In pregnancy, ask a practitioner first.
陰都 Yindu
“Yin Metropolis” · KI19
Foot Shaoyin · 19 of 27 · crossing-point
Where. Midway between the navel and the base of the breastbone, half a thumb-width out from the midline.
For. Belly ache; diarrhea or constipation; irregular periods.
Press. Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.
Caution. In pregnancy, ask a practitioner first.
陰都，一名食宮，在通谷下一寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Yindu Sits on the Upper Abdomen
The dataset places Yindu on the upper abdomen, four cun above the centre of the umbilicus and half a cun lateral to the anterior midline. A cun is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location: measurements taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, with the width of one’s own thumb serving as the classic rough equivalent. Four cun above the navel sets the point well into the upper belly, in the stretch where the abdominal wall begins its climb toward the ribs. Half a cun to the side keeps it remarkably close to the midline — the kidney channel runs here along the nearest of the paired lines to the body’s centre — so the search area is a narrow vertical strip rather than open ground.
A helpful way to fix the height is the classical ladder between navel and breastbone. Tradition divides the distance from the centre of the umbilicus up to the sternocostal junction — the notch where the lower rib margins meet at the base of the breastbone — into eight equal parts, so four cun above the navel lands exactly halfway up that climb. On the midline at precisely that level sits Zhongwan (CV12), a well-known point that offers a convenient cross-check: establish the height first, then step sideways half a thumb-width onto the kidney channel’s narrow line. Because everything is proportional, a tall adult and a slight teenager carry different absolute distances, yet the landmark sequence — navel, four parts up, half a part sideways — holds for every body.
What lies beneath deserves a gentle approach. The fingertips rest first on skin and the layered sheet of the abdominal muscle; deeper still, far beyond the reach of any sensible self-care, sit the organs of the upper belly. Nothing about this geography argues for force. The region answers unhurried lightness far better than pressure applied with intent, and the point announces itself through subtle qualities — a faint heaviness, a spreading warmth under patient contact. The dataset records no special caution attached to this point, and the safety rules described later in this guide grow from ordinary respect for the abdomen rather than from any extraordinary danger.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Lie on your back on a bed or mat with knees bent and feet flat, so the belly wall softens. Warm your hands first — chilled fingers meet guarded muscle. Rest one fingertip in the hollow at the centre of your navel, then walk straight up the midline toward the breastbone, measuring with the width of your own thumb: four thumb-widths brings you about halfway to the notch where the lower ribs converge. From there, slide sideways half a thumb-width onto the kidney channel’s strip, and settle on the first spot that feels softly yielding rather than bony or cord-like.
Confirm before pressing. Compare sides with feather-light touch: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true location and little sensation even a finger-width away. Let a slow breath move under the fingertip and feel the abdominal wall rise and settle. Check the horizontal position too — the spot should sit clearly nearer the midline than the stomach channel’s line, which tradition lays about two cun further out — so if your finger wanders wide, return to the midline and take the sideways step again. Once both sides have been found, give each the same quiet minute of simple contact before any circles begin.
Two slips account for most misses. The first is vertical: miscounting the ladder and landing a thumb-width low or high, which is why measuring up from the navel slowly, twice, beats trusting memory — remember that the target is the midpoint between navel and rib-notch, level with the midline’s own point. The second is horizontal: drifting outward toward the wider lines of the neighbouring channels. Yindu belongs to the narrow strip that hugs the centre. If doubt creeps in, flatten the hand, relocate the navel and the rib-notch, and repeat the sequence without hurry. Location traditions assume exactly this patience — landmarks confirming one another, never a single guess committed to.
Reading the Name: Yin Metropolis
The two characters carry a whole cosmology in miniature. Yin 陰 means shade, shadow, the hidden and interior — originally the north face of a hill, the side the sun does not visit. Its left-hand element is the old mound-and-hill radical, and the written form shown here keeps a cloud, 云, tucked beside that mound: the very picture of a shaded slope. By extension, yin names everything inward, cool, nourishing, and quiet in classical thought — including the front of the trunk, where the channels’ yin lines travel, in contrast with the yang back. A point called yin therefore announces at once that it works the interior country of the body.
Du 都 means capital or metropolis: a great city where multitudes gather, goods change hands, and administration sits. Its shape tells the story plainly — the right-hand ear radical descends from the old character for a walled settlement, joined here to a companion chosen for its sound. Commentators through the centuries read Yindu, the yin metropolis, as a place where the interior gathers: a seat of assembly for the hidden side of the body’s traffic, set midway along the channel’s climb through the belly. Whether imagined as a capital receiving tribute or a market square hosting the crowd, the shared idea is convergence — things collecting here rather than merely passing through.
