Not in pregnancy.
曲骨 Qugu
“Curved Bone” · CV2
Conception Vessel · 2 of 24 · crossing-point
Where. On the midline of the lower belly, on the upper edge of the pubic bone.
For. Difficult urination, period pain, irregular periods.
Press. Gentle with the fingertips, about a minute.
Caution. Not in pregnancy.
曲骨，在橫骨上、中極下一寸，毛際陷者中，動脈應手按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Qugu Sits at the Base of the Belly
The dataset locates Qugu on the lower abdomen, on the anterior midline, at the midpoint of the upper border of the pubic symphysis. Unpacked piece by piece: the anterior midline is the imagined vertical line running down the exact centre of the front of the body, through throat, chest, and navel; the pubic symphysis is the firm joint where the two pubic bones meet at the front of the pelvis, felt as a hard ridge where the soft belly gives way to the bony frame of the groin. The point claims the middle of that ridge’s top edge. A cun, the traditional unit of point-location, is proportional rather than fixed — taken from the person being examined — so measurements written in cun describe relationships on your own body rather than centimeters on a ruler.
The surrounding map explains the point’s character. The Ren vessel, which owns this midline address, runs up the midline of the front of the body and unites all the yin meridians; Qugu is its second point, near the very bottom of that long climb. Below it, the vessel’s first point, Huiyin, lies farther down still at the perineum; above it, Zhongji (CV3) waits on the same line, four cun below the centre of the umbilicus. Navel, solar region, chest, throat, chin — the whole scenery of the vessel arranges itself upward from this low anchoring ground, which is part of what makes the point feel like a foundation stone in classical descriptions.
What rests beneath deserves respect before any pressing begins. Below skin and the soft layers of the lower abdominal wall, the bladder settles directly behind the pubic bones, and in female bodies the uterus lies close by in the same sheltered hollow. That geography is precisely why the licensed record carries a pointed warning for this site, and why home practice treats the area as surface-only territory: everything interesting happens deeper than a fingertip should ever travel. Gentle contact honours the anatomy; force argues with it.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Prepare the search honestly: empty the bladder first, then lie on your back with knees bent over a cushion, if that helps the belly soften. Rest two fingertips just below the navel and walk them straight down the midline, past the soft lower belly, until the pads meet the first unmistakably firm ridge rising out of the pubic region — the upper border of the pubic symphysis. Settle the fingertips at the middle of its top edge, centred on the midline, riding the boundary where soft meets firm: that is the recorded location.
A few quiet confirmations help. Touch feather-light and test the centring: slide half a thumb-width to either side of the midline and the firm ridge should fall away on both sides, proving you began in the true centre. Many people notice a faint, dull awareness right at the point and little sensation a finger-width away. If the fingertips find only soft tissue, do not push harder — glide slowly downward instead. The bone always arrives, and the point lives exactly where softness ends. Searching is done by slowing down, never by loading weight onto the fingers.
Three mistakes account for nearly every lost search. Pressing hard into the ridge bruises tissue over thin padding and teaches nothing, because the point is confirmed by position, not by pressure. Drifting sideways off the midline lands on the cord-like edges of the abdominal muscles, whose firmness can be mistaken for bone. And hunting with a full bladder blurs every landmark while making any pressure genuinely uncomfortable — one more reason the bathroom visit comes first. Whenever the trail goes cold, return to the navel and walk the midline down again, slowly.
Reading the Name: Curved Bone
The name is a landmark description worn as a word. Qu 曲 means bent or curved; gu 骨 means bone; together they read simply as the curved bone. Classical anatomy applied exactly this term to the bone at the front base of the trunk — the arched sweep of pubic bone the fingertips meet at the bottom of the belly — and the point took its title from the structure it overlooks. Among thousands of points named for valleys, pools, gates, and courtyards, this one keeps the oldest convention of all: it tells you plainly what lies underneath.
The record adds a second identity: the dataset classes Qugu as a crossing-point — a station where more than one pathway is understood to converge. In the old frame such meeting grounds drew special watchfulness, and the lower abdomen was read as the gathering territory of fluids, reproduction, and deep reserves. The label flags this stretch of midline as a junction rather than a way-station: a place the tradition expected things to collect and interact, which helps explain why so many of its recorded uses concentrate here.
Pinyin writes the name Qūgǔ: qu carries the flat, high first tone, while gu dips through the third tone, falling then lifting again — the tone of a question answered. The hanzi pair 曲骨 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. Like so many points named for terrain, the metaphor does practical work: touch the curved bone and you have touched the name, no translation required. The point signs its own location in two syllables.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The licensed record gathers Qugu’s traditional applications almost entirely within one domain: the waterways and the womb. Listed indications include urinary retention, endometritis, pelvic inflammation, prostatitis, irregular menstruation, dysmenorrhea, vaginal discharge, nocturnal emission, and impotence. Read as tradition rather than prescription, the list describes the lower belly as the classical control room for passing urine, for menstrual rhythm, and for sexual function alike. Several entries — endometritis, pelvic inflammation, prostatitis — carry modern medical diagnostic names; each names a condition that belongs with physicians, not with home routines.
The traditional logic follows the map. In the classical frame the Ren vessel presides over the womb, conception, and the yin aspect of the body, and its lowest reach was understood to gather and move fluids downward; a midline point at the pubic bone therefore entered discussions of blocked or disordered flow — urine held back, menses irregular, discharge unsettled. Crossing-point status reinforced the reading: where pathways converge, classical practice looked for leverage over the whole neighborhood rather than one complaint. These are frameworks of pre-modern physiology, coherent on their own terms and documented here for understanding.
