The lungs lie beneath: gentle pressure only, never hard or sharp.
魄戶 Pohu
“Door of the Corporeal Soul” · BL42
Foot Taiyang · 42 of 67
Where. Below the third bump under the neck bone (C7), four finger-widths to each side of the spine.
For. Cough; shortness of breath; stiff neck.
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.
魄戶，在第三椎下，兩傍各三寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Pohu Sits on the Upper Back
Pohu takes its place high on the back, on the outer of the two lines the bladder meridian draws beside the spine. The dataset locates it plainly: on the back, below the spinous process of the third thoracic vertebra, 3 cun lateral to the posterior midline. Unpacked for hands rather than rulers: begin at the base of the neck, at the prominent knob that 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 three cun — and there, mirrored on either side of the spine, stands Pohu.
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 four fingers pressed side by side span close to three 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 weight the safety section below takes up in full.
The neighborhood completes the map. On exactly the same row, one and a half cun closer to the seam, the inner line carries Feishu (BL13), the lung transport — Pohu keeps the outer watch at the same vertebral height. Along this outer road, one ridge higher beneath the second thoracic vertebra, stands Fufen (BL41); one ridge lower beneath the fourth stands Gaohuang (BL43), a station the old literature wrapped in legend. 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, and Pohu stands on the more lateral of them — the road running three cun from the midline.
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 four pressed-together fingers, and settle into the shallow groove running along the long muscle column beside the spine. 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 quieter side. Check the horizontal position too: the true spot lies well clear of the inner line, out toward the shoulder-blade side of the long back muscles. Anyone who has located Feishu before holds the best cross-check of all — the two points share one row, and Pohu waits about another two finger-widths farther from the seam. 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. Landing on the inner line comes second: the celebrated lung transport sits temptingly close on the same row, and tired searches drift inward to it — if your spot hugs the seam, walk it outward again. Drifting outward too far, past the muscle column toward the edge of the shoulder blade, comes third. 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 on the row itself: whoever found Feishu yesterday can trust Pohu to share its line of vertebrae, simply farther out.
Reading the Name: Door of the Corporeal Soul
Two characters, and the second is plain: Hu 戶 means door — the character even pictures a single door leaf guarding an entrance. The first carries the depth. Po 魄 names the corporeal soul, the part of the human spirit classical teaching tied to the body itself: in the five-organs scheme, where the ethereal soul hun was assigned to the liver, the po belonged to the lung — a steadier, earthbound companion of the flesh rather than a wandering traveler. Set together, Pohu reads as the door of the corporeal soul — a gate through which this quiet lodger was imagined to arrive and depart.
Geography serves the metaphor gracefully. The lung keeps its formal back address one and a half cun nearer the seam — Feishu, the lung transport, standing directly below the third thoracic vertebra on the inner line — and Pohu opens its door on the same row, one step outside. Whatever the old physicians fully intended, the arrangement invites a reading: the soul’s gate set beside the organ’s house, the way a real door always belongs to a larger building. All of this is the tradition’s own architecture of meaning, offered as heritage for understanding why breath and lung matters dominate this point’s historic portfolio — warmly received, not as anatomy confirmed.
Pinyin renders the name Pòhù: po falls away on a sharp fourth tone, and hu falls with it — two descending syllables, like a latch dropping closed. The hanzi pair 魄戶 stays legible at a glance — corporeal soul, door — and like many channel points named for architecture — gates, windows, courtyards, storehouses — the metaphor does real work. A door implies a threshold watched, something admitted and something kept out. The name quietly states its instructions: here is where the tradition stationed its attention when the body’s deep quietness needed a doorway. A reader who remembers just the two characters carries the whole idea in miniature.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough, shortness of breath, consumptive lung disease, stiff neck, shoulder and back pain, and night sweats. The first two travel together in the traditional telling. In the classical frame the lung governs qi and respiration, and the stations gathered around its back territory stood ready whenever breath misbehaved — coughs dry or rattling, breathing that arrived short and effortful, chests that felt crowded from within. Standing just outside the lung transport, Pohu belonged to that ready company, and classical practice reached for it accordingly.
Then come the grave entries, and honesty asks that they be read slowly. Consumptive lung disease and night sweats were, in the vocabulary of older eras, headings for serious and often prolonged illness of the chest — wasting conditions with fevers that climbed toward evening and nights that soaked the bedding. 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, unexplained weight loss, fevers that will not settle, 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 come the musculoskeletal entries, and these read most easily through the channel map. The bladder meridian pours down the entire back in paired routes, and the outer line on which Pohu stands traverses shoulder-blade country between the spine and the arm; stations along that road served the territory they crossed, and the long muscles at this height knit neck, shoulder, and back into one working column. Stiff neck and shoulder and back pain therefore sat squarely on the outer line’s home ground, and classical practice treated such complaints with points along the route. It bears repeating plainly: all of 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 outer line 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, a step outside the lung transport’s row.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Of all the warnings in this collection, the one written for this stretch of back is among the plainest. The licensed record tells practitioners: do not needle deeply; over-deep insertion may injure the lung. Geography explains the warning without ornament — this is the upper back at lung height, set upon the wall of the rib cage 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 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 a door for the corporeal soul is elegant, and it earns its keep as memory and meaning; but the safest gift Pohu 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.
Pohu, the Door of the Corporeal Soul, stands on the upper back three ridges below the base of the neck, three cun out from the spine’s central seam — level with the lung transport Feishu, a step farther out. Classical practice reached for this door when cough, short breath, or wasting illness weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow; going too deep can puncture the lung.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Pohu 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 four pressed-together fingers onto the long muscle column flanking the spine. Feishu, the lung transport, shares the same row closer to the seam and confirms the height. Cun measurements encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Pohu 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 technique 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 Pohu for?
- The traditional record lists cough, shortness of breath, consumptive lung disease, stiff neck, shoulder and back pain, and night sweats. The name tells the headline: opened on the same row as the lung transport, the door of the corporeal soul sat beside the lung’s own address wherever breath and long wasting illness entered classical discussions. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- How is Pohu different from Feishu beside it?
- Height and line tell the difference. Both stand below the spinous process of the third thoracic vertebra, but Feishu holds the inner line, one and a half cun from the midline, while Pohu keeps the outer line at three cun — the same row, one step farther out. Classical cartography drew the bladder channel down the back in paired routes, and the outer road carried its own company of stations. For self-location the practical consequence is simple: find the row once, then decide how far from the seam your destination sits.
- Can acupressure at Pohu 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, drenching night sweats, 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 and bladder-channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for BL42 Pohu — location, 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/bl42/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/bl42/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/bl42/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "BL42",
"name": {
"en": "Pohu",
"gloss": "Door of the Corporeal Soul",
"zh-Hant": "魄戶",
"zh-Hans": "魄户"
},
"channel": {
"id": "BL",
"order": 42,
"of": 67
},
"location": {
"text": "Below the third bump under the neck bone (C7), four finger-widths to each side of the spine."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"shortness of breath",
"stiff neck"
],
"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/bl42",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}