KI-8 Jiaoxin - Exchange Pledges

Jiao means to cross or unite. Xin means to give your word: sincerity, truth, to entrust. In the classics, it is linked to the Earth or Water element and allows for successful intercourse and relationship. It works on the mental level. For interconnections between groups and people, the Official relies on a harmonious exchange of knowledge, ideas and responsibilities, and working on fluidity here allows that mutual exchange. It helps body, mind and spirit stay together until better times arrive. Its image is the delivery of reassurance: words spoken so that they restore faith and confidence and return the ability to voice it, sincerity supporting the will, heartfelt words that inspire faith. It deals with accountability, commitment, responsibility and communication. It harmonizes the Officials, and body, mind and spirit, when they are too scattered or too constrained, and restores a fair exchange, so reality is reflected clearly from an even view.

A commitment and contract that binds us to our inner truth.

• Here the Earth is not holding the Water in check; the Chinese character shows a river's banks being built up. It is a strong point for Water that is choppy and unstable and cannot settle. It works as an aid to the other Command points, helping practitioner and patient alike get past an obstacle and lending extra weight to whatever they are facing.

Location: On the inner lower leg, 3 ACI above the medial malleolus prominence, ½ ACI forward of KI-7, in front of flexor digitorum longus.
Needle depth: 3 fen
Moxa: 5 cones

• For high anxiety, extremely anxious thought patterns or extreme containment of fear
• When a person needs to stay together until better times arrive
• When the mutual exchange between people needs more fluidity
• When there is fear that there will not be enough to get through an emotional or physical winter
• When someone has lost trust in the processes of life
• For someone very powerful in themselves who is locked up and not present, with much strength and ambition that never comes up and out
• When someone can't communicate, everything flows one way and there is no give and take
• For someone who beats themselves up and is self-punishing, or who is self-aggrandizing and makes everyone else wrong
• When a person's relationship with themselves or others is out of harmony and they don't honor commitments to themselves or to partners and coworkers

• Accumulation (Xi Cleft) point for the Yin Qiao Mai
• Great for pregnant women: think of the name
• Xin, in its classical sense of heartfelt words that inspire faith, confidence and security, later became one of the Five Virtues; faith and confidence are vital to sustaining the Will the Kidneys govern
• Since faith is the Earth phase's virtue, the name hints at an intersection with Spleen Earth: after this point the channel reaches toward its meeting with the Liver and Spleen channels at SP-6
• The name has also been linked to the menstrual cycle, compared with the ocean's faithful tides