Not in pregnancy.
氣海 Qihai
“Sea of Qi” · CV6
Conception Vessel · 6 of 24
Where. On the midline of the lower belly, two finger-widths below the navel.
For. Belly pain, constipation or loose stools, low energy.
Press. Gentle with the palm or fingertips, about a minute.
Caution. Not in pregnancy.
在臍下一寸五分按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Qihai Sits on the Lower Belly
The dataset gives the address in one measured sentence: on the lower abdomen, on the anterior midline, 1.5 cun below the centre of the umbilicus. Each term translates into ordinary language without much trouble. The lower abdomen is the soft stretch of belly below the navel. The anterior midline is the vertical line running straight down the centre of the front of the body — the seam of the torso, equidistant from left and right at every height. The umbilicus is the navel, and its centre means the middle of that hollow rather than its rim. One and a half cun below sets the height: starting from the very centre of the navel and travelling straight down the midline toward the pubic bone, Qihai arrives before you have covered two thumb-widths of distance.
A cun, throughout this literature, is not a ruler unit but a proportional one, taken from the body being measured — a thumb-width on a broad-framed adult differs from one on a slight teenager, and the system prefers it that way. Tradition keeps a handy approximation sized for exactly this measurement: two fingers of one hand, index and middle held together at their widest, span roughly one and a half cun. The midline below the navel is also a ladder of evenly spaced neighbours, which makes misidentification easy to catch. One full cun down sits Yinjiao (CV7); two cun down sits Shimen (CV5); three cun down sits Guanyuan (CV4). Qihai falls halfway between the first and second rungs — a detail worth knowing, because it lets you confirm the spot against its neighbours rather than trusting a single guess. Unlike paired points on the limbs, a midline point is one address worked once, with either hand.
What lies beneath the fingertips here deserves particular gentleness, more than on most of the body. There is no bone close under this stretch of belly to stop or shield a finger — only the layered abdominal wall, skin over fat over thin muscle, and behind all of it the abdominal organs going about their quiet work. The wall rises and falls with every breath, most visibly when a person lies back, so the searching hand can watch the point move rather than pin it down. Nothing about locating Qihai requires force; a light, patient touch reads the landscape better than pressure ever could, and on this part of the body courtesy is not optional manners but the whole method.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Recline comfortably on a bed or mat and bend the knees slightly, letting the belly wall soften — a relaxed abdomen locates far better than a braced one. Find the centre of the navel first and rest a fingertip on it. Stack the index and middle fingers of your other hand together at their widest, lay the stack on the midline directly below the navel, and slide down until the lower edge of the stack comes to rest: that level, dead centre on the seam of the belly, is where Qihai waits. Settle onto the spot with a fingertip pad rather than probing with a tip, and give it a few slow breaths. The whole search takes less time than describing it, and it works lying down or standing in front of a mirror.
A few quiet checks steady the result before any pressing begins. Confirm the vertical line first: the spot should sit precisely centred, the same distance from the hip bones on both sides, on the midline that runs from the navel toward the pubic bone. Then compare sensation: feather-light contact at the true location typically answers with a faint, dull awareness, while a point a finger-width above or below stays comparatively quiet. Watch the breath under a still fingertip — the belly lifts on the inhale and settles on the exhale, and the point travels with it. If anything feels sharply tender, ease off entirely and simply re-anchor at the navel later; tenderness is information about today’s body, not proof of a wrong address.
The classic mistakes are easy to name because they are common to all midline work. The first is drifting sideways off the seam — surprisingly easy when pressing through soft tissue, and caught instantly by checking that the fingertip stays centred over the line toward the pubic bone. The second is confusing the ladder’s rungs: one full finger-width below the navel reaches Yinjiao, two reach Shimen, and a search that wanders lands on a neighbour rather than Qihai. The third is measuring upward instead of downward, onto the upper abdomen, where the channel continues but the recorded address does not follow. Whenever doubt creeps in, return to the centre of the navel, remeasure once, slowly, and trust the two-finger stack to do its quiet work again.
Reading the Name: Sea of Qi
Two characters, one image of gathering. Qi 氣 is breath — the moving, animating current that traditional physiology places at the centre of every process in the body, from digestion to defence to warmth. Hai 海 is a sea: not a pond or a well but vast water, deep enough to hold reserves. Together the name reads Sea of Qi, and the image does honest work: classical teaching imagined the body’s qi pooling in certain low grounds the way water gathers into inland seas, available to be drawn upon in times of need. The tradition names many points for landscape — gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses — and few names state their metaphor as plainly as this one.
