Light touch only; never press in between the ribs.
步廊 Bulang
“Stepping Corridor” · KI22
Foot Shaoyin · 22 of 27
Where. In the rib space one below the nipple line, halfway between the breastbone and the nipple.
For. Cough; wheezing; chest pain.
Press. A light fingertip touch on the surface, about a minute each side.
Caution. Light touch only; never press in between the ribs.
步廊，在神封下一寸六分陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Bulang Sits on the Chest
The dataset places Bulang on the chest, in the fifth intercostal space, two cun lateral to the anterior midline. A cun is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location — lengths 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. Two cun from the midline therefore means roughly two thumb-widths out from the vertical centre line of the front body: near enough to the breastbone that the search stays in the quiet strip where ribs are felt through soft covering, yet unmistakably off the central bone itself. The fifth intercostal space is named for the rib above it — it is the soft gap beneath the fifth rib — so honest counting, not guesswork, is the first skill this location asks of anyone looking for it.
Counting has a dependable anchor. Rest a fingertip in the hollow at the top of the breastbone, below the throat, and glide slowly downward until you feel a horizontal ridge where the bone changes direction — the landmark where the second pair of ribs fastens to the breastbone. The soft gap directly beneath that ridge is the second intercostal space. From there the third, fourth, and fifth spaces follow one beneath the other, each a little lower than the last; Bulang occupies the fifth, the lowest of that neatly countable run. Because everything here is proportional, tall and slight frames carry different absolute distances, yet the same sequence — ridge, gap beneath it, then three further gaps down — lands every body on the same rung.
What lies beneath the fingertips deserves a gentle manner. The pads rest first on skin and the thin sheet of muscle clothing the chest wall; immediately under that sit ribs and their soft intervening gaps, and within the cage — well beyond anything home practice should contemplate reaching — live the lungs and the heart. The licensed record carries an explicit caution for this point: practitioners are warned not to needle deeply here, and professional technique is directed obliquely or transversely instead, travelling along the plane of the chest wall rather than straight inward. That warning shapes everything a household practice ought to be. Nothing about this location invites force; it invites certainty about where you are, and then the lightest possible touch.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair or lie back comfortably, shoulders released, so the chest softens, and warm your hands before beginning — chilled fingers meet guarded muscle. Place the fingertips of one hand at the top of the breastbone and slide slowly down its face until the horizontal ridge announces itself; feel outward from the ridge to confirm the second ribs rising on either side. Then walk downward, pausing in each soft gap as it passes: the first gap lies directly beneath the ridge itself, and three further steps bring your fingers to the fifth. Keep the counting slow enough to say the numbers under your breath; speed is how miscounts happen.
From the fifth gap, measure sideways. Place a fingertip of the other hand on the centre line over the breastbone and step out two thumb-widths along the line of the gap, settling where the space feels softly yielding rather than ridged with bone. Two confirmations help. First, look upward along the same vertical line: the fourth intercostal space sits directly above, where the neighbouring point Shenfeng (KI23) rests, so feeling one more gap higher confirms the whole ladder. Second, compare sides with feather-light touch — many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and very little a finger-width away. On bodies where the gaps near the centre are hard to count through softer tissue, trace the same space inward from the outer chest, where ribs show themselves plainly, and follow it to the two-thumb line.
Most misses come from three slips. The first is vertical: skipping a gap during the count and arriving one space high or low, which matters here because each space on this stretch hosts its own point of the channel. The second is horizontal: drifting outward past the two-thumb line toward broader territory — the stomach channel’s points nearby, Yingchuang (ST16) among them, sit four cun out, twice the distance — or wandering inward onto bare breastbone. The third is settling on a rib edge instead of the groove between. Every slip shares one remedy: return to the ridge at the top, take a breath, and repeat the count slowly. Landmark sequences reward patience precisely because they ask nothing to be remembered and everything to be checked.
Reading the Name: Stepping Corridor
Two characters draw a small picture. Bu 步 means a step or pace, and in its oldest recorded form the character shows two footprints laid one ahead of the other — walking frozen into writing. Lang 廊 means a covered corridor or gallery: the roofed walkway that runs alongside a hall or courtyard, sheltering whoever moves along it. Joined, Bulang reads as the stepping corridor, the walked gallery — a passage measured out stride by stride. The name belongs to a family of architectural point-names across the channels, gates and valleys, courtyards and storehouses, and like them it does descriptive work rather than decorative work: it tells you what the tradition saw when it looked at this place.
The fit with the map is pleasingly exact. The kidney channel reaches the chest low down and climbs from there, and its six chest points ascend one intercostal space at a time, from Bulang at the fifth space up to Shufu (KI27) at the inferior border of the collarbone — paving stones set at even intervals, a walkway beside the body’s central hall. Read as instructions, the name counsels the same gait the channel takes: unhurried, regular, one step at a time. A seeker who rushes skips steps; a seeker who paces arrives. Few point-names compress a practice ethic so neatly, and none of the imagery needs stretching to fit the geography the dataset records.
