Not during fever or vomiting.
幽門 Youmen
“Gate of Seclusion” · KI21
Foot Shaoyin · 21 of 27 · crossing-point
Where. Three finger-widths below the base of the breastbone, half a thumb-width out from the midline.
For. Belly ache; bloating; vomiting.
Press. Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.
Caution. Not during fever or vomiting.
幽門，一名上門，在巨闕兩傍各五分陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Youmen Sits on the Upper Abdomen
The dataset places Youmen on the upper abdomen, six 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. Six cun above the navel sets the point in the highest stretch of the belly, in the shallow triangle where the abdominal wall tucks up beneath the meeting of the lower ribs. Half a cun to the side keeps it remarkably close to the midline — the kidney channel’s narrow line hugs the body’s centre all the way up the abdomen — so the search area is compact and precise rather than broad.
A helpful way to fix the height is the classical ladder of the trunk. Tradition divides the distance from the centre of the umbilicus up to the sternocostal junction — where the lower edges of the rib cage meet beneath the breastbone — into eight equal parts. Six thumb-widths up therefore leaves two parts below the junction. On the midline at exactly that level sits Juque (CV14), which offers a convenient cross-check: establish the height against the midline landmark first, then step sideways half a thumb-width. Because everything here is proportional, a tall adult and a slight teenager carry different absolute distances, yet the sequence — navel, six parts up, half a part out — holds for every body.
What lies beneath invites a gentle hand. The fingertips rest on skin and the upper band of the abdominal muscle, just below the protective shelf of the rib arch; deeper still, well beyond the sensible reach of self-care, sit the organs of the upper belly. Youmen is the highest point of the kidney channel on the abdomen: its neighbour Futonggu (KI20) lies one thumb-width lower on the same narrow line, while the point above, Bulang (KI22), has already climbed onto the chest, stepping out to two cun from the midline at the fifth intercostal space. The dataset records no special caution attached to this point, and the care described later follows from ordinary respect for the soft belly 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. Place one fingertip in the hollow at the centre of your navel, then walk straight up the midline, measuring with the width of your own thumb and counting quietly: six thumb-widths brings you into the territory just below the meeting of the lower ribs. Confirm the height by checking that you sit roughly two thumb-widths beneath the sternocostal junction, level with the midline point Juque. From there, slide sideways half a thumb-width onto the kidney channel’s narrow line and settle into 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 — though here, close to the ribs, the movement is smaller than lower down. Check the horizontal position too: the spot should sit clearly nearer the midline than the stomach channel’s points, which tradition lays about two cun further out. A chain check helps as well — Futonggu, one thumb-width directly below on the same line, should feel like kin; if your two candidate spots disagree, one of them has wandered.
Two slips account for most misses. The first is vertical: miscounting the climb from the navel and landing high against the rib arch or low among the middle-abdomen points, which is why measuring up slowly, twice, beats trusting memory. The second is horizontal: drifting outward toward the wider lines of the neighbouring channels. Youmen belongs to the narrow strip that hugs the midline. If doubt creeps in, flatten the hand, relocate the navel and the rib junction, and repeat the sequence without hurry. Point-location traditions assume exactly this patience — landmarks confirmed against one another, never a single guess committed to.
Reading the Name: Gate of Seclusion
The name gathers a whole atmosphere into two characters. You 幽 means secluded, dim, deeply hidden — the character pictures two fine skeins of silk tucked within the outline of a mountain, a valley’s hush held inside a single written form. Men 門 is simply a gate or door, one of the oldest images in the script and the closing character of many point names. Together, Yōumén reads as the gate of seclusion or hidden gate: a threshold between the busy surface of the body and some quieter chamber behind it. Commentators across the centuries have connected the image with the sheltered hollow beneath the costal arch, where the belly draws close under the ribs like a doorway drawing shut.
Another thread runs through food. Classical descriptions place this stretch of the upper abdomen along the passage by which the stomach hands its contents down toward the darker recesses of the bowel, and the older commentaries liked the picture of nourishment passing through a dim gate on its way inward. The name proved durable: modern Chinese anatomical vocabulary borrows these very characters, youmen, for the pylorus — the outlet of the stomach — a quiet case of an ancient acupoint name lending its poetry to anatomy. The dataset files Youmen among crossing points as well: locations where, by classical account, more than one pathway shares the road, with compilations describing fellow travellers alongside the kidney line as it crosses the abdomen.
Pinyin writes the name Yōumén. The dictionary gives you as a first-tone syllable — high and level, held steady like a sustained note — and men as second tone, rising from mid-range upward, the way a question lifts in speech. Said aloud, the name begins settled and ends ascending, a small intonation of something moving through and upward. The characters are friendly to learners too: men, in its simplified form, needs only three strokes, while you keeps nine strokes balanced around a central axis. Like gates, courtyards, and storehouses throughout the point names, the metaphor does real work — it says the tradition treats this spot as a threshold of passage, not merely a resting place for whatever passes through.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: abdominal pain, abdominal distension, vomiting, and diarrhea. Framed as tradition rather than promise, classical practice traditionally used Youmen for pain and discomfort gathered in the upper belly — the region just below the rib arch that the point overlooks — as well as for the broader ache and griping recorded simply as abdominal pain. Distension is its own traditional concept: a subjective tightness, swelling, or stuck quality across the middle of the body, understood in the classical frame as qi and circulation failing to move freely there. The pairing of the two — pain with fullness — recurs so often in the old records of this point that the two ideas travel together through its historic portfolio.
