The lungs lie beneath: gentle pressure only, never hard or sharp.
肺俞 Feishu
“Lung Transport” · BL13
Foot Taiyang · 13 of 67 · back-shu of the lung
Where. Below the third bump under the neck bone (C7), two finger-widths to each side of the spine.
For. Cough; shortness of breath; night sweats.
Press. Ask a partner to press gently with a thumb, about a minute each side.
Caution. The lungs lie beneath: gentle pressure only, never hard or sharp.
肺俞，在第三椎下兩傍各一寸五分按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Feishu Sits on the Upper Back
Feishu takes its place high on the back, one ridge lower than its well-known neighbor Fengmen. The dataset locates it precisely: on the back, below the spinous process of the third thoracic vertebra, 1.5 cun lateral to the posterior midline. Unpacked for hands rather than rulers: begin at the base of the neck, where the prominent knob at the junction of neck and shoulder glides beneath the fingertips when the head turns. Below that starting post rise the ridges of the twelve thoracic vertebrae. Walk straight down the centre seam past the first ridge and the second, settle into the soft step beneath the third, then step outward one and a half cun — and there, mirrored on both sides of the spine, sits Feishu.
A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, so a cun at the shoulder of a broad-framed adult differs from a cun on a slight teenager. One practical rendering passed along through self-location teaching holds that the width of the index and middle fingers pressed together comes close to one and a half cun on many adult hands — helpful arithmetic, worth trusting only alongside the bony landmarks. What lies beneath the skin deserves respect: the spot rests on the broad muscles flanking the spine, with the rib cage and the gaps between ribs close behind. The lungs ride surprisingly high behind the upper back, nearer the surface than most people guess — a fact whose full weight arrives in the safety section below.
The neighborhood completes the map. One ridge higher, beneath the second thoracic vertebra, the same lateral line carries Fengmen (BL12), the wind gate; one ridge lower, beneath the fourth, stands Jueyinshu (BL14), assigned in classical teaching to the pericardium. Directly opposite Feishu, on the centre seam itself, the governing vessel keeps Shenzhu (GV12) — a station the tradition likewise connected with breath. As for the channel: classical cartography draws the bladder meridian as the longest pathway in the body, sixty-seven stations strong, beginning at the inner corner of the eye, sweeping over the head, and descending the whole back to the little toe. Down the spine it travels in paired vertical routes, the inner one running 1.5 cun from the midline — the road Feishu stands on — and along that inner road classical teaching lined up the gathering stations of the organs.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair, feet flat, shoulders heavy, because hunching reshapes the terrain about to be read. Bow the head slightly and hook a fingertip over the bone at the neck-shoulder junction, confirming it with the movement test — turn the head side to side and watch the landmark glide while the ridges beneath stay still. Now walk straight down the centre seam and let the ridges pass under the finger, letting the count run quietly: first ridge, second, third. Rest the pad of the finger in the soft step immediately beneath the third. From there slide outward across the muscle until you have crossed roughly the width of two pressed-together fingers, and settle where the flesh forms a gentle cord-like column flanking the spine. Where that shallow groove settles, on either side of the seam, is the address. Repeat the whole search on the other side.
Confirmations cost nothing. Touch feather-light and compare sides: many people register a faint, dull awareness at the genuine spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Take a slow breath and notice how little the upper back stirs compared with the chest — that stillness quietly confirms the search stayed on the back’s quiet side. Check the horizontal position too: the true spot lies between the spine seam and the inner border of the shoulder blade, hugging the spine’s side of that gap, and with the arms hanging loose the upper inner corner of each shoulder blade arrives near this vertebral neighborhood — close enough to catch a miscount, though bodies vary. If bare bone meets the fingertip, the search has wandered onto the spine or a rib; ease back toward the muscle column and begin again.
Three slips account for nearly every mislocation. Counting the neck-base knob itself as the first ridge drops the whole search one vertebra low — the knob is the starting post, not the first runner. Drifting outward toward the shoulder blade comes second; the distance sounds generous until muscle and posture conspire to shorten it, and the correction never changes: return toward the seam. Forgetting the mirror pair is third — there are two Feishu, and neither substitutes for the other when both sides feel tight. When doubt outlives every test, resist guessing from wherever the wandering ended; go back to the neck, confirm the gliding knob once more, and recount slowly from the top. A friendly cross-check waits one ridge up: whoever found Fengmen yesterday can trust Feishu to sit exactly one vertebra beneath it.
