LU-09 (Tai Yuan) Great Abyss

What does LU-09 Tai Yuan do?

Tai Yuan LU-09 carries three classifications at once — Yuan (Source) point of the Lung, Shu-Stream and Earth point of the channel, and Hui-Meeting (influential) point of the Vessels — and it is the strongest tonifying point on the Lung channel. Sacred Lotus sources & references hold all three. The first two make it the point for Lung deficiency; the third makes it the point for the vessels and the pulse of the whole body, which is why it sits exactly where the radial pulse is taken.

• Tonifies the Lung and transforms phlegm — the defining action, recorded first in our own action record. As the Earth point on a Metal channel, LU-09 is the "mother" point in five-phase terms, and supplementing the mother to strengthen the child is the classical rationale that makes this the primary point for chronic Lung deficiency, whether of qi or of yin.
• Promotes the descending function of the Lung — for qi that rises when it should fall: cough, wheezing and shortness of breath. The Lungs are said to govern descent, and LU-09 restores it.
• Regulates and harmonises the hundred vessels — the Hui-Meeting of the Vessels action, recorded in these words in our own action record. The classical reasoning is that the Lungs govern qi and qi drives the blood through the vessels, so the point where the Lung channel meets the pulse is where the vessels as a whole can be reached. It underlies the point's classical use for weak, irregular or absent pulse and for poor circulation in the limbs.
• Activates the channel and alleviates pain — the local action, for pain and restricted movement of the wrist, thumb side of the forearm and hand.
• Benefits the throat and the chest — a secondary recorded use, for sore throat and for pain and fullness in the chest.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing action record; Yuan-Source, Hui-Meeting of the Vessels and Shu-Stream/Earth classifications); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138); Hui-Meeting point scheme per the Nan Jing (Classic of Difficulties), Difficulty 45; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

What is LU-09 Tai Yuan used for?

Tai Yuan LU-09 is used above all for chronic, weak cough and for Lung deficiency — the depleted, long-standing respiratory picture rather than the acute one. 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, and this point carries the cautions set out under needling.

• Chronic, weak cough
• Wheezing and asthma
• Shortness of breath and a weak voice
• Coughing of blood
• Sore or dry throat
• Pain and fullness in the chest
• Palpitations
• Weak, irregular or barely palpable pulse
• Pain in the wrist and the thumb side of the forearm
• Motor impairment and weakness of the wrist and hand
• Cold and poor circulation in the hands

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing indication record); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138).

Where is LU-09 Tai Yuan, and how is it used in practice?

Tai Yuan sits at the wrist crease on the thumb side, in the hollow between the radial artery and the tendon running to the thumb — which is to say, at the radial pulse position, level with Shen Men HT-07 on the other side of the wrist. Sacred Lotus sources & references give it in both of these terms. That location is not incidental. LU-09 is the Hui-Meeting point of the Vessels, and it lies precisely where a practitioner places three fingers to read the pulse; the classification and the position explain each other.

As the Earth (mother) point on the Metal channel, LU-09 is the primary point on the Lung channel for treating Lung deficiency by tonifying Lung qi and yin. That is the sense in which it is used most: not for an acute cough, which sends a practitioner to the dispersing points of the channel, but for the person whose Lungs are simply weak — chronic cough, breathlessness on exertion, a thin voice, susceptibility to catching things.

Which points is LU-09 combined with?

• With Fei Shu BL-13 — the Lung Back-Shu point. Back-Shu with Yuan-Source is the classical structure for supplementing an organ, and this is its Lung instance; a registered randomised trial protocol has been published testing acupuncture and moxibustion at exactly this pair, BL-13 and LU-09, for pulmonary function in bronchial asthma (Med Acupunct 2026;38(4):270–276, PMID 42405171, DOI 10.1177/19336586251378193).
• With Zhong Fu LU-01 — the Front-Mu point of the Lungs on the upper chest, giving Front-Mu with Yuan-Source.
• With Tai Bai SP-03 and Zu San Li ST-36 — where the Lung deficiency is traced back to weak Spleen qi failing to produce enough qi for the Lungs to govern; the Earth-point logic of LU-09 is extended to the Earth organ itself.
• With Tai Xi KI-03 — for chronic wheezing on the classical reasoning that the Lungs govern the intake of qi and the Kidneys its grasping. The two points are close analogues: each is the Yuan-Source and Shu-Stream and Earth point of its own yin channel, one at the wrist and one at the ankle.
• With Lie Que LU-07 — the Luo-Connecting point of the Lung and Confluent point of the Conception Vessel, one and a half cun proximal on the same channel; LU-07 releases and disperses where LU-09 supplements, and the two are chosen against each other rather than together in most cases.
• For the wrist — with Yang Xi LI-05 and Da Ling P-07 on the other aspects of the same joint, surrounding it.

Where does LU-09 sit among its category peers?