Pinyin writes the name Yīndū, and both syllables ride the same high, level first tone — a rare evenness that gives the name a calm, sustained ring, like a held note. There is a pleasing loop of language here as well: in traditional Chinese tone terminology the level tone itself is called yin ping, so the first character of this point’s name doubles as the level tone’s namesake. The characters are friendly to learners: yin pairs the hill radical with a moon-like element, while du sets a phonetic companion beside the settlement radical — city walls drawn small and squashed. Say the name slowly and the picture arrives with it: a quiet capital of the interior.
A Crossing Point on the Kidney Channel
Classical channel theory draws the kidney pathway beginning on the sole of the foot, climbing the inner leg, entering the lower abdomen, and rising onward to the chest. Across the belly it keeps to the narrow half-cun line that Yindu occupies, points stacked like rungs: Shiguan (KI18) a thumb-width below, Yindu (KI19) here, and Futonggu (KI20) a thumb-width above — steps of a single staircase climbing toward the ribs. The channel belongs to the water element and pairs with the bladder channel as its water-phase partner; the registry sums up its character in one line: it roots the body’s foundational qi.
The crossing-point label adds a second layer. Classical compilations describe the penetrating vessel — chong mai, the pathway tradition poetically named the sea of the twelve channels and, in another image, the sea of blood — as rising flanking the navel alongside the kidney line, climbing with it through the whole belly until the two part ways near the chest. In the traditional frame the companionship matters greatly: a pathway imagined as the body’s great reservoir of blood and abundance, passing exactly along the row of points where Yindu stands, helps explain why classical discussions of this stretch return so often to menstruation, digestion, and generative strength. These are traditional maps of the body, drawn for understanding — and remarkably coherent ones.
For a home practitioner, the theory earns its keep by sharpening the geography. Knowing the line runs half a cun from the midline tells you how narrow the search strip is. Knowing Yindu is one member of a stacked staircase tells you that landing a thumb-width off vertically means arriving at a different point rather than missing everything — and that the neighbours share a temperament, echoing the same themes of movement, warmth, and quiet regulation in the middle of the body. Precision matters less as a test and more as a courtesy: you are visiting a small, specific place, and the map deserves an honest attempt.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, irregular menstruation, and infertility. The first three belong to the middle of the body. Classical reasoning read the belly as the workplace of the spleen and stomach, the pair tradition charged with receiving food, transforming it, and moving the result onward; pain, looseness, or blockage there were read as the movement faltering — qi stalling in its course, or cold congealing what ought to flow. Because the kidney’s stored warmth was understood to feed that digestive fire, the row of points where the kidney channel climbs through the belly entered classical discussions of stubborn abdominal complaints, and Yindu stood squarely among them.
The remaining two indications carry the conversation toward the blood and the cycles. Tradition assigns the kidney the storing of essence — the deep reserve understood to underpin generative life — and teaches that the penetrating vessel governs the sea of blood from which the menses were said to be drawn. A point seated on that vessel’s path through the abdomen therefore took its place beside the wider company of kidney-channel points in classical discussions of unsettled cycles and difficulty conceiving. The vocabulary is pre-modern, and readers today should meet it as such: pattern-labels from an older physiology documenting centuries of careful watching, not diagnostic categories to be matched against a modern clinic chart.
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 Yindu treats any condition, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and context-dependent, and evidence tied to any single point remains thin. Digestive and gynaecological symptoms in particular deserve proper evaluation, because they can signal matters far more important than any wellness routine can address. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, arrange comfort first: lying down usually suits this work best — knees supported, clothing loose, hands warm. Rest the pads of two or three fingers — never the tips — on the spot and begin with contact alone for several slow breaths. Add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath. Aim for a pleasant dullness or a spreading warmth, never sharpness, and match the rhythm to the exhale so each circle rides the breath out. A common home measure is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, both sides treated with equal care.
Quality outranks duration. The belly softens around patience and tightens around force, so a heavy hand teaches the opposite of what the practice intends. Choose a quiet moment rather than a distracted one; many people fold the practice into the evening wind-down or a midday pause, when the day’s guard drops naturally. Treat the minutes as a pause of attention — noticing warmth pooling under the palm, breath settling deeper than usual, the mind growing still — rather than as treatment applied to a symptom. That reframing is not a retreat from seriousness; it is the honest shape of what self-acupressure is.
