中庭 Zhongting
“Central Courtyard” · CV16
Conception Vessel · 16 of 24
Where. On the midline at the lower end of the breastbone, where the ribs meet, level with the fifth rib space.
For. Fullness of the chest and ribs, trouble swallowing, vomiting.
Press. Gentle, on the breastbone, about a minute.
中庭，在膻中下一寸六分陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Zhongting Sits on the Midline
The dataset places Zhongting on the chest, on the anterior midline, level with the fifth intercostal space, at the sternocostal junction. Every clause earns its keep. The anterior midline is the body’s vertical centre line, running from the throat notch down the breastbone and along the belly; points posted along it belong to the Ren vessel, which meridian records describe running up the midline of the front of the body, uniting all the yin meridians. The sternocostal junction is where the hard body of the breastbone ends and gives way to the small, springy tip called the xiphoid process — the turning point between bone and the soft pit of the chest below. Level with the fifth intercostal space means level with the fifth groove between ribs, counted downward from the collarbone, which settles the point at the very base of the bony breastbone.
What lies beneath the fingertips here is friendlier than at many chest points: bone. Thin skin and a modest layer of tissue lie directly over the lower breastbone, and behind the point the skeleton itself does the backing. That changes the feel of contact. Over the soft belly a probing finger sinks; over this stretch of midline the touch meets a firm, unyielding floor almost at once, so sensation arrives quickly and honestly — a mild dullness, a faint warmth, sometimes a curious tenderness right on the line. The neighboring geography matters too: at this level the lower ribs sweep inward and upward to meet the breastbone, their cartilages converging into the arch that frames the pit of the stomach, and the junction sits exactly where that arch closes at the midline.
Company along the midline helps the search. One intercostal space higher, level with the fourth rib gap and squarely halfway between the two nipples, waits Danzhong (CV17), the most celebrated resident of this stretch; above it in turn rise Yutang, the Jade Hall, and Zigong, the Purple Palace. One cun below the junction, guarding the little xiphoid tip, sits Jiuwei (CV15), the Dove Tail. Reading the column turns a lonely hunt into a census: the courtyard, the halls and palace above, the bird’s tail marking the exit below. Losing your place simply means returning to a fixed landmark — the end of the breastbone, or the line joining the nipples — and measuring afresh, slowly.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair or lie on your back with knees bent, letting the chest and shoulders soften. Rest two fingertips on the notch at the base of your throat, then trace the midline slowly downward — down the breastbone, over its flat face, until the bone plainly ends and the tissue beneath goes soft. You have arrived at the sternocostal junction. Now walk the fingertips back up the midline a short step onto the bony surface again and settle them there: this last span of bone, level with the fifth groove between the ribs, is Zhongting’s address. If you want to double-check the height, count the rib-gaps downward from the collarbone at the side — five grooves — and confirm the point keeps company with the fifth.
A second route confirms the first. Lay an imaginary line between the two nipples: the catalogue locates Danzhong exactly on that line, at its midpoint on the breastbone, level with the fourth intercostal space. From Danzhong, slide one intercostal space straight down the midline, keeping the travel strictly vertical, and you stand on Zhongting. Run both routes on separate days and they begin to agree with each other, which is how self-location earns confidence. Add the breathing check: breathe slowly and let the fingertip ride the motion — the breastbone lifts a fraction on the inhale and settles on the exhale, and a correctly placed pad feels the rhythm without pressing for it. Sensation at the true spot tends to arrive as a rounder, fuller awareness than the skin a thumb-width away offers.
Three slips account for most misses. The first is sliding too far and landing on the xiphoid tip itself, the small pointed nub below the junction — that is Jiuwei’s doorstep, not the courtyard; if the finger feels a soft, mobile tip rather than broad flat bone, come back up. The second is drifting sideways off the midline onto the sloping rib-cartilage, where landmarks go vague; return to the central valley between the bony ridges. The third is miscounting the spaces and settling one or two grooves too high — harmless, since Danzhong and its neighbors are worthy addresses in their own right, but not the one this page describes. Counting from a fixed landmark twice, slowly, resolves every one of these.
Reading the Name: Central Courtyard
The two characters sketch a building. Zhong 中 means central, middle — a marker set through the midst of things. Ting 庭 is the courtyard: dictionaries gloss it as the open ground before a hall, the central space of a house, the yard where household life collected. Joined, Zhongting reads as the Central Courtyard — the court that lies within. The choice of image suits the setting. In a traditional compound the courtyard is neither the formal hall nor the private rooms but the in-between space where people gather, cross, pause, and breathe; set on the front of the trunk, the name proposes the chest’s midline as exactly such a shared ground.