• Among the eight Hui-Meeting points, LU-09 governs the vessels, as Ge Shu BL-17 governs blood, Zhang Men LIV-13 the zang organs, Zhong Wan REN-12 the fu organs, Shan Zhong REN-17 qi, Yang Ling Quan GB-34 the sinews, Xuan Zhong GB-39 the marrow and Da Zhu BL-11 the bones. All eight are held here. The set is what allows a practitioner to select a point by the tissue involved rather than by where the complaint sits — and LU-09's assignment, the vessels, is the one whose location makes the most immediate sense.
• Among the Yuan-Source points, LU-09 is the Lung's. Yuan-Source points are where the original qi of an organ is said to surface on its channel; they are used both to tonify the organ and, when tender, in diagnosis. On the yin channels the Yuan-Source point and the Shu-Stream point are the same point — which is why LU-09 carries both labels, exactly as Tai Xi KI-03, Tai Chong LIV-03 and Shen Men HT-07 do on their channels.
• Among the five-shu points of the Lung channel, LU-09 is the Shu-Stream and, because the Lung is a Metal channel, the Earth point. Earth is the mother of Metal, so in five-phase terms LU-09 is the tonification point of the Lung channel.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (LU-09 record including the existing Earth/mother-point rationale; the eight Hui-Meeting points and the Yuan-Source points queried in full); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138); PMID 42405171; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.

Where is LU-09 located?

• A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86): At the wrist joint, in the depression between the radial artery and the tendon of abductor pollicis longus, level with Shenmen HE-7 (the proximal border of the pisiform bone).
• Chinese Acupuncture and Moxibustion (p. 138): At the radial end of the transverse crease of the wrist, in the depression on the lateral side of the radial artery.

How is LU-09 Tai Yuan needled, and what about the radial artery?

Stated plainly: the radial artery lies immediately beside LU-09 — the point is defined by its relationship to it. Sacred Lotus sources & references record perpendicular insertion of 0.2 to 0.3 inch with the explicit instruction to avoid puncturing the radial artery, and moxibustion as applicable. The shallow recorded depth and the note about the artery are the whole of the documented caution for this point, and they are the most important things on this page after the point's classifications. Everything below is recorded as neutral reference data describing what the textbooks and the published literature state. It is not instruction, and this page does not teach technique. 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 0.2 to 0.3 inch — one of the shallowest ranges recorded anywhere in the repertoire — with the radial artery named directly, and moxibustion applicable.
• Deadman & Al-Khafaji (p. 86) and Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138) record a comparably shallow perpendicular insertion and both describe the point as located by first finding the artery and then moving to the depression on its radial (thumb) side — that is, the artery is the landmark the point is measured from. Both note that the artery is avoided.
• The location our own records carry places the point in the depression between the radial artery and the tendon of abductor pollicis longus. A needle placed in that groove is not aimed at the artery; the caution is against straying from it, and the shallow depth limits how far a needle can go if it does.

What the published literature actually documents

• Vascular injury from acupuncture is documented but rare, and the reported cases involve larger vessels. A systematic review of the world literature on vascular injuries caused by acupuncture identified 31 published cases in total. Bleeding and pseudoaneurysm dominated: there were eight pseudoaneurysms, ten pericardial tamponades (three patients died, two from tamponade and one from an aortoduodenal fistula), two cases of ischaemia, two venous thromboses, one compartment syndrome and seven bleeds, five of them in the central nervous system. The author's conclusion was that vascular injuries are rare and that follow-up in the published reports is insufficient (Bergqvist D, Int Angiol 2013;32(1):1–8, PMID 23435388). The vessels named in the case literature are the aorta, the popliteal artery and the vessels around the heart — not the radial artery.
• Honest limit of what we can source. A search of the published literature did not find a case report naming Tai Yuan LU-09 as the point at which a vascular injury occurred. That absence is stated here rather than filled in: the caution recorded in the texts is a caution about proximity, not a record of accidents. What can be said accurately is that a superficial artery sits directly beside the point, that puncturing a superficial artery produces local bleeding and bruising, that this is the single commonest minor adverse event in acupuncture generally, and that the reference texts respond to the proximity by recording an unusually shallow depth.
• The overall 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, with minor events such as bleeding and bruising far more common and self-limiting (Bäumler P et al., BMJ Open 2021;11:e045961, PMID 34489268, DOI 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-045961).
• Moxibustion is recorded as applicable at LU-09, and the point is also commonly used with acupressure — both avoid the question of the artery entirely.

Source: Sacred Lotus sources & references (existing needling record, including the radial-artery caution); Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138); PMID 23435388; PMID 34489268 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation.

What does the name Tai Yuan mean?

Tai Yuan means "Great Abyss" — tai, great or supreme, and yuan, a deep pool or abyss. Sacred Lotus sources & references translate it as Great Abyss; it is also rendered Supreme Abyss or Great Deep Pool. The Lung channel's point names run as a watercourse from the chest to the thumb, and by the wrist the water has gathered into something deep and still. The image is apt in two ways: the point sits in a palpable hollow at the wrist crease, and it is the place where the vessels of the whole body are said to gather — a deep pool into which everything drains. It is the deepest and most substantial point of the Lung channel in name as well as in function.