Respect the limits of escalation. Pressing harder, longer, or deeper to compel a result is the one direction this practice never rewards, and on the bare abdominal wall it is also the quickest route to soreness and next-day tenderness. Expect modest, honest outcomes: perhaps the area feels less tense, perhaps the belly moves more freely with the breath, perhaps the chief benefit is simply five settled minutes paid to your own body. Every one of those fits. If curiosity pulls toward force, return to gentleness, shorten the session, or set the practice aside for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Begin with what the record does and does not say. The licensed dataset attaches no specific caution to this point — unlike certain entries elsewhere on the body whose records carry pointed warnings. Absence of a recorded warning is not, however, an invitation to force. The plain geography of the upper abdomen — a thin wall, vital contents directly beneath — asks for the same courtesies as anywhere on the trunk: light hands, short sessions, and a firm rule that self-care stays strictly on the surface.
The practical rules follow. Use finger pads, never elbows, knuckles, or tools. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or infected skin, during acute illness or fever, and for some weeks after any abdominal surgery until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any abdominal point practice at all — the standard counsel across the tradition. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day; the same goes for any discomfort that worsens instead of easing.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, acupressure is self-care, and neither diagnoses nor treats disease. Seek prompt medical care — not a longer pressing session — for severe or worsening belly pain, blood in the stool or black stools, persistent changes in bowel habit, vomiting that will not settle, fever alongside belly pain, or any symptom that frightens you; unsettled or painful cycles, and difficulty conceiving, likewise deserve proper professional attention in their own right. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, whether physician or East Asian medicine clinician as suits the complaint. Yindu’s old name speaks of a quiet capital of the interior; the most useful gift it offers most households today is the habit of paying kind, unhurried attention to the body’s middle country.
Yindu, the Yin Metropolis, rests on the upper abdomen, four thumb-widths above the navel and close beside the body’s midline. Classical practice reached for it amid belly pain, loose stools, sluggish bowels, and unsettled cycles. This guide walks through finding it by touch, the story folded into its two characters, and pressing it gently and safely at home.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Yindu without knowing anything about cun?
- Use two landmarks and their midpoint. Lie down, find the hollow at the centre of your navel, then find the notch where the lower rib margins meet at the base of the breastbone. The point’s height is simply halfway between them; step sideways half a thumb-width from the midline and you stand on the kidney channel’s narrow strip. Cun measurements encode this same landmark sequence in proportional language, tuned to your own body rather than to a ruler.
- Is it safe to press a point on the upper abdomen myself?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the dataset records no special caution for this point. The upper abdomen still asks for particular softness: keep contact superficial, favour lying down, stop on any sharp or radiating sensation, and leave the point alone over broken skin, during acute illness, and entirely during pregnancy unless a qualified practitioner has advised otherwise. Persistent or severe symptoms always go to a clinician — never to a harder press.
- What did classical practice use Yindu for?
- The traditional record lists abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, irregular menstruation, and infertility. Classical texts describe the point as a crossing place on the kidney channel’s climb through the belly, standing on the stretch where the penetrating vessel — the sea of blood in traditional imagery — was drawn to travel, which is why digestive and gynaecological themes dominate its historic portfolio. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does the kidney channel run so close to the midline on the abdomen?
- Classical channel drawings bring the kidney pathway up the inner leg and onto the abdomen along a half-cun line beside the midline — closer in than the stomach channel’s line, which tradition lays about two cun out. Tradition links the arrangement with the channel’s deep, rooting character, and along this stretch adds the penetrating vessel said to travel alongside. Whatever the original reasons, the geometry is practical for beginners: the closer a line sits to the midline, the easier it is to find.
- Can acupressure at Yindu replace medical care for ongoing digestive or cycle problems?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnosis, and bowel or cycle changes deserve proper evaluation whenever they are severe, worsening, persistent, or new for you — the conditions behind such symptoms are common, often manageable, and sometimes serious in ways no pressure routine can address. Think of the two as different rooms of the same house: daily self-care lives in the kitchen, and the clinic is the room you visit when the body raises its voice. 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, crossing-point theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for KI19 Yindu — location, point class, 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/ki19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki19/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki19/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI19",
"name": {
"en": "Yindu",
"gloss": "Yin Metropolis",
"zh-Hant": "陰都",
"zh-Hans": "阴都"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 19,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "Midway between the navel and the base of the breastbone, half a thumb-width out from the midline."
},
"for": [
"belly ache",
"diarrhea or constipation",
"irregular periods"
],
"press": {
"text": "Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"In pregnancy, ask a practitioner first."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki19",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}