天泉 Tianquan
“Celestial Spring” · PC2
Hand Jueyin · 2 of 9
Where. On the inner upper arm, three finger-widths below the front armpit crease, between the two heads of the biceps.
For. Cough; pain of the chest and inner arm.
Press. Light fingertip pressure on the relaxed muscle, about a minute each arm.
天泉，一名天溫，在曲腋下去臂二寸，舉臂取之按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Tianquan Sits on the Inner Arm
The dataset locates Tianquan on the medial aspect of the arm, two cun below the anterior end of the axillary fold, between the long and short heads of biceps brachii. Unpacked, that sentence describes the soft inner face of the upper arm, measured straight down from the front crease where the armpit begins. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, with one cun sitting close to the width of your own thumb at its knuckle. Because the yardstick travels on the body itself, the same two cun measures differently on a slight teenager and a broad-shouldered worker, and the point always answers to the body it lives on.
What lies under the fingertips is muscle with a story. The biceps, the familiar two-headed muscle of the upper arm, begins as two separate heads near the shoulder — one longer, one shorter — that merge into the single belly everyone knows from flexing. High on the arm the two strands can still be told apart under a relaxed hand, and the record places Tianquan precisely in the seam between them. This is fleshy, forgiving ground: no rib behind, no thin membrane over delicate space, just muscle cushioning bone. Compared with the chest-wall points where the pericardium channel begins, the geography here asks far less of whoever touches it.
Position on the channel helps orient the search. Classical teaching draws the pericardium pathway beginning in the centre of the chest, surfacing on the chest wall, then running down the inner arm — between the territories of the lung and heart channels — to finish at the tip of the middle finger. Tianchi (PC1), the channel’s opening point, sits on the chest itself; Tianquan is its first stop on the limb proper, and from here the channel continues toward the elbow hollow at Quze (PC3). Knowing the sequence turns a lonely coordinate into a road with milestones: the channel carries nine named points altogether, and this is the second.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit or stand comfortably and let the left arm hang loose, palm turned gently forward, so the inner arm softens and the biceps goes quiet. With the right hand, find the front fold of the left armpit — the crease where the arm meets the chest at the front. From the lower end of that fold, walk two thumb-widths straight down the inner arm, keeping to its midline. At about that level, sink the pads of your index and middle fingers slowly into the flesh and feel for a soft seam running down between two muscular strands. Most people find the spot answers a resting fingertip with a faint, spreading awareness rather than plain pressure.
Two confirmations help before any pressing begins. First, compare sides: touch feather-light on both arms and notice whether one spot carries more of a dull, ready awareness than its mirror. Second, test the muscle: make a gentle fist and tense the biceps briefly, then release — the two heads firm under the fingers and the seam between them blurs, which tells you exactly which tissue you have been reading. Locate the point again on the relaxed arm. If what you feel instead is a cordlike ridge rolling under the fingers toward the armpit, you have drifted toward the back of the inner arm; slide forward and inward until muscle returns on both sides of your fingertips.
The classic mistakes are few. Sliding too low carries you past the elbow crease, where a different family of points waits; Tianquan keeps company with the armpit, staying much nearer its fold than the elbow. Drifting outward onto the outer arm leaves the channel’s corridor entirely — the inner face is the address. And searching with a tense arm hides the very seam you want, so relax first, then look. When in doubt, return to the front armpit fold, measure down two thumb-widths a single time, slowly, and trust the groove that meets you. Losing track mid-search simply means starting again from the fold.
Reading the Name: Celestial Spring
The characters tell the story in miniature. Tian 天 means heaven or sky — the character is traditionally explained as a figure of a person with a single stroke set above, marking what stands highest. Quan 泉 means a spring: not the season, but the source where groundwater rises freely into light. Together, Tianquan reads as the celestial spring, or water let fall from heaven. Traditional commentators pictured the channel’s qi leaving the chest and pouring down the inner arm like clear water released from a height, gathering strength as it travelled — and this point, just below the shoulder, stood where the stream had newly emerged. The name is a picture of downward flow caught at its start.
That watery image seats the point firmly in the naming habits of the whole system. Channels were imagined as rivers, and points along them took the names of gates, valleys, pools, ravines, and springs according to how the tradition read the terrain. A spring is a particular kind of water-place: not a broad pool where current gathers widest, nor a gate that opens and shuts, but a point of emergence, where something hidden becomes available. Read that way, the name quietly instructs the hand: whatever meets the fingertip here is best approached as something arriving fresh from above, met lightly rather than forced. Like many channel names, it does descriptive work rather than decorating.
Pinyin renders the name Tiānquán: a flat, high first tone on tian, then a rising second tone on quan, the voice lifting like water beginning to climb. The dictionary confirms the pairing — tian carried in the first tone, quan in the second — and the hanzi 天泉 are compact enough to memorise at a glance. Say the name aloud and the topography rehearses itself: height, then flow; sky, then spring. Names like this reward slow reading. Once the image lands, the point becomes harder to misplace — you are no longer hunting a coordinate on a diagram but visiting an address you already know, high on the inner arm where the stream comes down.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough; distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium; pain of the chest, back, and inner arm; and failing eyesight. Framed as tradition rather than promise, classical practice traditionally reached for Tianquan when coughs settled in and breathing felt effortful. Distending pain is a distinct traditional concept: a swelling, spreading ache — fullness with pressure in it — understood as qi and blood failing to move freely through the chest and its flanks. The hypochondrium means the soft sides of the trunk below the armpits, the territory the ribs frame; discomfort there was often discussed together with chest complaints, as the record groups them here.