Reading the Name: Lung Transport
The name is a job description in two characters. Fei 肺 means lung — plainest possible vocabulary. Shu 俞 belongs to a family of characters used across the point catalogue for stations of transfer, carrying the old sense of conveying or infusing, the way water passes along a channel from reach to reach. Together the name reads as the lung transport: the place where the lung system delivers its activity toward the back. Classical teaching set an entire series of such addresses beside the spine, one for each of the organs, all sharing the suffix character — and Feishu heads the procession, standing first among them in the catalogue’s order. Wherever the tradition wanted to say that an organ keeps a window on the back, it wrote shu.
Classical practice liked to read points in company. Across the trunk at the front, Zhongfu (LU1) serves as the lung mu point — the front gathering place described in the lung pages of this collection — and tradition often spoke of such front and back companions as a matched pair holding the organ between them. The lung itself occupied a particular seat in classical physiology: assigned the metal phase among the five, linked with autumn, entrusted with the skin and the body’s surface, and described in classical writing as the canopy of the organs, seated highest among them. All of this is the tradition’s own weather map, offered as heritage for understanding why cough and breath complaints dominate this point’s historic portfolio — warmly received, not as anatomy confirmed.
Pinyin renders the name Fèishū: fei falls away on a sharp fourth tone, while shu rides a level, high first tone. The hanzi pair 肺俞 stays legible at a glance — lung, transport — and like many channel points named for what they do rather than where they sit, the label performs real work. Gates imply watching a threshold; transports imply delivery. The name quietly states its instructions: whatever concerns the lung, this is where the tradition delivered its attention on the back. A reader who remembers just the two characters carries the whole doctrine in miniature.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough, shortness of breath, coughing blood, consumptive fever with sweating at night, lung abscess, and lower back pain. The first two travel together in the traditional telling. In the classical frame the lung governs qi and respiration, and its back transport stood at the centre of discussions whenever breath misbehaved — coughs dry or rattling, breathing that arrived short and effortful, chests that felt crowded from within. Classical writers treated Feishu much as a household treats its own front door: the first address consulted whenever the breath came knocking.
Then come the grave entries, and honesty asks that they be read slowly. Coughing blood, consumptive fever with drenching night sweats, and lung abscess were, in the vocabulary of older eras, headings for serious and often dangerous illness of the chest; classical physicians reached for this point inside systems of care that gave equal weight to diet, rest, and the long arc of recovery. None of that history transfers to self-care. Today, coughing blood, unexplained fever, or night sweats that soak the bedding are signals that belong before a doctor promptly — reasons to seek assessment, never targets for pressing. The record preserves these entries because records preserve everything; this page repeats them so the list is quoted faithfully and so nobody mistakes their gravity for an invitation.
Last on the list, lower back pain looks like the outlier until the channel map opens. The bladder meridian pours down the entire back in paired routes, and the inner line on which Feishu stands runs beside the spine from shoulder to sacrum; stations along that road served the territory they traversed, and the paraspinal muscles at this height share the same long column of tissue that aches in many backs. Candid readers will still notice that the thread tying this point to the low back runs looser than the thread tying it to the lung — the tradition kept the entry, and an honest footnote beats an invented explanation. It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, presented for cultural and historical understanding, not claims that pressing this point treats disease. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
Once located, settle into position: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy — the groove you want hides under tension. Reaching the upper back asks one small decision. Invite a partner to lend their fingertips, or reach the opposite hand over the shoulder and walk down beside the spine until the muscle column found earlier rests under your pads. Curl the fingers and touch with the pads — never the tips. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the ribs. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, each circle riding a long exhale out; then swap hands and match the other side.
Quality outranks duration, as it does everywhere in gentle practice. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact is the whole discipline; jabbing teaches the body nothing and startles the broad slope of the upper back besides. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the session double as a pause for breath — the upper back rarely receives deliberate attention, and simply being attended to settles many people. Readers who keep routines anchor this one somewhere natural: after the morning shower, before lights-out, or in the afternoon lull. Consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for, here as everywhere.
