鳩尾 Jiuwei
“Dove's Tail” · CV15
Conception Vessel · 15 of 24 · luo-connecting
Where. On the midline, one thumb-width below the small tab at the lower tip of the breastbone.
For. Chest tightness, palpitations, hiccups.
Press. Gentle, about a minute.
在臆前，蔽骨下五分按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Jiuwei Sits: the Midline Below the Breastbone
The dataset gives the address in one measured sentence: on the upper abdomen, on the anterior midline, 1 cun below the sternocostal junction, at the xiphoid process. Each term unfolds into ordinary language without much trouble. The upper abdomen is the soft stretch of belly between the navel and the base of the ribcage. The anterior midline is the vertical seam running straight down the centre of the front of the body, equidistant from left and right at every height. The sternocostal junction is where the lower end of the breastbone meets the rib margins that curve up toward it, forming a shallow notch — and the xiphoid process is the small, springy cartilage tab hanging at the tip of that notch. One cun below sets the height: starting from the little tab and travelling straight down the midline onto the belly, Jiuwei arrives within about a thumb-width. The cun itself, as always in this literature, is a proportional unit taken from the body being measured, not a ruler’s inch.
What lies beneath the fingertips here deserves particular gentleness, and the licensed record explains why in its own caution: the liver lies directly beneath, and deep insertion may injure it. Over most of the torso the bony cage shields what sits behind it; here, in the gap below the breastbone’s end, the armour opens. Under the skin of the upper belly run layers of soft tissue — the fibrous band where the abdominal muscles meet, then fat, then membrane — and behind all of it the organs go quietly about their work. The whole region rides visibly with the breath: the upper belly lifts on the inhale and settles on the exhale, so a searching hand can watch the point travel rather than pin it down. Nothing about locating Jiuwei requires force; a light, patient touch reads this landscape far better than pressure ever could.
The midline here is also a ladder of recorded neighbours, which makes misidentification easy to catch. Climb up the line and you reach the sternocostal junction itself, where the dataset places Zhongting (CV16), level with the fifth intercostal space. Walk down the line instead and the next recorded stop is Juque (CV14), entered six cun above the centre of the umbilicus, with Shangwan (CV13) and the ladder toward the navel below that. Every one of these addresses shares the same vertical seam, so height is the only thing telling them apart — which is why the search is best anchored at the breastbone, where bone itself confirms your place, rather than counting up from the navel across a long soft stretch. And unlike paired points on the limbs, a midline point is one address worked once, with whichever hand prefers.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Recline comfortably on a bed or mat, or sit upright against a chair back, and let the belly soften — a relaxed abdomen locates far better than a braced one. Begin at the breastbone. Walk a fingertip down the flat bone at the centre of the chest until the bone ends at the shallow notch where the lowest rib margins converge. Press very lightly there and you will feel the small, springy tab of the xiphoid at the bottom of the notch. Rest the pad of your index or middle finger just beneath that tab, then slide straight down the midline about one thumb-width, onto soft tissue. The level where bone gives way to belly and the finger settles into the gentle hollow of the upper abdomen is where Jiuwei waits. The whole search takes less time than describing it.
A few quiet checks steady the result before any pressing begins. First confirm the line: the finger should sit precisely centred on the seam, the same distance from the lowest ribs on both sides. Then compare sensation: feather-light contact at the true location typically answers with a faint, dull awareness, while a point a finger-width away stays comparatively quiet. Let a slow breath move under your fingertips and watch the soft tissue rise and settle — the true spot travels with it. Finally, check what lies under the finger: soft tissue, never bare bone. If you feel the hard edge of the xiphoid, ease half a thumb-width further down the midline and search again. Tenderness is information about today’s body, not proof of a wrong address; if a spot complains sharply, leave it alone and try again another day.
The classic mistakes are easy to name because they are common to all work at the top of the midline. The first is pressing on the xiphoid itself, mistaking the little tab for the point — the discomfort announces it quickly, and the fix is simply to come down off the bone. The second is starting from the navel and climbing five or six thumb-widths upward, a long journey over uniformly featureless tissue; anchoring at the breastbone instead turns the trip into one short step. The third is drifting sideways off the seam while circling, caught instantly by checking that the finger stays centred. Whenever doubt creeps in, return to the notch at the end of the breastbone, remeasure once, slowly, and trust the landmark to do its quiet work again.
