氣海俞 Qihaishu
“Sea-of-Qi Transport” · BL24
Foot Taiyang · 24 of 67
Where. On the lower back, one bump below navel level (below the third lumbar bump), two finger-widths from the spine.
For. Lower back ache; period pain; bloating.
Press. Hands on hips, press with the thumbs, fairly firm, about a minute.
Qihaishu, the Sea-of-Qi Transport, stands on the lower back beside the third lumbar vertebra, a thumb-and-a-half out from the spine’s central seam. Classical practice reached for it when bloating, period pain, or an aching low back weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Qihaishu Sits on the Lower Back
Qihaishu takes its place low on the back, in the band of the waist where the spine’s ridges turn broad and blunt. The dataset locates it precisely: on the lower back, below the spinous process of the third lumbar vertebra, 1.5 cun lateral to the posterior midline. Unpacked for hands rather than rulers: between the rib cage and the pelvis stand five lumbar vertebrae; find the ridge of the third, settle into the soft step directly beneath it, then step outward one and a half cun — and there, mirrored on both sides of the spine, sits the point. 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 waist of a broad-framed adult differs from a cun on a slight teenager.
The landscape under the skin is a kindly one. By this height the ribs have finished their descent, and the fingertips meet the two broad columns of muscle flanking the lumbar spine that steady the whole torso — thick, springy territory, with bone never far beneath. 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. The lumbar ridges themselves make patient guides: larger and easier to count than the delicate thoracic ridges farther up, though posture and padding change how boldly they announce themselves.
The neighborhood completes the map. One ridge higher, beneath the second lumbar vertebra, the same lateral line carries Shenshu (BL23), the kidney transport — recorded in this collection as level with the umbilicus. One ridge lower, beneath the fourth, stands Dachangshu (BL25), whose recorded landmark is the line joining the highest points of the iliac crests, the two wing-tops of the pelvis. 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 Qihaishu stands on.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair or stand with the weight even and shoulders released, because a braced waist hides its own landmarks. Begin with the navel as your ruler. Find the level of the belly button, bring a hand around to the spine at that same height, and feel for the ridges there: this row corresponds closely to the second lumbar vertebra, the address of Shenshu. Walk straight down the centre seam one full ridge to the third lumbar prominence, then rest the pad of your finger in the soft step immediately beneath it. 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. Repeat the whole search on the other side.
A second route begins at the hips. Rest your thumbs on the highest points of the iliac crests — the wing-tops of the pelvis — and draw an imaginary line between them around to the back: this belt-line runs level with the fourth lumbar vertebra, Dachangshu’s recorded landmark. Follow the centre seam upward from the line; the next prominent ridge above the fourth belongs to the third lumbar vertebra, and the shallow step directly beneath it hosts the point. Confirmations cost nothing afterwards. Touch feather-light and compare sides: many people register a faint, dull awareness at the genuine spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Lean back slowly and notice the muscle columns gather under the fingers — a quiet sign the search stayed on muscle rather than bone.
Three slips account for most mislocations. Direction reverses first: walking up from the crest-line you meet the fourth lumbar ridge before the third, and losing that order drops the search one vertebra astray. Drifting comes second — too close to the seam lands on bare bone, too far out wanders toward the flank, and the correction is always the same measured slide onto the muscle column. Forgetting the mirror pair is third: there are two Qihaishu, and neither substitutes for the other when both sides of the waist feel heavy. When doubt outlives every test, resist guessing from wherever the wandering ended; return to the navel or the hip crests, confirm the starting level once more, and recount slowly. The neighbors help too — whoever found Shenshu yesterday can trust Qihaishu to wait exactly one ridge below.
Reading the Name: Sea-of-Qi Transport
The name reads like a dispatch from the body’s interior. Qi 氣 is breath, energy, the vital current the tradition watched moving through everything alive. Hai 海 means sea — the great collector, the body of water into which rivers run and from which they rise again. Shu 俞, met throughout the catalogue’s back stations, carries the old sense of conveying or infusing, the way water passes along a channel from reach to reach. Together the name reads as the sea-of-qi transport: a place where the tradition delivered its attention to the body’s great reservoir of vitality, seen from the vantage of the back.
Classical writing loved the sea image for the lower abdomen. Ancient texts describe a gathering place there where qi pools as rivers pool into an ocean — a reservoir the tradition called the sea of qi — and a well-known station on the anterior midline of the lower abdomen bears the very name Qihai. Classical teaching often read such front-and-back companions together, holding one region of the body between them like the covers of a book. Worth noting honestly: the licensed record assigns Qihaishu no particular organ office — its entry carries no point-class title — so unlike its neighbors the kidney and large-intestine transports, its story arrives through the name alone. The sea imagery asks to be received as heritage and metaphor, warmly rather than as anatomy confirmed.
Pinyin renders the name Qìhǎishū. Qi falls away on a sharp fourth tone; hai dips and lifts on the third; shu rides high and level on the first. The three hanzi 氣海俞 stay legible at a glance — qi, sea, transport — and like many channel points named for architecture and waterworks, the metaphor does real work. Gates imply watching a threshold; transports imply delivery; a sea implies depth, reserve, replenishment after depletion. The name quietly states its instructions: whatever concerned the body’s deepest stores of qi, the tradition delivered its attention here on the back. A reader who remembers the picture carries the whole doctrine in miniature.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: abdominal distension with borborygmus, dysmenorrhea, lower back pain, nocturnal emission, and impotence. The first travels with the oldest imagery. Borborygmus is the formal word for a gurgling, rumbling belly — the audible traffic of gas and fluid moving through the gut. In the traditional frame, distension and noise together suggested qi failing to move smoothly through the abdomen’s passageways, a river dammed mid-course; classical practice therefore reached for points along the channels serving the belly, aiming to restore passage rather than to silence sound. Framed as tradition, this is the language of waterways: wherever things had stalled, practice sought movement.