The neighborhood carries the metaphor upward. Walking the breastbone from this point toward the throat, the catalogue’s names read like rooms of a palace: above the courtyard rises Yutang, the Jade Hall; above that stands Zigong, the Purple Palace; farther still hang the flowery canopy and the jade pivot of the upper chest. Below, the Dove Tail marks the far gate. Whether the ancient namers drew a strict floor plan hardly matters; the sequence shows a tradition thinking of the breastbone as the axis of an interior residence, with Zhongting holding the courtyard office — the gathering ground before the state rooms. Names like these file information rather than decoration: they announce that the tradition expected movement and meeting at this spot.
Pinyin renders the name Zhōngtíng. The first syllable, zhōng, carries the first tone — high, flat, and steady, written with a macron over the o; the second, tíng, carries the second tone, which rises like a question, marked with an acute accent over the i. Checked character by character against a dictionary, both readings hold: zhōng first tone, tíng second. The hanzi pair 中庭 is spare enough to memorise at a glance, and like so many points named for architecture — gates, halls, courtyards, pivots — the name works quietly as instructions: come to the middle, enter the court, pause where the house pauses.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, cardiac pain, difficulty swallowing, vomiting, and infantile vomiting of milk. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the list sketches one theme with variations: things failing to move smoothly in and around the chest. Fullness is the old records’ term for a subjective stuffing — weight, oppression, a stuck quality — felt across the chest or out along the hypochondria, the flanking sides of the trunk below the ribs, understood as qi failing to circulate freely there. Because the Ren vessel runs the midline through this very territory, classical practice naturally posted its chest-level points at the centre of such discussions, and Zhongting stood among them.
The second entry asks for careful translation. Cardiac pain in classical records denotes blocked, dull, oppressive sensations felt in the region of the heart — a premodern category describing discomfort the old texts attributed to congealed qi and blood about the chest. It was never the same thing as sudden, crushing, or spreading chest pain, which belonged then, as now, to urgent medical care and not to point work. Difficulty swallowing entered the same portfolio because the corridor from throat to stomach passes just above: tradition read obstruction in swallowing as qi rebelling or phlegm lingering along that passage, and midline points at the base of the chest figured in those discussions. Persistent swallowing trouble today deserves prompt professional assessment, quite apart from anything on a wellness page.
Vomiting completes the family: the tradition understood it as stomach qi rebelling upward instead of descending, and chest-midline points joined abdominal ones in classical conversations about settling it. The last item, infantile vomiting of milk, is a historical pediatric entry — old records noting babies who brought milk back up after feeding, for whom such points were discussed. The modern footnote writes itself: a baby with feeding difficulties belongs with a pediatrician, and nothing on this page substitutes for that. And the standing honesty applies to the whole list: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural understanding — not claims that pressing this point treats disease. Where research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence at any single point remains thin.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by either route, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy and easy. Stack the pads of your index and middle fingers and lay them flat on the spot, squarely on the midline, over the bone. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths — no pressure at all, just attention — then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the firm surface beneath rather than grinding against it. Aim for a pleasant dullness or gentle warmth; sharpness means lighten or lift. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes at a sitting, once or twice daily, matched where possible to long exhales so each circle rides the breath out. This is a single midline point, so there is no second side — symmetry gives way to stillness.
Quality matters more than duration, and at a bone-backed point quality means restraint. The breastbone transmits pressure efficiently, which is exactly why jabbing or leaning teaches nothing and may leave the area sore; finger pads only, never knuckles, elbows, or tools. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and treat the minute as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the chest widen under resting fingers, move on the long exhale. People who keep such rituals often anchor them to something already in the day — after morning washing, before the afternoon slump — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask. If the spot feels unusually tender on a given day, honour that and simply shorten the session.
Hold the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice honestly what changes: perhaps the chest feels less guarded, perhaps the pause itself becomes the value, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent ninety seconds tending your own middle. Every one of those outcomes sits comfortably inside what self-acupressure can honestly offer. What sits outside is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a particular result, especially around breathing or swallowing, where symptoms deserve professional eyes rather than firmer thumbs. When curiosity pulls toward force, return to gentleness, or close the day’s practice altogether. The courtyard metaphor earns its keep one last time here: courts are made for pausing in, not for pushing through.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record carries no special caution entry for Zhongting — the dataset lists none, and this page echoes that silence faithfully. Silence is not license. The universal rules that govern every point on this site apply in full, and this location adds a practical logic of its own: thin skin lies directly over unyielding bone, so force buys nothing here except a bruise, while light contact registers everything worth feeling. Treat the point as territory for patient fingertips and the anatomy does the rest of the safety work for you. Absence of recorded cautions is a reason for calm, never for ambition.
