建里 Jianli
“Building the Interior” · CV11
Conception Vessel · 11 of 24
Where. On the midline of the belly, four finger-widths above the navel.
For. Stomach ache, bloating, poor appetite.
Press. Gentle with the fingertips, about a minute.
建裏，在中脘下一寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Jianli Sits on the Abdominal Midline
The dataset places Jianli on the upper abdomen, on the anterior midline, three cun above the centre of the umbilicus. Every word of that sentence earns its place. The anterior midline is the vertical seam running down the exact front-centre of the trunk, and the upper abdomen is the stretch between navel and rib cage, so the search area narrows quickly. A cun, meanwhile, is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location: lengths taken from the person being examined rather than read off a ruler, which is why the same measurement fits bodies of very different sizes. At the abdomen the usual conventions make one cun about a thumb-width and group three cun into the width of four fingers held snugly together — a hand-measure old enough to feel less like arithmetic than like habit.
Jianli shares this stretch of midline with two better-known neighbors, and the catalogue entries for them triangulate its position neatly. One cun below sits Xiawan (CV10), recorded two cun above the centre of the umbilicus; one cun above sits Zhongwan (CV12), recorded four cun above the navel and described as midway between the umbilicus and the sternocostal junction. That midway remark quietly fixes the scale: if four cun reaches the halfway point of the navel-to-breastbone stretch, the whole span reads as eight cun, and Jianli waits one cun short of that halfway mark. Knowing the neighborhood turns a bare number into a place with addressable surroundings — a point you can confirm from three directions at once.
Under the fingertips there is less drama here than at many celebrated points, and that is part of its character. The spot lies over the soft midline band where the paired sheets of abdominal muscle meet, with no rib or bone edge close enough to serve as a landmark; what the hand notices instead is the abdominal wall itself, rising and falling with each breath. Because the wall yields, self-palpation asks for patience rather than pressure — a light, listening touch finds the midline groove far faster than a determined poke, and nothing about locating this point requires pushing inward at all.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Begin settled rather than standing: sit upright on a firm chair, or lie on your back with knees supported and the belly relaxed, because a tensed abdominal wall hides its own landmarks. Find the centre of the navel — the deepest point, not the rim. Lay the index, middle, ring, and little fingers of one hand snugly together, and set their lower edge on the navel centre with the fingers pointing straight up toward the breastbone. Where the top edge of the four fingers meets the midline is, by the traditional hand-measure, roughly three cun above the navel — the height where Jianli lives. Settle your fingertips onto the midline there and simply let them rest.
Confirmations come cheaply at this point. First, check the line: slide a fingertip a few millimeters left and right of centre; the midline itself feels like a softer, slightly grooved seam between firmer muscle bellies, and the true point sits squarely on that seam rather than on muscle. Second, check the height: the spot should sit clearly above the navel yet distinctly below the notch where the lower ribs converge at the base of the breastbone — below, that is, the halfway landmark occupied by Zhongwan. Third, most people notice a faint dull awareness or mild tenderness directly on the point and noticeably less a thumb-width away. None of these checks needs force; every one of them works feather-light.
The classic mistakes are few, and worth naming. Measuring from the rim of the navel instead of its centre throws everything off by half a thumb-width or more. Drifting sideways off the midline is the commonest slip of all — the belly offers no ridge to correct you, so re-find the soft seam whenever unsure. Some people measure downward from the breastbone instead of upward from the navel and lose a cun to miscounting; the navel route is shorter and harder to botch. When in doubt, drop the hand, take two slow breaths, and start again from the navel centre. Repetition is how the sequence becomes second nature.
Reading the Name: Building the Interior
Two characters carry the whole idea. Jian 建 means to build, establish, or set up — the verb of foundations and raising structures. Li 里 is read most directly as the interior, what lies within — the sense simplified writing folds into it from 裡; the character itself served classically for a village ward and a unit of travel distance, older senses that hover politely in the background. Read together, Jianli invites a rendering like Building the Interior or Establishing What Lies Within. The name is offered here as a reading rather than a decree — point names gathered layers across centuries — but the image suits the point’s traditional role uncannily well: a station where classical practice attended to the middle of the body whenever its workings stalled.
The pinyin spelling Jiànlǐ records the sounds precisely: jian carries the falling fourth tone, a decisive downward step, while li rides the dipping third tone that sinks briefly before rising again. Say the pair aloud and the name lands with the cadence of its own meaning — one firm stroke, then a settling finish. The hanzi themselves are compact enough to memorise at a glance. Point names in this tradition favour images of architecture and landscape — gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses — and a builder’s verb belongs to the same family: the tradition names places for what it hopes happens there.
Channel context rounds the picture out. The Ren vessel — rendered the Conception Vessel in classical translation — runs up the midline of the front of the body, and the tradition describes it as uniting the yin meridians; Jianli is the eleventh of its twenty-four stations, sitting in the busiest stretch of the whole course. Notably, the licensed record assigns this point none of the grand classical offices: no mu-point title, no crossing-point status, nothing beyond its location and its recorded uses. Those honours belong to its celebrated neighbor above. Jianli reads instead as a steady working point of the midline — and something about a point named for building doing quiet work without a title feels entirely fitting.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: stomachache, abdominal pain and distension, hiccups, poor appetite, borborygmus, and edema. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list sketches a coherent picture. In the classical frame, the middle burner — the stomach-and-spleen partnership that traditional physiology charges with receiving, transforming, and transporting food — is expected to move things smoothly downward and outward. Poor appetite, stomachache, and the coupled complaint of abdominal pain with distension were read as that middle machinery turning sluggishly or meeting obstruction, and the midline points of this stretch stood ready in classical practice for exactly those moments.
