食竇 Shidou
“Hollow of Food” · SP17
Foot Taiyin · 17 of 21
Where. On the side of the chest, in the fifth rib gap, about three finger-widths outside the nipple line.
For. Tight chest and sides, belching, bloating.
Press. Gentle finger pads in the rib gap, one minute each side.
食竇，在天溪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 Shidou Stands on the Side of the Chest
The dataset locates Shidou on the lateral chest, in the fifth intercostal space, six cun lateral to the anterior midline. Each phrase carries weight. Lateral chest means the side wall of the torso — the curved panel running down from the armpit toward the lower ribs, neither front nor back. The intercostal spaces are the soft grooves between the ribs, and the fifth is found by counting downward from just below the collarbone. Cun, meanwhile, is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location: proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler, so the same written distance lands in slightly different places on different bodies. The point is recorded symmetrically, on each side of the body alike.
Counting rib gaps sounds fiddly until the logic is seen. Beneath the outer half of the collarbone sit the upper ribs, one below another, separated by soft grooves a relaxed fingertip can trace. The first groove below the collarbone is the first intercostal space; counting four more brings the fingertip to the fifth — a fair way down the chest wall, out where the ribs curve away toward the arm. What lies beneath deserves respect. Here there are ribs, thin layers of muscle drawn between them, and close underneath the pleura, the slippery membrane that wraps the lung. Plain geography like this is why the licensed record carries a caution for this site, discussed fully below.
Neighbours confirm the address. One groove higher, in the fourth intercostal space on the same lateral corridor, stands Tianxi (SP18); the catalogue records the pair six cun out alike, a vertical ladder of points one rib apart. Above them the sequence keeps climbing — Xiongxiang (SP19) holds the third space — and the channel’s final point, Dabao (SP21), rests on the lateral chest wall as well. Reading the ladder bottom to top shows how deliberately the tradition pegged these points to the ribs: the spleen channel arrives at the lower chest and simply climbs. If your located spot disagrees with its neighbours by more than a groove, the count has slipped somewhere, and the honest move is to return to the collarbone and begin again.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair, shoulders released, so the muscles between the ribs soften. Raise your left arm slightly or rest the left hand on the opposite shoulder to open the space below the armpit. With the right hand, walk two fingertips outward along the underside of the left collarbone until they leave the bone, then press feather-light and begin counting grooves straight down the side of the chest: one, two, three, four — the fifth groove you reach belongs to Shidou. Move slowly enough that the count stays honest, and let the fingertips glide rather than dig. Repeat the whole search on the other side, because locating each side independently is the best guard against a drifted count.
Several quiet confirmations help before any pressing begins. Compare sides first: most people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a finger-width away. Check the horizontal position next. Six cun from the midline places the point well out on the curved side wall — noticeably farther out toward the underarm than the nipple — so a candidate found too near the front of the chest has wandered inward. Finally, sanity-check the height: the fifth groove sits clearly below the armpit hollow, on territory where the ribs feel broad and closely spaced. If your fingers land on bare bone, slide half a thumb-width off the rib edge and search for the groove again rather than pressing the bone itself.
Two slips account for most miscounts. The first is losing track across five grooves — easy to do when attention wanders — so some people rest a fingertip of the other hand on the groove being counted to keep tally. The second is drifting backward into the deep panel under the armpit, where different landmarks live; Shidou stays on the outward-facing curve of the chest. Soft chest tissue may also lie over the search area, and that calls for patience rather than force: palpate gently through it, and if there is any lump, soreness, or skin change in the region, skip this point entirely until a clinician has looked at it. Unsure at the end of it all? Return to the collarbone and count again, slowly — certainty costs one more minute.
Reading the Name: The Hollow of Food
The name compresses the point’s character into two characters. Shi 食 means food, or the act of eating — the everyday character for meals. Dou 竇 pictures a hollow: a hole, a burrow, a cavity through which things pass, the same character that survives in modern anatomical words such as nasal sinus. Set together, Shidou reads as the hollow of food — a doorway-shaped image attached to eating and drinking. Like many points named for architecture and landscape — gates, valleys, courtyards, storehouses — the metaphor does real work here, marking this as a place where the business of meals was thought to collect close beneath the surface.
Why does a digestion-flavoured name stand on the chest wall? The traditional reading follows the channel, not the muscle map. Classical teaching describes the spleen channel ascending from the big toe, climbing the inner leg, and entering the chest, carrying the organ’s office — transformation and transportation of food and drink — up into the thorax. Commentators accordingly tied this hollow of food to the complaints of meals gone wrong: belching, regurgitation, distension, the very indications the licensed record preserves. In that frame the point reads as a window where the spleen’s stewardship of food and fluids surfaces on the lateral chest, ready to be addressed from outside.
Pinyin renders the name Shídòu: a rising second tone on shi, a falling fourth tone on dou. Spoken aloud, the name falls away at the end, like something settling into a hollow. The hanzi pair 食竇 stays simple enough to memorise at a glance, and the earth identity of the spleen channel rounds out the picture: earth generating metal in five-phase thinking, nourishment rising, a channel whose recorded course climbs steadily from the ground toward the chest. Nothing about the name instructs; everything about it describes. It tells you the tradition saw here a small chamber concerned with meals, standing quietly on the ribs.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium, belching, regurgitation, abdominal distension, edema, jaundice, and urinary retention. Take them in the traditional vocabulary. The hypochondrium names the flank region where the side of the chest meets the upper belly, below the armpit; distending pain is the stretched, taut, swollen ache of fullness rather than a stabbing hurt. Belching and regurgitation describe food and drink moving the wrong way — upward and outward — which classical practice read as the stomach’s contents rebelling when their natural descent failed. Abdominal distension completes the picture of a congested middle that will not move.
