日月 Riyue
“Sun and Moon” · GB24
Foot Shaoyang · 24 of 44 · front-mu of the gallbladder, crossing-point
Where. Straight below the nipple, in the rib gap one below LV14, just above the edge of the rib cage.
For. Acid reflux; hiccups; pain under the ribs.
Press. Gentle fingertip pressure on the rib groove, about a minute.
日月，膽募也，在期門下一寸五分按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Riyue Sits on the Lower Rib Cage
The dataset places Riyue on the upper abdomen, directly below the nipple, in the seventh intercostal space, four cun lateral to the anterior midline. Two descriptors, one address: the vertical line dropped from the centre of the nipple is itself the traditional four-cun line, because classical proportional measurement sets the nipple roughly four cun outward from the midline on most adult bodies. A cun is not a fixed ruler length but a proportion taken from the person being examined — broadly a thumb-width at the knuckle — so broad shoulders carry their cun farther out than narrow ones, and the point travels with them. What does not travel is the vertical logic: whatever your body’s four-cun line happens to be, Riyue waits along its lower stretch, in one of the last clearly separated gaps between ribs before they gather into the costal margin.
What lies beneath this stretch of rib cage earns it a careful reputation. The seventh intercostal space sits low, near where the cartilaginous ribs begin to soften into the arch of the costal margin, and behind the skin, the thin intercostal muscle, and the membrane lie the substantial organs of the upper abdomen and lower chest. Classical location texts therefore treat the whole band from the sixth space downward as territory for exactness, and the licensed record carries an explicit caution against deep work at this site. None of this makes the point frightening; it makes the manner of touching it simple. Everything a home practitioner needs happens within a few millimeters of the surface — enough to feel the groove of the space, the give of the muscle, the warmth of the skin. Deeper is not better here; deeper is not part of the practice at all.
Riyue belongs to a mirrored pair, one point on each side of the breastbone line, and the two are located identically. Its most useful neighbour stands directly overhead on the same vertical line: one intercostal space higher, in the sixth space, lies Qimen (LV14), the front-mu point of the liver. Finding the pair together confirms placement, because the two spaces read as consecutive grooves on one plumb line, which makes misplacement by a whole space easy to spot and correct. If you lose count while searching, return to the nipple and start the descent again rather than guessing upward from the belly, where the ribs have already merged and the spaces stop announcing themselves.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with feet flat and shoulders released so the chest wall softens. Find the nipple and picture a plumb line dropping straight down from it; everything happens along that line. Walk two fingers of the opposite hand down the line, feeling each ridge of rib and each groove between them. Counting from the top helps orient you — the first groove beneath the collarbone is the first intercostal space — but the quicker route climbs from below: locate the lower edge of the rib cage where it arches toward the stomach, then travel up the line until you meet the last two clearly separated grooves. Riyue occupies the lower of the pair, and Qimen the one directly above. Settle your fingertips into that lower groove at about its midpoint, and compare sides before any pressing begins.
A few confirmations separate a confident location from a hopeful guess. Touch feather-light and compare the two sides; many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot that fades a finger-width away. Check the horizontal address too: the groove should sit well out from the breastbone, roughly in step with the nipple, matching the recorded four cun from the midline rather than drifting inward toward the sternum. Mind the vertical as well: if what you feel is soft abdominal wall with no rib ridges at all, you have slid past the costal margin — climb back up until bone returns under your fingers. Bodies differ, and on some frames the seventh space hides close against the margin; patience, not pressure, finds it.
The classic mistakes cluster at the edges of the search. One is landing a space too high and taking Qimen’s groove for Riyue — recounting from the lowest still-separated groove resolves it, since Riyue is the lower of the two. Another is hunting near the breastbone, where the spaces crowd together and feel alike; the recorded address keeps the point well out at the nipple line. A third is giving up among the merging cartilage at the margin, where ribs no longer present clean ridges; if the grooves blur, move slightly up and outward onto clearer rib and restart the descent slowly. When in doubt, pause, breathe, and begin again from the nipple — the line is short, and the destination never moves.