Dysmenorrhea — painful menstruation — appears in the record beside the lower-back entries, and the pairing suits the geography: classical texts approached monthly suffering largely through the lower back, the lower abdomen, and the pathways joining them, so a station standing at waist height on the bladder channel belonged naturally to those discussions. Nocturnal emission and impotence are older eras’ headings for intimate concerns about male vitality; classical physiology tied such matters to the fullness or emptiness of the lower-abdomen reservoir the point’s own name invokes. These entries belong to a historical system of the body, recorded faithfully here and read today with respect and restraint — they describe where classical practice directed its attention, not what pressing achieves, and persistent intimate or menstrual complaints belong with qualified care rather than self-diagnosis.
Lower back pain closes the list and looks least surprising. The bladder meridian pours down the entire back in paired routes, and the inner line on which Qihaishu 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 are the very cords that ache in many tired backs. It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are 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. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, settle in: seated on a chair, or standing with one foot slightly forward, a hand reaching behind the back. Curl the fingers and touch with the pads — never the tips — resting them against the muscle column beside the spine. 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 ridge. 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; if reaching behind is awkward, invite a partner to lend their fingertips, or swap hands midway and let symmetry finish the work.
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 muscle into guarding. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards doubly. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the session double as a pause — the low back carries more unnoticed tension than almost any other stretch of the body, and simply being attended to settles many people. Readers who keep routines anchor this one somewhere natural: after the evening shower, before lights-out, during 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 breathing feels easier while you press, or simply that you spent ninety seconds tending your own waist — every outcome fits 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 waist-height address.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This page carries an unusual feature worth stating plainly: the licensed dataset records no specific caution for Qihaishu. Unlike some upper-back neighbors, whose warnings speak of how closely the lungs lie, this entry arrives without a warning line — the low back at this height is muscle working over bone, with no organ sitting directly beneath the surface. Read that absence correctly: it is not an invitation to force, merely a lighter reason for reverence. Every rule governing gentle practice elsewhere governs here unchanged, because the discipline was never about dodging individual dangers; it is about how attention touches the body at all.
For fingertip practice the rules follow plainly. Use finger pads, never elbows, knuckles, tools, or devices, and keep the intention in skin and superficial muscle rather than driving inward toward the vertebrae. Skip the point during feverish illness and over broken or irritated skin. After recent 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 should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone unsure whether their back or menstrual symptoms are ordinary should take that question to care, not to a pressing routine. When energy runs low, 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 back pain joined by numbness or tingling running down a leg, by weakness in the legs, by fever, by loss of bladder or bowel control, or by any fall or accident that preceded the pain. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the problem. The image of a quiet sea held behind the waist is elegant, and it earns its keep as memory and meaning; but the safest gift Qihaishu offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own low back, tended lightly.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Qihaishu without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the navel or the hip bones as the whole map. Navel route: bring a hand around to the spine at belly-button height, walk down the centre seam one ridge, and rest a finger in the hollow beneath the third lumbar ridge; then slide outward about two pressed-together fingers onto the muscle column. Hip route: imagine a line joining the tops of the two iliac crests, follow the seam up one ridge past the fourth vertebra, and settle in the step beneath the third. Cun measurements encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Qihaishu myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the licensed dataset attaches no specific caution to this entry — the territory is muscle over bone rather than organ. Ordinary sense still applies: keep contact light and superficial, use pads rather than tools, stop on sharp or radiating sensation, and skip the session entirely during fever, illness, or over broken skin. Anyone pregnant, recently injured, or unsure about their symptoms should ask a qualified practitioner first.
- What did classical practice use Qihaishu for?
- The traditional record lists abdominal distension with borborygmus, dysmenorrhea, lower back pain, nocturnal emission, and impotence. Part of the story lives in the name: as a transport station standing beside the sea of qi of classical imagery, it figured in discussions of the body’s deep reserves, while its place on the bladder channel’s inner line tied it to the low back it overlooks. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why is it called the sea of qi?
- Classical writing pictures vital energy pooling in the lower abdomen the way rivers pool into an ocean, and it named that reservoir the sea of qi outright — a famous front point on the lower abdomen carries the very name. Standing on the back across from that stretch of the body’s map, this station borrowed the reservoir’s name and added the transport suffix the whole spine-side family shares: the sea’s outpost behind the waist. It is heritage imagery meant to guide attention, received warmly rather than taken literally.
- Can acupressure at Qihaishu replace seeing a doctor about my back pain?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Back pain with numbness or tingling down a leg, leg weakness, fever, loss of bladder or bowel control, or pain following a fall calls for professional assessment promptly, and pain lingering beyond a couple of weeks deserves it too. 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, sea-of-qi imagery, and bladder-channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL24 Qihaishu — location, actions, and indication 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/bl24/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl24/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl24/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL24",
"name": {
"en": "Qihaishu",
"gloss": "Sea-of-Qi Transport",
"zh-Hant": "氣海俞",
"zh-Hans": "气海俞"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 24,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "On the lower back, one bump below navel level (below the third lumbar bump), two finger-widths from the spine."
},
"for": [
"lower back ache",
"period pain",
"bloating"
],
"press": {
"text": "Hands on hips, press with the thumbs, fairly firm, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/bl24",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}