The practical rules stay simple. Use finger pads and light pressure only; skip the point entirely during a feverish or acute illness, and over any broken, irritated, or recently injured skin at the site. Stop at once — for that day — on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, or on pain that worsens instead of easing. After recent chest injury or chest surgery, and during any ongoing heart or lung condition, wait for a clinician’s clearance before adding point practices. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before beginning any new acupressure routine. None of these rules is unique to Zhongting; together they describe ordinary care, which is precisely the register self-care should keep.
And the wider rule stands over everything. Seek medical help promptly — not a pressure routine — for chest pain that is heavy, crushing, or spreading; for breathlessness at rest or on mild exertion; for pain arriving with exertion, sweating, nausea, or faintness; for swallowing difficulty that persists or worsens; for repeated vomiting, especially in an infant; for coughing blood; for any symptom that frightens you. Emergency symptoms belong to emergency services, immediately. For everything slower and milder, a licensed practitioner remains the right first stop. This page is educational; acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. The safest gift the Central Courtyard offers most visitors is a quieter, better-informed acquaintance with the centre of their own chest.
Zhongting, the Central Courtyard, stands low on the breastbone, squarely on the front midline of the chest, at the junction where the bone gives way toward the pit of the stomach. Classical practice reached for this spot when the chest felt stuffed or swallowing felt stuck. This guide walks you there by touch and shows how gentle self-acupressure can fit ordinary days.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Zhongting without counting rib spaces?
- Use the end of the breastbone as the whole map. Trace the midline down from the throat notch until the hard bone plainly stops — that stopping place is the sternocostal junction — then step the fingertips back up onto the last span of bone and rest them there. Cross-check with the nipple line: its midpoint crosses the breastbone at Danzhong, and one intercostal space below that sits Zhongting. Two routes agreeing is worth more than any ruler.
- Is pressing on the breastbone safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure over the bone is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults: the skeleton itself backs the point, so light contact stays comfortably superficial and the feedback is immediate. What to avoid is force — jabbing, leaning, or tool-assisted pressure over the sternum serves nothing and can leave the area sore. Sharp or spreading sensation means stop for the day, and the usual skips apply during fever or over broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Zhongting for?
- The traditional record lists fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, cardiac pain, difficulty swallowing, vomiting, and infantile vomiting of milk. Read together they form one theme: chest-centred congestion and rebellious flow — fullness, blocked sensation, and stomach qi rising when it ought to descend. These are traditional frameworks recorded for context and cultural understanding, not evidence-backed treatment claims, and symptom-specific worries belong with qualified clinicians.
- Why is a courtyard named on the chest?
- Because the breastbone reads like the axis of a residence. Above Zhongting the point names climb through Yutang, the Jade Hall, to Zigong, the Purple Palace, while the Dove Tail waits below — a courtyard set among halls. Traditional naming loved architecture for points on the trunk, and a courtyard specifically means the in-between ground where a household gathers, crosses, and pauses. The name suggests movement and meeting at the centre of the chest, which matches how classical texts reached for the spot.
- Can acupressure here replace seeing a doctor about chest or swallowing symptoms?
- No. Self-acupressure is comfort practice, not diagnosis. Heavy or spreading chest pain, breathlessness, exertional symptoms, persistent swallowing trouble, or repeated vomiting need professional assessment promptly — urgently, for anything suggesting a cardiac emergency. Think of the two as different buildings in one compound: daily self-care lives in the courtyard, and medicine keeps the consulting hall; knowing which door to use is the whole skill.
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, chest-courtyard lore, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for CV16 Zhongting — 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/cv16/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv16/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv16/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV16",
"name": {
"en": "Zhongting",
"gloss": "Central Courtyard",
"zh-Hant": "中庭",
"zh-Hans": "中庭"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 16,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline at the lower end of the breastbone, where the ribs meet, level with the fifth rib space."
},
"for": [
"fullness of the chest and ribs",
"trouble swallowing",
"vomiting"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle, on the breastbone, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv16",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}