Light touch only; never press in between the ribs.
彧中 Yuzhong
“Refined Abundance at the Centre” · KI26
Foot Shaoyin · 26 of 27
Where. In the first rib space below the collarbone, halfway between the breastbone and the nipple line.
For. Cough; fullness of the chest; sore throat.
Press. A light fingertip touch on the surface, about a minute each side.
Caution. Light touch only; never press in between the ribs.
或中二穴，在腧府下一寸六分陷中，仰而取之按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Yuzhong Sits High on the Chest
Yuzhong occupies the highest rib gap on the kidney channel’s chest corridor. The dataset locates it on the chest, in the first intercostal space, two cun lateral to the anterior midline. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than read from a ruler, so a cun across the chest of a broad-framed adult differs from a cun on a slight teenager. Two cun from the centre line amounts to roughly two thumb-widths sideways from the breastbone — still plainly on the front of the chest, high enough that the collarbone hangs just overhead, yet far enough out that the spot belongs firmly to the chest wall rather than to the root of the neck.
What lies beneath the fingertips here deserves particular respect, more than most chest points ask. The first intercostal space is the very first soft gap below the collarbone line, and high on the chest wall only muscle and thin membrane separate the skin from the pleural lining and the lung, whose upper reaches ride close to the surface in this territory. Classical location texts are correspondingly precise about the address, and the licensed record attaches an explicit caution to the point. None of this makes the site forbidden ground for self-care; it makes it ground for the lightest possible touch — skin and surface muscle only, with no thought of driving inward between the ribs.
Neighbours confirm the address. One step up, resting against the lower border of the collarbone itself, stands Shufu (KI27); one rib-gap down, in the second intercostal space, waits Shencang (KI25); and on the anterior midline at exactly this height, at the midpoint of the sternal angle, sits Huagai (CV20). The kidney channel climbs the trunk in a strikingly tidy pattern: along the abdomen its stations hug a narrow lane half a cun beside the midline, then across the chest the map widens the lane to two cun, one thumb-width between rungs, ending at the clavicle. Yuzhong stands near the top of that widening ladder.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and shoulders released, so the chest muscles soften. Find the soft notch at the top of the breastbone, then let your fingertips slide a short way down its face until they meet the faint transverse ridge where the second ribs join the sternum — the sternal angle, which marks the level of the first intercostal space. Now move outward: from the breastbone’s edge walk sideways about two thumb-widths, keeping to that same height, and let your fingertips settle into the shallow groove they find there. That groove-level spot, two cun out on the chest wall, is the neighbourhood of Yuzhong. Repeat the search with hands swapped so the other side receives the same attention.
A few confirmations help before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Let a slow breath move under your fingertips — high on the chest the ribs travel noticeably with each inhale, and a genuine location feels that tide through the groove. Check the horizontal distance too: the spot should sit about two thumb-widths clear of the breastbone’s edge, close enough to the centre that your hand barely travels, far enough that the sternum’s hard margin is distinctly behind you. If your finger rests on bare bone, ease off the rib edge and search the groove again rather than pressing harder.
The classic mistakes are worth naming. Slipping one gap too low lands in the second intercostal space — Shencang’s respectable address, but not the one this guide describes; counting down from the collarbone prevents it, because the very first soft groove beneath the bone line is the one you want. Climbing instead of descending finds the fingers hooked on the lower border of the collarbone itself, which is Shufu’s territory. Drifting outward past two thumb-widths leaves the kidney channel’s chest lane entirely. When in doubt, return to the sternal angle or the collarbone, breathe once, and begin the short journey again, slowly.
Reading the Name: Refined Abundance at the Centre
The first character carries the personality. Yu 彧 is an uncommon guest in everyday writing; dictionaries give it senses of refinement and cultivated elegance, and of luxuriant, flourishing abundance — growth so full it seems ornamented. Zhong 中 is the plain and ancient word for centre or middle. Read together, Yuzhong invites an image of richly gathered refinement at the chest’s central region — a name that suits a point standing high on the front of the trunk, where several of the body’s great pathways pass close together and where classical practice located gatherings of qi.
The second character does steady wayfinding work. Point names across the channels use zhong again and again to mark ground near the body’s central axis — the treasury of Zhongfu on the lung channel, Danzhong at the very centre of the chest — and Yuzhong keeps the custom: two cun out from the midline, it remains unmistakably a point of the centre country, standing sentinel beside the breastbone rather than wandering toward the shoulder. Like the gates, valleys, courtyards, and storehouses scattered along the channels, the name sketches a function in landscape terms: this is presented as a place where something valuable collects, not a roadside the traffic merely crosses.
Pinyin renders the name Yùzhōng. The first syllable carries the falling fourth tone; the second rides the flat, high first tone — the fourth-tone reading zhòng belongs to other senses of the character and has no part here. The hanzi pair 彧中 memorises at a glance once seen, and older records sometimes write the first character in a simpler related form, a reminder that these names travelled centuries by hand before print fixed them. However spelled, the image holds: cultivated abundance, gathered at the centre, high on the chest where the kidney channel ends its climb.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough, asthma, fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, poor appetite, and sore throat. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the breathing complaints come first because geography puts them first: the point stands on the chest wall itself, and classical texts describe the kidney channel’s interior pathway rising through the torso to enter the lung before surfacing toward the collarbone. The tradition also teaches that the kidneys anchor the breath, receiving the air the lung draws in — a teaching often summarised as the kidney grasping qi. Whatever one makes of the physiology, the historic portfolio follows the map: cough and wheezing breath dominate the chest stations of this channel, Yuzhong included.
