across the interior-exterior pair: the Connecting point of the Small Intestine, connecting back to the Heart.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (name, translation, categories, the full fifteen-point Connecting set, the twelve Yuan-Source points, the twelve Heavenly Star points and the HT-04, HT-06, HT-07, SI-04, SI-07, REN-23, DU-15 and GB-39 records, all queried directly in the live point records); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 216); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 165); Ling Shu (Spiritual Pivot), Chapter 10, on the fifteen connecting vessels; PMID 28868952 / PMC5805221; PMID 26129898; PMID 27352512; PMID 23297549; PMID 36633235 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.