The remaining entries extend the same logic. Hiccups — sudden, repeated upward jolts — were understood as rebellious qi failing to descend, a traditional diagnosis that made midline abdominal points natural candidates for attention. Borborygmus, the formal word for audible gurgling and rumbling in the bowel, belonged to the same family of movement gone uneven. Edema may look the odd one out, yet in traditional physiology the transformation and movement of fluids belongs to the same middle-burner partnership, so texts discussing water metabolism gone awry did reach for points of this region among others. Each entry records what classical practice reached for, not what any modern trial has measured.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing in this guide replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied 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, arrange the conditions before the pressure. Warm your hands first — chilled fingers make a tense belly. Sit supported or lie back with knees softened, breathe out slowly, and rest the pads of two or three fingertips on the point. Start with contact alone for a few breaths, letting the belly rise against still fingers; then add small, slow circles, keeping pressure at the level of pleasant dullness or mild warmth. Never press while holding the breath, and never drive inward toward the spine — the intention stays in the abdominal wall itself. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per session, once or twice daily, each circle riding a slow exhale out.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing teaches the body nothing and serves nobody. Many people find the habit easiest to keep anchored to an existing routine — after morning washing, before lunch, during an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the minute of pressing double as a minute of down-shifted breathing. If your mind races, count the exhales instead; the practice tolerates imperfection generously.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks you might notice the belly feeling less guarded, meals sitting more easily on days you paused, or simply that you spent ninety seconds attending to your own middle. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or simply stop for the day and try again tomorrow with lighter hands.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Honesty starts with the record itself: the licensed dataset registers no cautions for Jianli. That clean sheet deserves reporting exactly as it stands, because readers arriving from chest or neck points may brace for warnings that do not exist here. An empty caution field is a statement about what the record contains, though, not a license for force. The abdomen shelters the digestive organs, and although gentle surface pressure engages only the wall itself, the sensible posture toward any point over the torso remains the same: light hands, shallow intent, and close attention to feedback from your own body.
The practical rules are short. Skip the point entirely during any acute abdominal pain, during a feverish illness, and over broken, irritated, or injured skin. After abdominal surgery, wait until a clinician has cleared ordinary activity before adding any new point practice. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new acupressure at all. Use finger pads, never elbows, knuckles, or tools; never press through pain; and stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, giving the spot the rest of the day off. Discomfort that worsens rather than settles is a signal to finish, not to persist.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for severe or worsening abdominal pain, vomiting blood, black or bloody stools, difficulty swallowing, unintended weight loss, persistent vomiting, or any symptom that frightens you. Milder digestive complaints that lack red flags still belong with a licensed practitioner — medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint — if they hang on beyond a couple of weeks. The safest gift Jianli offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own belly, treated kindly.
Jianli — Building the Interior — stands on the soft midline seam of the upper abdomen, three cun above the navel, a quiet station on the Ren vessel that classical practice kept in view when appetite faltered, the belly swelled, or hiccups would not settle. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently and safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Jianli without knowing anything about cun?
- Use your own hand as the ruler. Find the exact centre of your navel, lay four fingers of one hand snugly together with their lower edge on that centre pointing straight up, and the top edge lands at roughly three cun — the height of the point. Then find the soft midline seam between the muscle bands and settle there. The traditional measurements simply encode that same hand-and-landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Jianli myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults — it engages only the abdominal wall, far short of the organs it shelters. The dataset records no specific cautions for this point, which is reassuring, though it is not an invitation to press harder. Respect the stop signals: sharp or radiating sensation, pain, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately, and skip the point entirely during acute abdominal pain, fever, or broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Jianli for?
- The traditional record lists stomachache, abdominal pain and distension, hiccups, poor appetite, borborygmus — rumbling, audible bowel sounds — and edema. Classical thinking grouped these as disorders of the middle burner, the stomach-and-spleen partnership charged with transforming food and moving fluids, which made this stretch of midline natural territory for attention. Those are traditional frameworks documented for cultural understanding, not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why are there so many points packed onto this one stretch of midline?
- Because the Ren vessel runs straight up the front-centre of the body, and the tradition gave nearly every cun of its abdominal passage its own named station. Jianli, Xiawan below it, and Zhongwan above it stand one cun apart like milestones on the same road. Classical practice treated the midline as prime territory for attending to digestion, so the stations multiplied — each a slightly different doorway into the same corridor.
- Can acupressure at Jianli replace seeing a doctor about stomach trouble?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Severe or worsening abdominal pain, vomiting blood, black stools, difficulty swallowing, or unintended weight loss call for prompt professional assessment, and milder complaints that persist more than a couple of weeks deserve one too. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and the consulting room upstairs opens when symptoms persist or escalate. Neither substitutes 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 ren-vessel channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for CV11 Jianli — 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/cv11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv11/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv11/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV11",
"name": {
"en": "Jianli",
"gloss": "Building the Interior",
"zh-Hant": "建里",
"zh-Hans": "建里"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 11,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline of the belly, four finger-widths above the navel."
},
"for": [
"stomach ache",
"bloating",
"poor appetite"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle with the fingertips, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv11",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}