Pinyin writes the name Bùláng. The first syllable, bu, carries the falling fourth tone — spoken decisively, from high ground down, like a foot planted. The second, lang, carries the rising second tone — lifting evenly from middle pitch toward the top, like a long vowel carrying up a hallway. One fall, one rise: the name even sounds like walking, weight down and gaze up. The hanzi pair is friendly to learners; both characters are common enough to meet again in everyday words for corridors and strolls, which makes this one of the easier names on the channel to memorise and one of the more satisfying to understand.
The Kidney Channel’s Climb onto the Chest
The registry describes the kidney channel in one line: it ascends from the sole of the foot up the inner leg to the chest, rooting the body’s foundational qi. It is the water channel among the five phases, paired classically with the bladder channel as its counterpart of interior and exterior. Its route up the trunk changes width as it climbs: the catalogue lays the abdominal points along a narrow line half a cun from the midline — Youmen (KI21), the highest of the belly series, stands six cun above the navel and only half a cun out — while on the chest the recorded locations step outward to a uniform two cun. Bulang, numbered twenty-second of the channel’s twenty-seven, is the first point of that new, wider chest line: the place where the climb leaves the belly for the ribs.
Above Bulang the staircase continues without a break, and the catalogue lets you read it like a flight of stairs. Shenfeng (KI23) follows in the fourth intercostal space; Lingxu (KI24) in the third; Shencang (KI25) in the second; Yuzhong (KI26) in the first; and Shufu (KI27) closes the run at the inferior border of the clavicle — six points, one rib-gap apart, all on the two-cun line. Their recorded companies overlap heavily: cough and asthma recur down the whole staircase, with chest pain and chest fullness close behind. Knowing the neighbours turns a locating error into a simple identification problem — one space too high and you have found Shenfeng rather than failed to find Bulang — and it explains why the family feels coherent when touched: they share a temperament as well as an address.
Why the line widens from half a cun to two as it leaves the abdomen, the sources state as geometry rather than argue as doctrine, and this guide will not invent reasons on their behalf. What the widening means practically is worth stating plainly. Your search strip doubles, so the sideways measurement deserves real attention; the ladder of neighbours provides a vertical cross-check whenever doubt creeps in; and the shared respiratory character of the run means a mistake along it is rarely a disaster — it lands you with a cousin. Theory, here as throughout, earns its keep by sharpening geography and steadying the hand, not by promising outcomes.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: chest pain, cough, asthma, breast abscess, and vomiting. Framed as tradition rather than promise, classical practice reached for Bulang amid complaints gathered in the chest. Cough and wheezing breath dominate the portfolio, as they do for nearly every point on this stretch of the kidney line; the old records grouped under asthma a family of noisy, effortful breathing patterns rather than the single modern diagnosis. Chest pain in the same idiom usually names a dull, oppressive, blocked quality — the sensation tradition described as fullness moving into pain — not the sudden, crushing, or tearing kinds of chest pain, which belong to urgent medical care now as then. That distinction matters and is worth holding firmly.
Breast abscess sounds startling to modern eyes and was a settled category in pre-modern medicine: hot, painful swelling of the breast, the condition old texts discussed in terms modern readers might meet as mastitis-like illness. Points of the chest and its borders appear repeatedly in such records, and Bulang’s entry carries the pairing forward. Today, a hot, painful, swollen breast — especially with fever — calls for prompt medical assessment, without exception; the traditional association is context for understanding the literature, never a reason to delay care. Vomiting completes the list, a reminder that old records grouped complaints differently than we do, letting a chest point stand alongside stomach complaints without explanation; the dataset preserves the pairing, and honesty preserves the uncertainty around it.
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 Bulang treats any condition, and nothing in this guide 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. Chest symptoms in particular deserve respect — the causes behind them range from the trivial to the serious, and no home routine can tell them apart. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated with the spine tall but unforced, or lying back with support under the knees — whichever lets the chest soften. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads, never the tips, on the spot. Begin with contact alone for several slow breaths; then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding toward the ribs. Aim for pleasant dullness or faint warmth, never sharpness, and let each circle ride a long exhale out. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, both sides treated with equal care and symmetry.
Quality outranks duration everywhere, and nowhere more than on the chest. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; force teaches nothing and risks soreness at minimum. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the session double as a breathing pause: the lower chest moves noticeably with the breath, so still fingers resting in the fifth space register each slow cycle directly — a small, built-in feedback loop between attention and body. People who keep the habit usually anchor it to something existing — after morning washing, before sleep — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually request. Warm hands, loose clothing, and an unhurried minute beat any amount of earnest pressing done in haste.
