上脘 Shangwan
“Upper Stomach Cavity” · CV13
Conception Vessel · 13 of 24 · crossing-point
Where. On the midline of the upper belly, one thumb-width above Zhongwan, the point halfway from navel to breastbone.
For. Stomach ache, retching and vomiting, poor appetite.
Press. Gentle with the fingertips, about a minute.
上脘，在巨闕下一寸五分，去蔽骨三寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Shangwan Sits on the Upper Belly
The dataset places Shangwan on the upper abdomen, on the anterior midline, five cun above the centre of the umbilicus. Each coordinate narrows the search. The upper abdomen is the stretch of belly between the navel and the converging ribs; the anterior midline is the vertical seam running down the exact front-centre of the trunk, shared by every point of the Ren vessel; and a cun is the traditional proportional unit of point-location, measured from the person rather than off a ruler. At the abdomen the usual conventions take one cun as roughly a thumb-width and group three cun into the width of four fingers held snugly together, which turns the arithmetic back into something hands can perform.
Neighbors triangulate the position neatly. One cun below sits Zhongwan (CV12), recorded four cun above the navel and described in the catalogue 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 Shangwan waits one thumb-width above the midpoint. One cun further up again sits Juque (CV14), recorded six cun above the umbilicus. Read together, the column says the same thing three ways: Shangwan lies just above the middle of the run between navel and breastbone, and three cun below the sternocostal junction itself. A position confirmed from several directions is a position found reliably.
Under the fingertips there is little drama, and that suits the point’s working character. The spot lies over the soft midline band where the paired sheets of abdominal muscle meet, with no rib edge or bone close enough to serve as a landmark; what the hand notices instead is the wall itself, gently 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 braced: sit upright on a firm chair or lie on your back with knees supported, because a tensed abdominal wall hides its own landmarks. First find the two anchors. One is the centre of the navel — the deepest point, not the rim. The other is the notch where the lower ribs converge at the base of the breastbone, the sternocostal junction. Visually bisect the vertical stretch between them: its midpoint is the neighborhood of Zhongwan. Lay your fingertips on the midline at that halfway height, confirm the soft seam beneath them, and then walk one comfortable thumb-width straight up the seam. Where the thumb lands is the neighborhood of Shangwan — five cun above the navel by the traditional count, three cun below the notch.
Confirmations come cheaply here. Check the line: slide a fingertip a few millimeters left and right of centre; the midline feels like a softer, slightly grooved seam between firmer muscle bellies, and the true spot sits squarely on that seam. Check the height: the place you chose should sit clearly above the navel yet distinctly below the rib-notch — closer to the notch than to the navel. Then listen: most people notice a faint dull awareness or mild tenderness directly on the point and noticeably less a thumb-width away, and slow breathing makes the wall rise and fall beneath still fingers, a quiet sign that the belly is relaxed and the location plausible.
A counting route exists for those who prefer numbers: lay four snug fingers with their lower edge on the navel centre pointing straight up to cover three cun, then add two more thumb-widths up the midline to complete the five. Whichever route you take, the classic mistakes are the same. Measuring from the rim of the navel instead of its centre throws everything off. Drifting sideways off the seam is the commonest slip of all, since the belly offers no ridge to correct you. Sliding down from the notch without anchoring the midpoint first invites miscounting. Whenever doubt creeps in, drop the hand, take two slow breaths, and return to the bisection method — it needs no counting at all.
Reading the Name: Upper Cavity
Two characters carry the whole idea. Shang means upper or above — plain direction, no poetry required. Wan means the interior cavity of the stomach, an old character drawn with the flesh radical at its left side, tying it to the body’s soft interior rather than to any hollow of wood or stone. Read together, Shangwan is the Upper Cavity. The name belongs to a family: one cun below stands Zhongwan, the Middle Cavity, and lower still lies Xiawan, the Lower Cavity, so the midline between navel and breastbone carries a graduated map of the stomach’s interior written in three stations. Point names gathered layers across centuries, and this reading is offered as a rendering rather than a decree — but few names draw their picture so plainly.
The pinyin spelling Shàngwǎn records the sounds precisely. Shàng carries the falling fourth tone — a decisive downward step, the tone of settled finality — while wan rides the dipping third tone, which sinks low before rising again toward its finish. Say the pair aloud and the name steps down, pauses, and settles: a small piece of music in two syllables. Both hanzi are compact enough to memorise at a glance — a direction set above a cavity. In a lexicon fond of gates, valleys, courtyards, and storehouses, a name that simply points upward to the top room of the stomach feels almost austere.