Reading the Name: Dove’s Tail
The characters tell the story in miniature. Jiu 鳩 is the turtledove — the plump, gentle cousin of the pigeon known across East Asian gardens and fields — and wei 尾 means tail. Together they read as the dove’s tail, and the traditional reading looks upward from the point: the xiphoid process, that small cartilage tab hanging at the tip of the breastbone, resembles a bird’s tail, and Jiuwei waits immediately beneath it. The name is therefore a landmark instruction folded into two syllables — find the bird’s tail, and the point is the soft ground just below. Etymology of this kind is preserved here as cultural heritage: it describes anatomy as the classical authors saw it, not physiology as laboratories measure it.
The catalogue adds a second identity: Jiuwei is recorded as a luo-connecting point. In classical teaching, certain points serve as doorways through which a channel sends a connecting branch outward, linking its course to neighbouring regions rather than simply passing through. Applied to the Ren vessel — the Conception Vessel, which the registry describes running up the midline of the front of the body, uniting all yin meridians — that role made Jiuwei a natural subject whenever tradition discussed how the vessel’s influence spread across the chest and upper abdomen. Classical texts treat these branchings as part of the body’s geography; this page records them as such, without claiming any mechanism that modern science would recognise.
Pinyin renders the name Jiūwěi. The first syllable, jiu, carries the first tone — high and steady, held level like a note sustained on a flute. The second, wei, carries the third tone, which dips low and rises again, the falling-rising contour that learners of Chinese meet early and never forget. The two-character name 鳩尾 is compact enough to memorise at a glance, and it belongs to a family: along the midline the tradition stacked its images one above another — seas, palaces, courtyards, and gates between the navel and the throat — each name pinned to the terrain it marked. The tradition named its points the way a town names its streets: descriptively, memorably, and close to the ground.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: chest oppression, palpitations, vexation, cardiac pain, hiccups, vomiting, and epilepsy. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list opens with chest oppression — a subjective weight, tightness, or stuck quality across the chest, understood classically as qi failing to move freely there. Palpitations meant an unpleasant awareness of the heartbeat — racing, thumping, stumbling — noticed when the body was otherwise at rest. Vexation is the most period-specific term: a traditional concept of inner restlessness, agitation, or heat-like fretfulness with no single modern equivalent, best read as the mind’s companion to the chest complaints listed beside it.
The digestive pair, hiccups and vomiting, follows naturally from the address: Jiuwei stands exactly where the chest hands over to the abdomen, at the threshold of the stomach’s territory, and classical reasoning treated the point as a keeper of that passageway — reached for when rising, rebellious movements such as hiccup and vomiting disturbed it. The final item, epilepsy, asks for a clear historical eye: old records gathered seizure presentations under this single heading and approached them within their own framework. Today seizure disorders belong entirely with physicians. The listing survives here as a record of what the tradition wrote down, not as a suggestion for self-care, and readers living with such a diagnosis should treat their clinical team as the only relevant authority.
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 any condition. Cardiac pain deserves special emphasis — chest pain of any kind is a reason to seek medical assessment promptly, never a reason to begin a pressure routine. And where modern research touches acupressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, with evidence specific to any single point remaining thin. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated with the spine tall but unforced, or lying back with the knees bent so the belly wall slackens. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the spot. 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 into it. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes at a time, once or twice daily, matched where possible to long exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Being a single midline address, Jiuwei asks for no left-right symmetry — one careful session, either hand, is complete.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing into the soft pit teaches the body nothing and invites trouble. Warm the hands first if they tend to chill, because cold muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen: the practice doubles as a breathing pause — inhale through the nose, feel the upper belly swell under still fingers, lean the gentlest pressure in on the exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit, after morning washing or before the afternoon slump, because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually request.