The remaining three indications all concern water. Edema is swelling; jaundice is the yellowing of skin and eyes; urinary retention is urine that will not flow. In five-phase thinking the spleen belongs to earth and oversees the transformation and transportation of fluids, so failing transport was classically blamed for water pooling in tissues, colour rising to the skin, or passages blocking below. These attributions belong to a pre-modern physiology and are recorded here as history — yet the symptoms themselves remain serious signals in any century. Yellowing skin or eyes, new or spreading swelling, or inability to pass urine belong with prompt medical assessment, never with a self-care routine alone.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses preserved in the licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease. Where modern research touches self-applied acupressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and heavily context-dependent, and evidence specific to any single point remains thin. Hold the old framework lightly and the safety rules firmly, and reading this list becomes what it should be: an insight into how another era organised knowledge of the body, and a reminder of how much has since changed hands.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point confirmed by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, breathing unhurried. Curl the index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never 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 against the ribs. Pressure should register as a 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 long exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and repeat on the other side, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing teaches nothing and risks the very tissues this page has asked you to respect. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner rather than a screen, and treat the minute as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the side of the chest expand under still fingertips, lean in gently on the long exhale. People who keep such routines usually anchor them to an existing habit — morning washing, an afternoon pause — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually request.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks you might notice the area feels less guarded, that breathing feels easier while you press, or simply that you spent ninety seconds attending to your own body. Every outcome of that kind sits inside the honest scope of self-acupressure. What sits outside it is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, especially on a point whose record already asks for restraint. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or stop for the day; the point will be there tomorrow.
Cautions and Safe Practice
Shidou earns its caution plainly stated. The licensed record warns practitioners against deep needling at this site, directing angled approaches instead — guidance that belongs wholly to professional training. The reason is the geography traced earlier: along this stretch of lateral chest wall, only thin muscle separates the skin from the pleura wrapped around the lung, and an instrument driven straight inward could injure the lung and cause a pneumothorax, a collapsed lung that is a medical emergency. 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. Use finger pads only — no elbows, knuckles, or tools — and keep pressure light and strictly superficial, the intention staying in skin and superficial muscle, never driving inward between the ribs. Never press through pain, while holding the breath, or against a numbed area. Skip the point entirely during feverish or acute illness, over broken, irritated, or inflamed skin, and near any lump, rash, or recent surgical scar until a clinician has cleared ordinary touching. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once and do not try again that day. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with heart, lung, kidney, or liver 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 longer pressing session — for yellowing of the skin or eyes, new or worsening swelling, difficulty passing urine, breathlessness, chest pain, a cough that persists, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints of any kind belong with a licensed practitioner, whether medical or East Asian medical as suits the situation. The hollow-of-food imagery is charming, but the safest gift Shidou offers most people is a better acquaintance with their own chest wall, treated kindly and left intact.
Shidou, the Food Hollow, stands low on the side of the chest where the spleen channel steps onto the ribs on its long climb from the foot. Classical practice reached for it when tightness gathered across chest and ribs, or when meals moved badly — belching, regurgitation, a distended abdomen. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently, safely.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow, with an oblique or transverse angle.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Shidou without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the collarbone and your own counting. Rest two fingertips just under the outer half of the collarbone, press feather-light, and count the soft grooves downward along the side of the chest — one, two, three, four, five. Then confirm the result: the spot should sit well out toward the underarm side of the torso, clearly beyond the nipple line, and give a faint dull awareness where neighbouring patches of skin give none. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Shidou 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, and any lump or skin change in the area means seeing a clinician before any further practice.
- What did classical practice use Shidou for?
- The traditional record lists distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium, belching, regurgitation, abdominal distension, edema, jaundice, and urinary retention. The name itself — the hollow of food — reflects how classical commentators tied the point to meals gone wrong, while the water-related entries follow the spleen’s traditional oversight of fluids. Those are historical frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a digestion-focused channel stand on the chest?
- Classical channel theory draws the spleen pathway starting at the big toe, ascending the inner leg, and entering the chest, where its final points line the lateral chest wall — Shidou among the climbers, and the closing point Dabao resting there too. The tradition read the ascent as the spleen carrying its stewardship of food and fluids upward. Whatever one makes of the story, the recorded map is clear: this channel finishes high on the ribs, not down at the foot.
- When should chest, swelling, or urinary symptoms send me to a doctor instead?
- Promptly, whenever any of them is new, severe, or persistent. Yellowing skin or eyes, spreading or unexplained swelling, difficulty passing urine, breathlessness, chest pain, or a lasting cough all call for professional assessment — these are exactly the serious faces of the complaints the old record lists. Self-acupressure can sit alongside recovery as comfort, never ahead of it as diagnosis. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, full stop.
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 SP17 Shidou — 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/sp17/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/sp17/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/sp17/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SP17",
"name": {
"en": "Shidou",
"gloss": "Hollow of Food",
"zh-Hant": "食竇",
"zh-Hans": "食窦"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SP",
"order": 17,
"of": 21
},
"location": {
"text": "On the side of the chest, in the fifth rib gap, about three finger-widths outside the nipple line."
},
"for": [
"tight chest and sides",
"belching",
"bloating"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle finger pads in the rib gap, one minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/sp17",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}