It bears repeating plainly: all of the above 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 disease. Where modern research has touched self-applied acupressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Several listed entries — urinary retention, pelvic inflammation, unexplained pelvic pain — are, in modern life, reasons to see a clinician promptly. Hold the tradition lightly; hold the referral rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
Set up the session the way the search set up: bladder emptied, lying down, knees softened over a cushion so the lower belly can release. Warm your hands. Place the pads of one or two fingers on the midline point and begin with contact alone — a few slow breaths of simple, still touching. Then add small circles, letting the skin glide over the firm ridge beneath rather than grinding against bone. Pressure should register as mild warmth or pleasant dullness, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes, once or twice daily, easing in as the breath leaves and softening as it returns.
Quality outranks duration, as everywhere in self-care. Because the point sits directly on bone with only a thin cushion between skin and skeleton, lighter is genuinely better here than at the fleshy points of the limbs: the intention stays in skin and superficial layer, never drives inward or downward toward the pelvis. No tools belong in this work — fingertips only. People who keep the habit usually anchor it to something already in the day, after the evening wash or before sleep, because regularity, not intensity, is what home practice actually asks for. Two calm minutes most days beat an ambitious session abandoned by Thursday.
Treat the few minutes as a pause rather than a repair job. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the lower belly feels less guarded, perhaps the breath reaches deeper while your hand rests there, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent ninety seconds attending kindly to a part of the body most people never think about. All of that fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — heavier hands, longer sessions, pressure continued through pain in pursuit of a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or close the practice for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point’s caution belongs at the top, so it leads here. The licensed record warns practitioners not to needle during pregnancy, because deep insertion may injure the bladder or uterus — the organs resting directly behind the point. Home practice inherits an absolute rule from that warning: if you are pregnant, do not press Qugu at all, in any amount, however gentle. Carry the same conservatism through any stage of trying to conceive or possible pregnancy, and consult a qualified practitioner before adding anything new. No traditional suggestion outweighs a risk stated this plainly.
Other limits guard the rest of the map. Acute difficulty passing urine is never a self-care moment: retention of urine is a medical urgency, and the correct move is seeking care now, not pressing longer. Skip the point entirely during feverish illness, when urination burns or stings or has turned suddenly frequent, when vaginal discharge is new or unusual, and over any broken or irritated skin. Pause after recent lower-abdominal surgery or injury until ordinary activity is cleared, and on heavy menstrual days many people simply choose gentler ground elsewhere. During any session, sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical attention — not a pressing routine — for inability to pass urine, blood in the urine, fever with pelvic or back pain, severe or worsening pelvic pain, or any symptom that frightens you. For complaints persisting beyond a couple of weeks, a licensed practitioner — medical or East Asian medical, as suits the concern — is the right next step. The curved bone will still be there tomorrow; health questions deserve today’s professionals.
Qugu, the Curved Bone, sits where the body’s midline meets the upper edge of the pubic bone at the base of the belly. Classical practice turned here for urinary and pelvic complaints, the concerns tradition gathered under the lower abdomen. This guide covers finding it by touch, pressing it gently, and the readers who must skip it entirely.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Not to be needled in pregnancy; a deep needle can damage the bladder or uterus.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Qugu without knowing anything about cun?
- Let the skeleton do the measuring. Empty the bladder, lie back, and walk two fingertips straight down the midline from the navel until they meet the first firm ridge rising at the base of the belly — the upper border of the pubic bone. The middle of that top edge, centred on the midline, is the recorded location. Cun measurements encode the same journey proportionally; the walk finds it by feel.
- Is Qugu safe to press during pregnancy?
- No — pregnancy removes this point from play entirely. The dataset warns practitioners against needling here during pregnancy because deep insertion may injure the bladder or uterus, and home practice adopts the strictest reading: no pressing, however light, at any stage of pregnancy, while trying to conceive, or when pregnancy is possible. Readers in those situations should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point work.
- What did classical practice use Qugu for?
- The traditional record centres on the urogenital domain: urinary retention, irregular menstruation, painful periods, vaginal discharge, nocturnal emission, impotence, and several pelvic conditions recorded under modern diagnostic names. Classical theory read the Ren vessel’s lowest reach as governing fluid movement, the womb, and conception, which concentrated this domain around its lowest midline points. Those are traditional frameworks documented for context, not treatment claims.
- Can pressing Qugu relieve urinary retention?
- No — and treating that idea as a home remedy would be dangerous. Inability to pass urine is a medical urgency with causes ranging from blockage to infection to medication effects, and it needs professional assessment now, not finger pressure. Self-acupressure plays no role in managing it. If you or someone near you cannot urinate despite a full bladder, seek medical care immediately.
- What about pressing Qugu around menstruation?
- Tradition lists painful and irregular menses among the point’s historic uses, and healthy adults who know their cycles sometimes keep gentle midline contact in their routines. The conservative approach: use light pressure only, pause on heavy or uncomfortable days, and treat changes in bleeding, new or severe pain, fever, or unusual discharge as reasons to see a clinician rather than invitations to press differently. Menstrual symptoms that disrupt ordinary life deserve assessment, not escalation of pressure.
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, crossing-point theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for CV2 Qugu — location, point class, 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/cv2/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv2/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv2/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV2",
"name": {
"en": "Qugu",
"gloss": "Curved Bone",
"zh-Hant": "曲骨",
"zh-Hans": "曲骨"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 2,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline of the lower belly, on the upper edge of the pubic bone."
},
"for": [
"difficult urination",
"period pain",
"irregular periods"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle with the fingertips, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not in pregnancy."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv2",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}