Treat the exercise as a few minutes of attended stillness rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice honestly: perhaps the area feels less guarded, perhaps breathing drops more easily while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent time attending to the place where your own chest meets your belly. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — deeper force, longer sessions, harder digging aimed at forcing a result. When curiosity pulls that direction, return to gentleness, or simply stop for the day. The point has waited centuries; it will happily wait until tomorrow.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This is the rare point whose licensed record opens with two separate warnings, and they belong at the front of any conversation about it. The first concerns professional technique: do not needle deeply — the liver lies directly beneath, and deep insertion may injure it. The second is older and stranger: do not apply moxibustion here, because classical literature says moxibustion at this point diminishes strength. Both warnings are carried verbatim on this page’s record block, exactly as the dataset preserves them. Neither is ambiguous, and neither is softened here: whatever else Jiuwei may offer, the tradition itself drew a firm line around this small patch of the upper belly, and this page honours the line as drawn.
For fingertip self-care the practical rules follow simply. Keep every touch strictly superficial: the intention lives in skin and the outermost layer, never driving inward into the soft pit. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, massage tools, or devices. Never press through pain, while holding the breath, or against a tensed, guarded belly. Skip the point entirely during any acute stomach upset or vomiting episode, during a feverish illness, and over broken or irritated skin; set the practice aside after any abdominal injury, surgery, or medical procedure until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with liver, gallbladder, or heart conditions, should speak with a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
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 chest pain or pressure, breathlessness, palpitations accompanied by dizziness or fainting, repeated vomiting, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, whether physician or East Asian medicine provider as suits the complaint. The image of the dove folding its tail at the base of the breastbone is lovely, but the most useful thing Jiuwei offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own upper belly — met kindly, pressed lightly, and left unharmed.
Jiuwei, the Dove’s Tail, marks the seam where chest meets abdomen: a single point on the front midline, one thumb-width below the notch where the breastbone ends. Classical practice reached for it when the heart raced, the chest felt oppressed, or hiccups and vomiting would not settle. This guide walks through finding it by touch — gently, because the record itself asks for gentleness here.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow — the liver sits directly underneath, and a deep needle can damage it. No moxibustion; classical texts say it saps strength.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Jiuwei without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the breastbone as the whole map. Trace the flat centre bone of the chest downward until it ends at the shallow notch, feel the small springy xiphoid tab at its tip, then slide one thumb-width straight down the midline onto soft tissue. That spot — dead centre, just below the bone — is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Jiuwei myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and superficial tissue far short of the structures the record warns about. The documented dangers — liver injury from deep needling, and the classical prohibition on moxibustion — belong to professional techniques that home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Jiuwei for?
- The traditional record lists chest oppression, palpitations, vexation, cardiac pain, hiccups, vomiting, and epilepsy. Classical texts describe it as the point where the Ren vessel sends out its connecting branch, which shaped how the tradition reasoned about its uses. Those frameworks are documented for cultural understanding — they are not evidence-backed treatment claims, and several items on the list, such as cardiac pain and seizures, call for medical care outright.
- Why does the record warn specifically against moxibustion here?
- Because the licensed dataset carries that caution in their own words: moxibustion is not applied at Jiuwei, with classical literature cited to the effect that it diminishes strength. The editorial layer does not revise, soften, or explain away such statements — it reproduces them. Whatever the original reasoning behind the old prohibition, the practical instruction handed down to modern readers is simple: this is a point for light touch, not for heat or force of any kind.
- Can acupressure at Jiuwei replace seeing a doctor about palpitations?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and a racing or irregular heartbeat — especially with dizziness, chest discomfort, or breathlessness — needs professional assessment promptly. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs for symptoms that persist, worsen, or frighten you. Neither substitutes for the other, and the staircase between them should always be kept in easy reach.
Sources
- 01aijiu-mpvue (MIT License), complateXwInfo.json — Chinese-language location, indications, and point class for this entry.
- 02English wording authored in-house (2026) from the Chinese-language record, following WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008) nomenclature conventions.
- 03Point-name reading and midline-channel context cross-checked against A Manual of Acupuncture (Deadman) and WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region (2008).
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/cv15/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv15/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv15/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV15",
"name": {
"en": "Jiuwei",
"gloss": "Dove's Tail",
"zh-Hant": "鳩尾",
"zh-Hans": "鸠尾"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 15,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline, one thumb-width below the small tab at the lower tip of the breastbone."
},
"for": [
"chest tightness",
"palpitations",
"hiccups"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv15",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}