The geography suits the name. The Ren vessel — the Conception Vessel, whose registry entry describes it running up the midline of the front of the body and uniting all yin meridians — passes directly through this territory, and classical texts describe the region below the navel as ground associated with the body’s deeper reserves of vitality. The point’s own recorded indications echo the same picture: among its traditional uses are shortness of breath, weakness and emaciation from qi deficiency, and collapse after stroke, entries that read like a list drawn up around the idea of replenishing a depleted sea. No special point-class title accompanies the entry in the licensed record; the name itself carries most of the theory anyone needs.
Pinyin writes the name Qìhǎi, and the tones deserve their moment. Qi rides the fourth tone — a clean, decisive fall from high to low, like something settling into place — while hai carries the third tone, the dipping contour that drops and then lifts again, giving the name a settle-and-swell cadence well suited to a sea. Both readings were checked character by character and match the catalogue’s marked spelling exactly: a grave accent over the i marks the fourth tone, a caron over the a marks the third. The hanzi pair 氣海 is compact enough to memorise at a glance — breath beside sea — and like the gates and storehouses elsewhere on the channel maps, it compresses a chapter of theory into two small characters.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications open with digestion: abdominal pain, diarrhoea, constipation. In the traditional frame the mid and lower abdomen are the seat of transformation — the workshops where food is broken down, moved, and settled — so a point on the front of that territory stood naturally in discussions of what the old records called irregular movement: stool that runs too loose or refuses to move, and dull pain gathered around and below the navel. Framed honestly for modern readers, these are recorded traditional uses, descriptions of how classical practice reasoned, not outcomes promised by pressing a point. Recurring or severe abdominal symptoms belong with a clinician promptly, whatever the old books list here.
The next cluster turns to water and reproduction: enuresis — involuntary wetting — then impotence and nocturnal emission in the male sphere, and irregular menstruation, absent menstruation, and uterine bleeding in the female sphere. Again the traditional logic follows the map. Classical teaching assigned the lower abdomen a governing role over water metabolism and the reproductive organs, and the Ren vessel was described as threading exactly that territory. Several of these entries map onto matters that belong promptly with licensed care — bleeding with no explained cause, cycles that vanish, persistent urinary troubles — and the old records themselves treat such complaints as conditions for skilled hands, not casual ones.
The remaining entries close with the tonic theme the name predicts: weakness and emaciation from qi deficiency, shortness of breath, collapse after stroke, and hernia. Qi deficiency is a traditional concept — vitality running low, the sea drawn down — and classical practice reached for this address when it wanted, in its own terms, to refill the reservoir. Collapse after stroke belongs unambiguously to emergency medicine in any century; hernia, a tissue protrusion through a weakened opening, belongs with professional assessment too. It bears repeating plainly: all of these are traditional uses preserved in a licensed dataset and older literature, offered here for cultural understanding. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition as a lens, never a prescription.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: lie back, knees bent, hands warm — cold fingers press harder than they mean to. Because Qihai sits alone on the midline, there is no mirror side to balance; one careful session is complete in itself. Rest the pads of two or three fingertips, or a relaxed palm, on the spot and begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths. Then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissues beneath rather than pushing inward toward the organs. Pressure should register as gentle warmth or mild pleasantness, never soreness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes, once or twice daily, timed so the firmer moments of each circle ride the exhale.
The practice pairs naturally with slow abdominal breathing, and many people find that pairing is the whole point. One hand resting on the lower belly, eyes closed, breath followed down to where the fingers wait: inhale as the belly rises into the palm, soften as it falls. This turns two minutes of pressure into a genuine pause, and consistency — morning after washing, evening before sleep — matters far more than intensity. As with every practice on this site, quality outweighs duration: light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the register of self-care, while hard digging into a soft abdomen teaches nothing and asks for trouble. Anchor the habit where it will survive busy weeks, and let it stay small.
Keep expectations the size of the practice. Perhaps the belly feels warmer and looser; perhaps breathing deepens and the shoulders drop; perhaps nothing announces itself beyond a few calm minutes spent looking after your own body. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force energy or a result out of a point whose name promises a sea. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or stop for the day; the point will still be there tomorrow, and so will the breath it sits beside.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point earns a firmer boundary than most, and the licensed record says so plainly. The dataset cautions practitioners to work carefully with needles here and never go deep, and to exercise particular caution in pregnancy and over the abdominal organs. The reasoning is simple geography: the abdominal wall is soft and yielding, the organs behind it have no bony armour, and depth is therefore the one variable home practice should never test. Professional training manages that risk with exact technique; home self-care manages it by staying on the surface altogether. Nothing in gentle fingertip work approaches the techniques the caution addresses — but the caution is why the surface rule on this page admits no exceptions.