Treat the exercise as a few minutes of attention paid to a stretch of yourself that cannot see itself. Across weeks you may notice the area feels less guarded, or simply that you spent ninety seconds tending your own back — both outcomes fit the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation: pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. Curiosity pulling that way should meet the same answer every time — return to gentleness, or stop for the day. The point is not going anywhere; tomorrow it will wait at the same third-ridge address.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Of all the warnings in this collection, Feishu’s is written closest to the lung itself. The licensed record tells practitioners plainly: do not needle deeply; the lung lies beneath and over-deep insertion may cause pneumothorax. Geography explains the warning without ornament — this is the lung’s own station, set upon the wall of the rib cage high in the back, where lung tissue rides close behind the torso’s surface, so an instrument driven too far could pierce it and cause an emergency called a pneumothorax, a collapsed lung. Professional training manages that risk with exact technique and years of study. Home self-care manages it differently and completely: by never leaving the surface at all. The dataset’s caution describes professional practice, a category household acupressure never approaches — yet honouring it builds precisely the habits gentle practice wants.
For fingertip practice the rules follow from the picture. Keep contact light and strictly superficial — the intention stays in skin and superficial muscle, never driving inward toward the ribs. Use finger pads, never elbows, knuckles, tools, or devices. Skip the point entirely during feverish illness, during any acute breathing difficulty, and over broken or irritated skin. After recent chest or upper-back injury or surgery, wait until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once, and not again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with lung or heart conditions, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. And when energy runs low or illness visits, the wisest session is the postponed one — rest is also self-care.
Over everything stands the wider rule: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a longer pressing session — for breathlessness at rest or on mild exertion, chest pain, any coughing of blood, fever that will not settle, nights soaked with sweat, or symptoms following a blow to the chest or back. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the problem. The image of the lung’s window on the back is elegant, and it earns its keep as memory and meaning; but the safest gift Feishu offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own upper back, tended lightly and surrendered promptly whenever the body asks for more than gentleness can give.
Feishu, the Lung Transport, stands on the upper back three ridges below the base of the neck and a thumb-and-a-half out from the spine’s central seam. Classical teaching made it the lung’s own address on the back, the place practice reached for when cough or labored breath weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow; the lung sits below, and too deep a needle can collapse it (pneumothorax).
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Feishu without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the neck as the whole map. Find the knobby bone at the junction of neck and shoulder that slides under the fingers when the head turns; walk straight down the centre seam and count three ridges; rest a finger in the hollow beneath the third; then slide sideways about the width of two pressed-together fingers onto the muscle column beside the spine. Fengmen waits one ridge higher, and the pair confirm each other. Cun measurements encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Feishu myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, engaging skin and superficial muscle far short of the deeper structures the caution concerns. The recorded danger involves deep professional needling near the lung — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals all the same: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens means finish immediately, and fever or acute breathing trouble cancels the session entirely.
- What did classical practice use Feishu for?
- The traditional record lists cough, shortness of breath, coughing blood, consumptive fever with sweating at night, lung abscess, and lower back pain. The name tells the headline: as the lung’s own transport point on the back, Feishu anchored classical discussions of nearly everything concerning breath. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does every organ get a point beside the spine?
- Classical cartography draws the bladder meridian descending the back along two paired routes, and the inner line — 1.5 cun from the midline — carries a procession of stations the tradition matched organ by organ, beginning with the lung at BL13 and continuing down the spine. The ordering gave practitioners a single tidy map: find the organ’s row, and its back address follows. Bilateral symmetry doubles everything — there is a Feishu on each side of the spine.
- Can acupressure at Feishu replace seeing a doctor about my cough?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Breathlessness, chest pain, coughing blood, fever that will not settle, or a cough stretching past a couple of weeks call for professional assessment promptly — think of daily self-care and clinical medicine as caretakers of two different doors, each minding its own threshold, neither substituting for the other.
Sources
- 01WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008), World Health Organization — nomenclature conventions.
- 02A Manual of Acupuncture, Peter Deadman, Mazin Al-Khafaji and Kevin Baker — point-name tradition, back-shu theory, and bladder-channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL13 Feishu — location, point class, actions, and caution record.
Last reviewed
牌記This leaf, for machines
Old books ended with a colophon saying who printed them. Every leaf here carries the same facts as structured data for agents and search, with no layout in the way.
- GET /en/points/bl13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl13/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL13",
"name": {
"en": "Feishu",
"gloss": "Lung Transport",
"zh-Hant": "肺俞",
"zh-Hans": "肺俞"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 13,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "Below the third bump under the neck bone (C7), two finger-widths to each side of the spine."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"shortness of breath",
"night sweats"
],
"press": {
"text": "Ask a partner to press gently with a thumb, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [
"The lungs lie beneath: gentle pressure only, never hard or sharp."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/bl13",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}