Reading the Name: Sun and Moon
The name wears its meaning openly. Ri 日 means sun, and also day; yue 月 means moon, and also month — the two characters together name the great paired lights of the sky and, with them, the rhythm of bright and dark that orders days and months. Pinyin renders the name Rìyuè, and both syllables fall away in the fourth tone: ri falls sharply, and yue falls again after its brief glide. Spoken aloud, the twin falling tones give the name a decisive, unhurried close. Among point names this one is unusually grand — most neighbours take theirs from valleys, gates, and hollows — and the grandeur itself hints that classical authors considered this spot special long before explaining why.
Commentators across the centuries have offered readings rather than a single ruling, and the traditional record preserves several. The most durable ties the name to the gallbladder’s office: classical texts describe the gallbladder as the organ of decision and firm judgment, prized for a clarity unmoved by partiality — and what in the sky is clearer, or more faithful to its course, than sun and moon? A second reading attends to position: the point stands where the trunk’s front meets its side, a threshold between the body’s day-side and night-side, and the paired luminaries mark the border. A third simply notes the geography: the liver’s own gathering place, Qimen, lives one space above on the same line, and setting Sun and Moon beside it lets the neighboring mu points read as a matched pair of images.
The title that matters most structurally is quieter than the name: Riyue is recorded as the front-mu point of the gallbladder. Mu points form a family of twelve — one gathering place on the front of the trunk for each of the zang and fu organs — and classical teaching holds that a given organ’s qi pools closest to the surface at its mu point, the way water settles in a courtyard’s lowest corner. The category records add a second layer: Riyue is noted as a crossing-point, meaning classical descriptions have other channels’ pathways meeting the gallbladder channel in this neighbourhood. Neither label tells a modern reader what the point does; both show how the tradition thought about where an organ’s activity comes nearest the skin — and why a name borrowed from the heavens ended up on the rib cage.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: vomiting, acid regurgitation, hiccups, jaundice, hypochondriac pain, epigastric pain, and disorders of the liver and gallbladder. Framed as tradition rather than promise, this is a portrait of the middle of the body in revolt: food refusing to stay down, sourness climbing the wrong way, breath catching in hiccups, bitterness and yellowing signaling that bile’s flow has stalled, dull ache spreading across the ribs or settling above the stomach. Classical practice grouped these complaints under the governance of the liver and gallbladder, and it traditionally reached for their gathering places when the group appeared together.
Hypochondriac pain deserves a word of explanation, since everyday English rarely uses the term. It names the flanking regions along the sides of the lower ribs — the very territory the gallbladder channel crosses on its long descent. Classical channel theory draws the pathway beginning at the outer corner of the eye, zigzagging across the side of the head, descending the neck and the lateral trunk, then curving forward through this stretch of lower rib before continuing to the waist and eventually down the leg to the fourth toe. Discomfort along that route was read as the channel’s flow moving poorly, and points standing on the route — Riyue chief among those on the front of the body — became the traditional addresses for inviting the flow to smooth out again.
It bears stating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and described across classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and several of the conditions named — jaundice chief among them — are themselves signals that belong promptly with medical assessment, whatever gentle practices accompany them. Where modern research has touched acupressure at all, reviews suggest effects tend to be modest and context-dependent, and evidence gathered at any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition as a lens rather than a prescription, and let the safety rules do any prescribing that gets done.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, breath easy. Rest the pads of the index and middle fingers — pads, not tips — into the groove on one side first. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the rib. Pressure should register as gentle dullness or pleasant warmth, never sharpness or an ache that lingers after you lift off. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, timed where possible to long, slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Finish one side completely, then mirror the work on the other; the pair likes symmetry.
Quality matters more than duration here — perhaps more than at any other point on the channel — because the ground rules come from geography rather than custom: the organs sit close, so the practice stays shallow by design. Warm your hands first if they run cold; chilled muscle guards against you. Skip oils or lotions that send fingers skating off the groove, and choose a quiet upright chair over a bed, where body weight quietly rearranges the ribs. Many people fold the minute into an existing habit — after washing the face, before the afternoon coffee — and that kind of consistency suits the wellness register better than intensity ever could.