The remaining indications each carry their own traditional logic. Fullness of the chest and hypochondrium names a subjective weight or stuck quality across the chest and along the lower ribs, understood in the old frame as qi failing to move freely where it pools; a point stationed on the chest wall was naturally reached for in such discussions. Sore throat answers to the same map higher up: classical descriptions send the kidney pathway upward alongside the throat, so throat complaints appear repeatedly among the indications of its upper stations. Poor appetite looks the furthest from home, and the tradition bridges the distance through connection — the channel’s deep course brushes the organs of digestion in the old diagrams, and its abdominal stretch shares company with the deep pathway later named the penetrating vessel. These are explanations drawn from within the tradition’s own geography, offered as context rather than verdict.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, 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. 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: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — not the tips — on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding toward the ribs. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow 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 achieves nothing and has no business this high on the chest wall. 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 breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the upper chest rise under still fingertips, press gently on the long exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — morning washing, an evening wind-down — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Notice what changes across weeks: perhaps the area feels less guarded, perhaps breathing feels easier while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds attending to your own chest. 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. At a point this high on the chest, curiosity of that kind should meet a firm door: return to gentleness, or simply stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Of the kidney channel’s twenty-seven stations, the handful at the top of the chest carry the weightiest cautions, and Yuzhong stands among them. The licensed record warns practitioners not to needle the point deeply. That warning says, in dataset vocabulary, what this guide prefers to say in plain geography: the lung’s upper reaches and their delicate pleural lining lie close beneath a thin chest wall here, and anything driven deep risks serious injury. Professional training manages that risk with exact technique; home self-care manages it differently and far more simply — by never leaving the surface at all.
For fingertip acupressure the practical rules follow from that picture. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial — the intention stays in skin and superficial muscle, never driving inward between the ribs. Use finger pads, never elbows, knuckles, or tools, and never press while holding the breath or through pain. Skip the point entirely during any acute breathing difficulty, during a feverish illness, and over broken or irritated skin; be cautious after recent chest injury or surgery until a clinician clears ordinary activity. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with lung or heart conditions, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for breathlessness at rest or on mild exertion, chest pain, coughing blood, a cough lasting beyond a few weeks, wheeze that will not settle, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The imagery of refined abundance is lovely, but the safest gift Yuzhong offers most people is a better acquaintance with their own upper chest, treated kindly.
Yuzhong stands high on the chest in the first intercostal space, two cun beside the centre line, among the topmost stations of the kidney channel’s climb from the sole of the foot. Classical practice reached for it when cough, tight breath, chest fullness, or a sore throat weighed on a person. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow, with an oblique or transverse angle.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Yuzhong without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the collarbone as your ceiling and the breastbone as your starting line. Rest a fingertip on the lower border of either collarbone, about two thumb-widths out from the breastbone’s edge, then let the finger slip into the very first soft groove beneath the bone line. That groove is the first intercostal space, and the spot you are touching — two thumb-widths from the centre, one gap below the collarbone — is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Yuzhong myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, because it engages skin and superficial muscle far short of the structures behind the ribs. The recorded danger concerns deep professional techniques that reach toward the lung — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Yuzhong for?
- The traditional record lists cough, asthma-style wheezing breath, fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, poor appetite, and sore throat. Classical teaching placed the point high on the kidney channel’s chest climb and connected the channel’s interior course with the lung and the throat, which is why breath and chest complaints dominate its historic portfolio. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why do the kidney channel’s chest points sit farther from the midline than its abdominal ones?
- Classical maps draw the kidney pathway rising from the sole of the foot, up the inner leg, and through the abdomen in a narrow lane half a cun beside the midline; across the chest the same map widens the lane to two cun and holds it there through the final six stations to the clavicle. The registered locations of every point from Bulang (KI22) to Shufu (KI27) record exactly that two-cun line. Why the corridor widens is a question the classical texts answer in their own fashion; what matters for finding the points is that the ladder agrees on it without exception, which makes the whole family unusually easy to trace.
- Can acupressure at Yuzhong replace seeing a doctor about my cough?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and a cough carrying red flags — blood, fever, worsening breathlessness, duration beyond a few weeks — needs 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, channel course, and chest-station context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for KI26 Yuzhong — 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/ki26/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/ki26/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/ki26/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "KI26",
"name": {
"en": "Yuzhong",
"gloss": "Refined Abundance at the Centre",
"zh-Hant": "彧中",
"zh-Hans": "彧中"
},
"channel": {
"id": "KI",
"order": 26,
"of": 27
},
"location": {
"text": "In the first rib space below the collarbone, halfway between the breastbone and the nipple line."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"fullness of the chest",
"sore throat"
],
"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": "Tongren Shuxue Zhenjiu Tujing, middle book",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/ki26",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}