The third entry, pain of the chest, back, and inner arm, follows the channel’s own geography. Classical texts draw the pericardium pathway from the centre of the chest out to the chest wall, then down the inner arm toward the middle finger, so discomfort tracking from the front of the trunk along the arm’s inner face lay squarely on the route. Points along a channel were traditionally consulted for complaints along that channel’s course, and as the pathway’s upper-arm station, Tianquan stood naturally in such discussions. The reasoning is topographical, not mysterious: meet the traveller on the road it travels.
The last entry, failing eyesight, looks surprising beside the others, and honesty means reporting it plainly rather than inventing an explanation. Classical compilers grouped indications in ways that cannot always be reconstructed from channel maps alone, and this entry survives simply as part of the point’s recorded portfolio. It bears repeating that all four entries are traditional uses documented in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding — not claims that pressing this point treats disease. 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 found by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, shoulders easy, the working arm loose and slightly away from the body so the inner face is reachable. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest their pads — not the tips — on the spot. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the muscle beneath. 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. Swap hands and repeat on the other arm, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard digging into the groove teaches the body nothing and serves no tradition worth following. Warm cold hands 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 arm soften under still fingers, lean attention into the long exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — morning washing, an afternoon stretch — 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. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the arm feels less guarded, perhaps the chest feels easier while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend a little time each day attending to yourself. 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 spring imagery earns its keep here: water that rises freely is never pumped.
Cautions and Safe Practice
The licensed record for Tianquan carries no specific caution of its own — a quiet fact worth noticing, because it marks this as forgiving ground compared with points higher on the chest wall, whose records urge real care since deep work there could reach the lung. Here, muscle cushions muscle, and the structures beneath lie well padded. Absence of a recorded caution is not absence of sense, though: every rule of gentle self-care still governs, and the inner line of the arm doubles as a corridor the body uses for vessels and nerves, which is one more reason contact stays kind.
For fingertip acupressure the practical rules are simple. Use finger pads only — never elbows, knuckles, or tools — and never press through pain or while holding the breath. Skip the point over broken, irritated, or rashy skin, after a recent arm injury or surgery until ordinary activity is cleared, and during any acute illness that leaves you feeling unwell. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with a circulatory or heart condition, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice to their week.
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, chest pain, a cough carrying warning signs such as blood or fever, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, whether medical or East Asian medical as suits the problem. The image of a heavenly spring is lovely, but the most useful thing this point offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own arm and breath, treated patiently and safely.
Tianquan, the Celestial Spring, rests high on the inner arm, two cun below the front fold of the armpit, in the groove between the two heads of the biceps. Classical practice reached for it when cough, chest and flank distension, or aching through chest, back, and inner arm troubled a person. This guide finds it by touch and presses it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Tianquan without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the front armpit fold as the whole map. Find the crease where the arm meets the chest at the front, then come straight down the soft inner line of the arm about two thumb-widths. Sink your fingertips gently into the flesh and feel for the seam between two muscle strands. That groove-level spot, much nearer the armpit than the elbow, is the location the dataset describes. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Tianquan myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip pressure held on relaxed muscle is generally reasonable self-care for healthy adults, and this point’s licensed record lists no specific caution — unlike some chest-wall points higher on the same channel. Home acupressure stays on the surface by design and never approaches the techniques professionals manage with training. Respect the stop signals anyway: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Tianquan for?
- The traditional record lists cough, distending pain across the chest and flanks, pain of the chest, back, and inner arm, and failing eyesight. Classical texts describe the pericardium channel running from the chest down the inner arm, which is why complaints along that stretch dominate its historic portfolio. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a channel that begins on the chest have a point up on the arm?
- Because the classical pathway leaves the chest almost immediately. Drawn from the centre of the chest to the chest wall, it then descends the inner arm — passing between the territories of the lung and heart channels — and ends at the tip of the middle finger. Tianquan is the pathway’s first station on the limb proper, which places it high on the arm, close beneath the shoulder. The nine points of the channel mark that whole descent.
- Can acupressure at Tianquan 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 and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for PC2 Tianquan — location, 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/pc2/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/pc2/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/pc2/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "PC2",
"name": {
"en": "Tianquan",
"gloss": "Celestial Spring",
"zh-Hant": "天泉",
"zh-Hans": "天泉"
},
"channel": {
"id": "PC",
"order": 2,
"of": 9
},
"location": {
"text": "On the inner upper arm, three finger-widths below the front armpit crease, between the two heads of the biceps."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"pain of the chest and inner arm"
],
"press": {
"text": "Light fingertip pressure on the relaxed muscle, about a minute each arm.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/pc2",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}