Why is LU-09 the Hui-Meeting point of the Vessels, and does that matter?

The eight Hui-Meeting or influential points, set out in the Nan Jing, each govern one tissue or category across the whole body rather than one channel. LU-09 is assigned the vessels (mai) — a category that in classical Chinese medicine covers the blood vessels and the pulse together, since the pulse is the vessels made perceptible.

The assignment has an obvious logic once the location is known. LU-09 sits at the radial pulse, the place where Chinese medicine has read the state of the whole body for two thousand years; the Lungs govern qi, and qi is what moves blood through the vessels; and the Lung channel is where the circulation of qi through the twelve channels is said to begin. The practical consequence is that LU-09 is selected for disorders of the vessels and circulation — a weak or irregular pulse, cold and poorly perfused hands, and in the classical literature the condition of "no pulse" — as well as for the Lung. That is the fact most worth carrying away about this point, because it is the one that separates LU-09 from the other Lung-channel points, which are respiratory points and nothing more.

Is there research on LU-09 Tai Yuan?

There is no clinical trial of LU-09 on its own, and that should be said plainly. What does exist is a small body of measurement work in which LU-09 is one of the points measured — and, interestingly, in which it behaves differently from control points on a different channel.

• Measured changes at LU-09 in lung disease. A prospective, controlled, assessor-blinded study compared 40 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease against 40 age-matched healthy controls, measuring blood perfusion by laser Doppler flowmetry, surface temperature by infrared thermography and regional oxygen saturation by functional near-infrared spectroscopy at four sites: Taiyuan LU-09 and Chi Ze LU-05 on the Lung channel, and Shen Men HT-07 and Shao Hai HT-03 on the Heart channel. In the COPD group, perfusion and temperature at LU-09 and LU-05 were significantly raised compared with controls (P < 0.05), while the two Heart-channel sites did not change significantly; regional oxygen saturation fell at the two Lung-channel points (P < 0.01). The authors read this as supporting a relative specificity in the relationship between body surface and internal organ (Jiang Y et al., Front Physiol 2023;14:1051190, PMID 37153229, PMC10159081, DOI 10.3389/fphys.2023.1051190). The same group later ran the mirror-image study in chronic stable angina, where it was the Heart-channel sites that changed (PLoS One 2025;20(9):e0331868, PMID 41004484, DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0331868). Neither study treats anything — they measure — but they are among the few pieces of work in which LU-09 is a named, individually measured site rather than one line in a protocol, and the design includes a channel-specific control.
• A registered trial of the LU-09 and BL-13 pair. A protocol for a randomised controlled trial of acupuncture and moxibustion at BL-13 and LU-09 for pulmonary function in bronchial asthma has been published (Med Acupunct 2026;38(4):270–276, PMID 42405171, DOI 10.1177/19336586251378193). This is a protocol — a statement of intent — and no results are available; it is recorded here because it is the closest thing to a trial of this point, and a reader following the literature should know it is under way.

What is missing should be said plainly: despite LU-09 being the tonification point of the Lung channel and one of the eight influential points, there is no randomised trial isolating it for chronic cough, asthma or any circulatory indication. Where LU-09 appears in trials, it appears inside multi-point protocols that cannot tell us what this point contributes. The measurement studies above are the honest extent of the point-specific evidence.

How does LU-09 compare with the points around it?

Lie Que LU-07, one and a half cun proximal, is the point LU-09 is most often weighed against: LU-07 is the Luo-Connecting point and the Confluent point of the Conception Vessel, used to release the exterior, disperse and descend — the choice for an acute cough or a common cold, where LU-09 is the choice for a weak one. Jing Qu LU-08 lies between them, one cun above LU-09 on the radial side of the same artery, and is used far less. Yu Ji LU-10, on the thenar eminence, is the Ying-Spring and Fire point and is used to clear heat from the Lung and throat rather than to tonify. Chi Ze LU-05 at the elbow is the He-Sea and Water point, the draining point of the channel and LU-09's functional opposite. Shen Men HT-07 sits on the same wrist crease at the little-finger side and is the exact structural counterpart on the Heart channel — Yuan-Source, Shu-Stream and Earth point, all three, just as LU-09 is on the Lung. Tai Xi KI-03 is the same construction again at the ankle. And Da Ling P-07, in the middle of the wrist crease, completes the row: three wrist-crease Yuan-Source points of three different yin channels, distinguished by which side of the wrist they sit on.

Source: Deadman & Al-Khafaji, A Manual of Acupuncture (p. 86); Chinese Acupuncture & Moxibustion (p. 138); Sacred Lotus sources & references (LU-09 record; the eight Hui-Meeting points and neighbouring Lung-channel and Yuan-Source records queried directly); Nan Jing, Difficulty 45; PMID 37153229 (PMC10159081); PMID 41004484; PMID 42405171; PMID 23435388 — each verified resolvable and checked for retraction status before citation; cross-referenced against multiple online sources.