For self-care, read the caution conservatively and let the conservative reading govern. If you are pregnant, skip this point entirely, and ask a qualified practitioner before adding any abdominal point work at all; if pregnancy is possible, do the same. Use finger pads or a relaxed palm only — never elbows, knuckles, devices, or sustained hard leaning. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or scarred skin, across a known hernia, during feverish illness, and whenever the belly is acutely painful or distended. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Anyone living with digestive or urinary organ conditions, recovering from abdominal surgery, or with reduced abdominal sensation should consult a clinician before making abdominal pressure a habit.
And the wider rule stands over everything, as on every page of this site: this material is educational, acupressure is self-care rather than diagnosis or therapy, and some symptoms belong with prompt medical assessment rather than any pressure routine — severe or worsening abdominal pain, vomiting blood, blood in the stool, unexplained weight loss, persistent change in bowel or bladder habit, or bleeding with no explained cause. Persistent symptoms otherwise belong with qualified practitioners, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The sea imagery is beautiful, but the safest gift Qihai offers most people is smaller and real: a few quiet minutes of attention paid to the centre of the body, taken gently and left wanting nothing.
Qihai, the Sea of Qi, rests on the front midline of the lower belly, a little below the navel. Classical practice named it for the body’s store of vital breath and reached for it when digestion, water metabolism, or vitality ran low. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently, with the safety limits this part of the abdomen deserves.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Needle cautiously and shallowly, taking special care in pregnancy and over the abdominal organs.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Qihai without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the navel and two fingers as the whole map. Rest a fingertip on the exact centre of the navel, stack your index and middle fingers together just below it along the midline, and the level where the stack ends — dead centre on the seam of the belly — is the location the dataset describes. The one-and-a-half-cun figure simply encodes the same two-finger measure in proportional language, and the neighbouring points one and two cun further down make handy cross-checks if you want confirmation.
- Is pressing Qihai myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults who are not pregnant, gentle fingertip or palm pressure held at the surface is generally reasonable self-care: it engages skin and the outer layers of the abdominal wall and never approaches the deep techniques the recorded caution addresses. The exceptions carry the weight here — pregnancy excludes the point outright under the conservative reading of the caution, and sharp pain, worsening discomfort, or any radiating sensation ends the session immediately. Anyone with organ conditions or past abdominal surgery should clear the practice with a clinician first.
- What did classical practice use Qihai for?
- The recorded list spans digestion — abdominal pain, diarrhoea, constipation; water and reproduction — enuresis, impotence, nocturnal emission, irregular menstruation, absent menstruation, uterine bleeding; and the tonic sphere the name predicts — shortness of breath, weakness and emaciation from qi deficiency, collapse after stroke, plus hernia. The breadth follows the image: a sea of qi gathered at the centre of the lower belly spoke to nearly every system the tradition located there. These are traditional frameworks, documented for context, not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why is the pregnancy limit so firm when the pressure involved is only gentle?
- Because the recorded caution names pregnancy specifically, alongside the abdominal organs, and home practice has no way to calibrate what “gentle enough” would mean against it. The responsible reading is the categorical one: anyone pregnant skips the point entirely, and anyone possibly pregnant consults a practitioner before adding abdominal point work. Certainty costs almost nothing here — the tradition offers many other addresses for relaxation that carry no such warning, and a few weeks of skipping one point is a small price for a clear conscience.
- Does pressing the Sea of Qi actually boost my energy?
- An honest answer: nobody can promise that. Some people fold a couple of minutes at this point into a breathing pause and report feeling calmer for it, and reviews of self-applied pressure generally suggest modest, context-dependent effects, with evidence for any single point remaining thin. Fatigue that persists, worsens, or comes with weight loss, breathlessness, or other changes deserves proper assessment rather than a pressure routine. Treat the name as poetry about how the tradition saw the body — and treat the practice as comfort work that accompanies good care, never replaces it.
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/cv6/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/cv6/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/cv6/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "CV6",
"name": {
"en": "Qihai",
"gloss": "Sea of Qi",
"zh-Hant": "氣海",
"zh-Hans": "气海"
},
"channel": {
"id": "CV",
"order": 6,
"of": 24
},
"location": {
"text": "On the midline of the lower belly, two finger-widths below the navel."
},
"for": [
"belly pain",
"constipation or loose stools",
"low energy"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle with the palm or fingertips, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not in pregnancy."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/cv6",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}