Vomiting and diarrhea complete the set, and their company is no accident in traditional reasoning. The classics speak of stomach qi rising in rebellion when queasiness drives contents upward, and of the intestines faltering in their separating work when loose stool rushes downward — opposite directions of the same middle-body upset. A point seated beside the stomach’s outlet, at the gate where food changes hands, made sense to the older writers as a place to settle such reversals, and generations of manuals grouped these complaints under its name. This is the internal logic of the traditional map, offered for understanding — not a modern claim about outcomes.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, presented for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, 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 specific to any single point remains thin. Persistent or severe abdominal symptoms belong promptly with medical care, whatever one’s self-care habits. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle into position: lying back or reclining supported, knees softened, belly unguarded. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — not the tips — on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, gentle circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding inward. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or spreading warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to unhurried exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and repeat on the other side, keeping the two sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing teaches the body nothing and serves only to bruise. If your hands are cold, warm them first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen, since the practice doubles as a pause for the middle of the body: breathe low into the belly, feel the abdominal wall soften under still fingertips, press gently on the long exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after lunch, before an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. Around this point especially, favour lightness: the upper belly answers kindness better than insistence.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the area feels less clenched after meals, perhaps a moment of warmth spreads under your fingers, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds attending to your own middle. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or simply stop for the day. The gate imagery suits the practice well, for it suggests a door that opens by yielding, never by pushing.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record attaches no special caution to Youmen, and that absence deserves careful reading: it signals that professional references flag nothing unusual about this site, not that force becomes welcome here. The upper abdomen houses the stomach and its neighbours directly behind a comparatively thin wall, so every general rule of abdominal self-care applies with full weight. Gentle, superficial fingertip contact stays in skin and superficial muscle; anything sharper, deeper, or tool-assisted steps outside what this page describes. The point also sits against the lower ribs, so pressure that slides up onto the costal margin should be redirected downward onto soft tissue.
The practical rules follow plainly. Skip the point during any acute illness with fever or vomiting, over broken or irritated skin, and whenever touching it provokes pain; be cautious in the weeks after any abdominal surgery until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, as should anyone living with a digestive condition under active treatment. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Keep the contact brief and kind, and let the session end while it still feels easy — fatigue and stubbornness are poor companions to self-care anywhere on the body.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational only, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical attention — not a pressure routine — for severe or worsening abdominal pain, repeated vomiting, vomiting blood or material resembling coffee grounds, black or bloody stools, fever together with belly pain, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, whether medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The seclusion imagery is lovely, but the safest gift Youmen offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own middle, treated gently and without demands.
Youmen, the Gate of Seclusion, rests at the top of the abdomen, half a thumb-width from the body’s midline just below the arch of the ribs. Classical practice reached for it when belly pain, fullness, vomiting, or looseness unsettled the middle of the body. This guide covers finding it by touch, reading its name, and pressing it gently and safely at home.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Youmen without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the rib junction as your ruler. Find the notch where the lower edges of the rib cage meet at the bottom of the breastbone, walk straight down two thumb-widths along the midline, then step sideways half a thumb-width onto the narrow line nearest the centre. That soft spot on the upper belly is the location the dataset describes. Alternatively, count six thumb-widths straight up from the navel. Both routes land on the same height; cun measurements simply encode the landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Youmen myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and the licensed record flags nothing unusual about this site. Still, the absence of a special caution is not an invitation to force: the upper belly keeps important structures behind a thin wall, so keep contact light, superficial, and brief. Respect the stop signals — sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately — and skip the point entirely during acute illness or over broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Youmen for?
- The traditional record lists abdominal pain, abdominal distension, vomiting, and diarrhea — the classic complaints of the middle body. Classical texts describe the point as a gate of passage at the top of the abdomen, carrying the imagery of the stomach’s outlet and serving as a crossing place where more than one pathway was understood to share the kidney line. 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 maps give the kidney channel a narrow, private road. After climbing the inner leg, the pathway draws in toward the centre on the lower belly and keeps to a strip barely half a cun wide all the way up the abdomen — honouring, in the traditional imagery, the foundational qi gathered at the core. Only at the ribs does the line step outward, reaching two cun from the midline as it continues onto the chest toward Bulang (KI22) and the points above. The geometry is distinctive: no other paired channel lies closer to the centre on the trunk.
- Can acupressure at Youmen replace seeing a doctor about my stomach trouble?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and belly symptoms carrying red flags — severe pain, repeated vomiting, blood in vomit or stool, fever, unintended weight loss, symptoms persisting beyond a few days — need professional assessment promptly. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs that you visit when symptoms persist or escalate. 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 KI21 Youmen — 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/ki21/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki21/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki21/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI21",
"name": {
"en": "Youmen",
"gloss": "Gate of Seclusion",
"zh-Hant": "幽門",
"zh-Hans": "幽门"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 21,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "Three finger-widths below the base of the breastbone, half a thumb-width out from the midline."
},
"for": [
"belly ache",
"bloating",
"vomiting"
],
"press": {
"text": "Lying down, a light fingertip touch, about a minute.",
"seconds": 60
},
"cautions": [
"Not during fever or vomiting."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki21",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}