Keep the exercise honest in scope. Perhaps the area releases a little; perhaps breathing feels smoother while you press; perhaps the truest yield is ninety seconds of kind attention paid to your own chest wall. All of that fits self-acupressure exactly. None of the escalation does: pressing harder, longer, or deeper to compel a result is the one direction the practice never rewards — and on a point whose own record warns against depth, escalation is doubly misplaced. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, shorten the session, or simply set the practice down for the day. The corridor image earns its keep here too: corridors are for passing through calmly, not for leaning on the walls.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a written warning in its licensed record, and it belongs at the centre of any honest account. The dataset cautions practitioners not to needle deeply at this site and directs professional technique obliquely or transversely instead — along the plane of the chest wall rather than perpendicular into it. The reasoning is plain geography: a thin wall of skin and muscle, ribs and soft gaps, and vital structures within reach behind them. Professional training manages that geometry with exact skill; home self-care manages it far more simply, by never leaving the surface at all. Fingertip pressure that stays in skin and superficial muscle operates in a world far short of the structures the warning protects — but only if it truly stays there.
The practical rules follow directly. Use finger pads only — never elbows, knuckles, or tools — and keep the intention in the surface layers. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or infected skin, during feverish or acute illness, and after recent chest injury, surgery, or any procedure on the chest until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day; the same goes for discomfort that worsens instead of easing. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with lung or heart conditions, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice at all. And because the recorded warning concerns depth, let this page add the conservative corollary in plain terms: for home practice there is no version of this point worth pressing hard.
Over everything stands the wider rule. This page is educational; acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a longer pressing session — for breathlessness at rest or on mild exertion, chest pain of any severe, squeezing, spreading, or persistent kind, coughing blood, wheeze that will not settle, palpitations or faintness, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, physician or East Asian medicine clinician as suits the matter. The stepping corridor offers most households its truest gift in the end: a surer acquaintance with the landscape of one’s own chest, met gently, one careful step at a time.
Bulang, the Stepping Corridor, gives the kidney channel its first foothold on the chest, resting in the fifth intercostal space two thumb-widths out from the midline. Classical practice reached for it amid chest pain, cough, and wheezing breath. This guide walks through finding it by touch, reading the story in its name, and pressing it gently and safely at home.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow, with an oblique or transverse angle.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Bulang without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the ridge on the breastbone as your whole map. Slide a fingertip down the front of the breastbone from the throat hollow until you feel the horizontal ridge where the second ribs fasten; the soft gap beneath it is your first station. Three further gaps down brings your fingers to the fifth, and from there you step sideways two thumb-widths from the centre line. That gap-level, two-thumb spot is the location the dataset records. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language tuned to your own body.
- Is pressing Bulang myself actually safe, given the recorded warning?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults: it engages skin and superficial muscle, far short of the deep structures the warning protects. The recorded caution addresses professional techniques that travel inward — hence the direction to work obliquely or transversely rather than deeply — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals regardless: sharp or radiating sensation, worsening discomfort, or any real doubt all mean finish immediately and let the point rest.
- What did classical practice use Bulang for?
- The traditional record lists chest pain, cough, asthma, breast abscess, and vomiting. Respiratory complaints lead the list, fitting a point on the kidney channel’s chest climb, where nearly every neighbour shares the same company in the old books. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims — and breast symptoms in particular call for prompt medical assessment today rather than any home routine.
- Why does the kidney channel sit two cun out on the chest when it hugs the midline on the belly?
- That is simply the geometry the classical drawings and the dataset locations agree on: abdominal points half a cun out, chest points uniformly two cun. The sources record the shift without explaining it, and this guide declines to invent reasons. Practically, the wider line means a broader search strip, so measure the sideways step with care — and use the vertical ladder of neighbours, one point per intercostal space from the fifth up to the collarbone, as your cross-check whenever a count feels uncertain.
- Can acupressure at Bulang replace medical care for chest symptoms?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and chest symptoms deserve proper evaluation whenever they are severe, new, worsening, or accompanied by breathlessness, fever, coughing blood, palpitations, or faintness. Think of the two as different floors of the same building: daily self-care lives downstairs, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room upstairs for when symptoms persist or escalate. Neither substitutes for the other, and with chest complaints the stairs are always worth climbing promptly.
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 and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for KI22 Bulang — location, 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/ki22/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki22/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki22/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI22",
"name": {
"en": "Bulang",
"gloss": "Stepping Corridor",
"zh-Hant": "步廊",
"zh-Hans": "步廊"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 22,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "In the rib space one below the nipple line, halfway between the breastbone and the nipple."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"wheezing",
"chest pain"
],
"press": {
"text": "A light fingertip touch on the surface, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [
"Light touch only; never press in between the ribs."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki22",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}