Favourite Pressure Points (stress relief?), known and unknown
Ronald Loui
Ronald Loui
Ronald Loui
Published Jun 4, 2026
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Running out of things I've learned worth passing on, or at least putting to more permanent form. So let's move from intellectual ideas to life hacks. Apparently I need to copy these recent articles to my homepage AND substack AND quora if i really care about fast preservation.

One thing i discovered that no one else seems to know about it hidden pressure points. I asked our classmate who does acupuncture with a doctorate if she knew them. News to her. So let's spill. Funny thing is i have no idea, no claim, no inkling what these points do (in the traditional medicine mythology), but they seem to be physiologically relevant.

Let's start with the points we can all agree on. By the way, massage therapists who know what they are doing can be amazing. I'm talking therapeutic pressure points here; if you want to talk about other forms of productive touching, ha ha, DM me. One of the first old massage magicians asked if i wanted my sinus cleared. She pressed a point between my toes on one foot and voila. Amazing. Like a parlor trick. Orthopedist never cleared my sinuses before sticking me with a steroid shot.

Well, there are about two dozen points in the face. I would not have survived most plane flights if I hadn't known about these. You take a knuckle to these soft areas -- fingers probably too dirty -- and they are easy to find. By the way, disclaimer, disclaimer, be gentle and careful, don't take these ruminations as medical advice, your mileage may vary, no expressed warranty, your risk taking is your own, etc.

Most of the face points are symmetrical. Besides these, there's one at the center of the chin, one centered above the lip, and one in the center of the forehead. Not my favorites, but ok. My fave is the inner edge of the cheeks, along the diagonal character line halfway between the edge of the nose and the edge of the mouth. Easy to find. Gets sore easily. Also seems to open sinuses right up. I really like finding the three points on each side along the jawline. Seem equally spaced from the corner under the ear, to the center point in the chin. These are all famously documented.

The ear has about five good points along the edge, starting at the lobe where you might have a piercing, equally spaced, to the top of the ear where you might have a piercing. There are also a couple of famous ones on the interior. Do I care that people on airplanes see me working these spots? No. But i don't fly airplanes any more (hate the business model and the filth and dense packing and loss of autonomy), so these are mostly a gift of knowledge to those who still suffer commercial air transportation and its insult to bodily comfort.

So let's talk about the ones that don't seem documented or at least are not well known.

These i find in the hands and feet at the knuckles.

First, the hands and feet have legitimate good pressure points in soft tissue. And I am just interested in stress-relieving self-massage here. My aikido buddy in 8th grade used to find a pressure point in the wrist that made you drop what you were holding. This isn't about that, but that was pretty cool. His magic martial arts point is actually not a hard point to find if you want to make people, who let you touch their wrist, immediately drop things!

On the knuckles, each seems to have a nerve in a notch, on each side, and in the center. I once learned the Latin for these but leave the Latin to the Romanians I say.

That's it. Find the notch in each knuckle with the tip of the opposing thumb (so that's why you have an opposing thumb!). Or knuckle to knuckle. Each finger has three knuckles; thumb has one. Same with toes. My MD brother would be saying i also have a big knuckle in my head for talking about these things. But if i'm just hallucinating here, still could be doing better than the neural net you just asked for a diagnosis.

Probably not a great idea to be putting force on knuckle notches over time, but i find i they are sore, i find them and manipulate, they get even more sore, then they stop being sore. Exactly like a massage point responds to pressure.

I have no idea what benefit this has, though i'm hoping some people discover correlations over time. I know it's not as exciting as coronary artery bypass graft or pacemaker implantation with lithium battery cells, but like i say, i couldn't have suffered economy class airplane seating without knowing about the famous TCM acupressure points. So maybe this will help someone someday down the road. Maybe they'll put you in a Viet Cong bamboo cage or a DHS ICE deportation cell for two years, and you'll need some ideas for passing the time.

Best i can figure at the moment, these pressure points are good for discovering and fixing bugs in awk scripts! That's a good use too.