The catalogue adds one credential: it tags Shangwan a crossing-point. Classical channel descriptions treat such spots as meeting places where more than one pathway converges, and crossroads carried weight in traditional reasoning, because whatever gathered at a junction was thought to arrive from several directions at once. Position deepens the claim: the Ren vessel itself runs up the midline of the front of the body and is traditionally described as uniting all the yin meridians, so a crossing posted on the Ren stands on a road that already hosts many travelers. Shangwan is the thirteenth of the vessel’s twenty-four stations, posted high on its abdominal passage where the road begins climbing toward the chest.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: stomachache, vomiting, abdominal distension, poor appetite, retching, and epilepsy. Set the last aside for a moment and the rest sketch a coherent picture. In the classical frame, the middle burner — the stomach-and-spleen partnership charged with receiving, transforming, and moving food onward — was expected to send things smoothly downward. Stomachache, distension, and poor appetite were read as that machinery turning sluggishly or meeting obstruction, while vomiting and retching were understood as rebellious qi surging the wrong way, up instead of down. The stretch of midline where this point stands beside its two siblings was natural territory for such moments in classical practice.
Epilepsy looks the outlier, and honesty requires sitting with it rather than smoothing it away. Classical indication lists catalogued far wider territory than digestion: texts of that era record deep midline stations of the trunk being reached for in contexts of severe agitation of body and spirit, under a physiology belonging to another age. The entry documents what classical practitioners reached for, not what any modern trial has measured, and it says nothing about what pressing a point achieves. Reading the whole list as history clarifies all six entries at once: a portfolio of moments when traditional practice attended to the upper belly and the disturbances classical medicine associated with it.
It bears repeating plainly: these are 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 any condition, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and heavily context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly; the second half of that sentence carries consequences.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the location settled, 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 at a sitting, 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. 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 those minutes as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks you might notice the upper 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 set the practice down 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 Shangwan. That clean sheet deserves reporting exactly as it stands, because readers arriving from lower-abdominal points may brace for warnings that do not exist here. An empty caution field describes what the record contains, though; it is not a license for force. The upper abdomen shelters 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 acute abdominal pain, during an episode of active vomiting, 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 longer press — for severe or worsening abdominal pain, vomiting blood, black or bloody stools, persistent vomiting with nothing staying down, difficulty swallowing, unintended weight loss, or any symptom that frightens you; seizure activity, likewise, always belongs with medical professionals. Milder digestive complaints that lack red flags still deserve a licensed practitioner — medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint — if they hang on beyond a couple of weeks. The safest gift Shangwan offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own upper belly, tended kindly.
Shangwan, Upper Cavity, rests on the soft midline seam of the upper abdomen, five cun above the centre of the navel — the highest of three sibling stations named for the stomach’s inner cavity. Classical practice reached here when the stomach rebelled: vomiting, retching, aching, swelling, or refusing food. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently and safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shangwan without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the midpoint shortcut. Find the centre of your navel and the notch where the lower ribs meet at the base of the breastbone, mentally halve the stretch between them, and lay your fingertips on the midline at that halfway height — that is Zhongwan’s neighborhood. Walk one comfortable thumb-width straight up the soft midline seam and you have arrived: five cun above the navel in the traditional count. The cun system simply writes the same landmark recipe in proportional language.
- Is pressing Shangwan myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults — it engages only the abdominal wall, well short of the organs beneath. 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 during acute abdominal pain, active vomiting, fever, or broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Shangwan for?
- The traditional record lists stomachache, vomiting, abdominal distension, poor appetite, and retching, alongside an epilepsy entry that reflects how broadly classical lists ranged beyond digestion. Classical thinking grouped the stomach complaints as disorders of the middle burner and of rebellious qi failing to descend, and tagged this station a crossing-point on the Ren vessel — frameworks for understanding the historical record, documented for context, not treatment claims.
- Why do three neighboring points share the wan character?
- Because the tradition drew a graduated map. Shangwan, Zhongwan, and Xiawan mean Upper, Middle, and Lower Cavity, marking three stations along the stretch of midline that classical medicine read as the stomach’s interior laid onto the body surface. Standing a cun apart near the top of the navel-to-breastbone run, the siblings let a practitioner speak precisely about height within one continuous region — the way a street gains order from its numbered houses.
- Can acupressure at Shangwan replace seeing a doctor about nausea or stomach trouble?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool. Severe or worsening abdominal pain, vomiting blood, black or bloody stools, persistent vomiting, 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. Daily self-care and the consulting room answer different questions, and 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 CV13 Shangwan — 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/cv13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv13/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV13",
"name": {
"en": "Shangwan",
"gloss": "Upper Stomach Cavity",
"zh-Hant": "上脘",
"zh-Hans": "上脘"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 13,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline of the upper belly, one thumb-width above Zhongwan, the point halfway from navel to breastbone."
},
"for": [
"stomach ache",
"retching and vomiting",
"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/cv13",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}