Treat the session as a few minutes of attended quiet rather than a treatment event. Notice, over weeks, what actually changes: perhaps the area feels less guarded under your hands, perhaps the breath deepens a little while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent three minutes tending yourself. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — harder pressure, longer sessions, pressing through pain to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, answer it with gentleness, or close the practice for the day and let it wait.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record speaks plainly about this point: do not work deeply here, because deep intervention at the site may involve the organs of the chest and abdomen. The professional caution is written for trained technique, and its geography applies to anything that pushes inward — behind this stretch of rib cage, separated from the surface by little more than muscle and membrane, lie structures that have no business meeting a fingertip driven hard. Home self-care manages the risk in the simplest possible way: it never leaves the surface. Fingertip pressure held lightly on skin and superficial muscle engages nothing the caution worries about, provided the lightness is real.
The practical rules follow from that picture. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial; use finger pads, never knuckles, elbows, or tools. Do not press while holding your breath, and never press through pain. Leave the point alone entirely during acute abdominal illness, during feverish sickness, over broken or irritated skin, and for a proper interval after any abdominal surgery until ordinary activity has been cleared by a clinician. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop immediately and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, and anyone living with liver, gallbladder, or digestive disease should do the same — an underlying condition changes what sensible self-care looks like.
And the wider rule stands above the practice: this page is educational, and acupressure is comfort care, never diagnosis. Seek prompt medical attention rather than continuing a pressure routine for persistent vomiting, vomiting blood, yellowing of the skin or the whites of the eyes, severe or worsening abdominal pain, unexplained weight loss, or any symptom that frightens you. Jaundice especially is a message delivered on the surface about events underneath, and it deserves professional eyes rather than patient thumbs. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner; everything gentler belongs to the daily habits this page describes, practised kindly and within limits.
Riyue, Sun and Moon, gathers the qi of the gallbladder on the front of the body, in the seventh intercostal space directly below the nipple. Classical practice reached for it when vomiting, acid regurgitation, hiccups, or jaundice troubled a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently and safely.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow and angled obliquely — a deep needle can reach the chest and abdominal organs.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Riyue without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the nipple and the rib cage as the whole map. Drop a mental plumb line straight down from the nipple, follow it until the ribs begin converging into the costal margin, and identify the last two clearly separated grooves. The lower groove is Riyue’s address; the groove directly above it belongs to Qimen. The recorded four-cun distance simply encodes the nipple line in proportional language — on most bodies the two descriptions land on the same spot.
- Is pressing Riyue myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and superficial muscle far short of the structures the dataset warns about. The recorded danger concerns deep techniques reaching toward the organs of the chest and abdomen — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals all the same: sharp or radiating sensation, discomfort that worsens, or any odd feeling deep under the groove all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Riyue for?
- The traditional record lists vomiting, acid regurgitation, hiccups, jaundice, hypochondriac pain, epigastric pain, and broader liver-and-gallbladder complaints. Classical texts describe Riyue as the front-mu point where gallbladder qi gathers at the front of the trunk, which is why digestive and bile-related complaints dominate its historic portfolio. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims, and jaundice in particular always warrants medical assessment today.
- Why is the gallbladder’s gathering point on the front of the body?
- Front-mu theory assigns each organ a collecting place on the anterior trunk, wherever its related pathways pass closest to the surface. The gallbladder channel spends most of its journey along the side of the head and body, but on its way down it curves forward across the lower ribs — and the tradition marked the gathering place where that curve happens. Sun and Moon standing just below the nipple records the turn in imagery rather than geometry.
- Can acupressure at Riyue replace seeing a doctor about digestive symptoms?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and digestive complaints carry red flags that deserve professional assessment promptly — persistent vomiting, blood, jaundice, severe pain, symptoms lasting beyond a couple of weeks. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs, 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, front-mu theory, and channel-course context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for GB24 Riyue — 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/gb24/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/gb24/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/gb24/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "GB24",
"name": {
"en": "Riyue",
"gloss": "Sun and Moon",
"zh-Hant": "日月",
"zh-Hans": "日月"
},
"channel": {
"id": "GB",
"order": 24,
"of": 44
},
"location": {
"text": "Straight below the nipple, in the rib gap one below LV14, just above the edge of the rib cage."
},
"for": [
"acid reflux",
"hiccups",
"pain under the ribs"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle fingertip pressure on the rib groove, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/gb24",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}