周榮 Zhourong
“Flourishing All Around” · SP20
Foot Taiyin · 20 of 21
Where. High on the side of the chest, in the second rib gap, two gaps above Tianxi (SP18).
For. Cough, a full chest, hiccups.
Press. Gentle finger pads in the rib gap, one minute each side.
周榮，在中府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 Zhourong Sits on the Lateral Chest
The dataset places Zhourong on the lateral chest, in the second intercostal space, six cun lateral to the anterior midline. Each part of that sentence deserves a slow read. The lateral chest is the side wall of the trunk — the curved panel between the front of the chest and the back. An intercostal space is one of the soft grooves between adjacent ribs, and spaces are numbered downward from the top of the rib cage, so the second space sits very high: only one groove below the first, which runs just beneath the collarbone’s level. The cun remains the proportional unit of traditional point-location, measured from the body being examined rather than from any ruler. Six cun from the midline works out, on most frames, to about two thumb-widths beyond the line that drops through the nipple — the zone where the front slope of the chest turns the corner into the side wall.
What lies under the fingertips earns the respect it does everywhere on the rib cage, and then some. The layers run shallow here: chest-wall muscle, rib edge, the soft filling between the ribs, and — separated by only millimetres at the thinnest points — the smooth lining of the pleural cavity with the lung behind it. Level with the second space means standing among the highest reaches of that wall, where padding over the ribs runs thinnest and the lungs ride closest to the surface with every inhale. The licensed record speaks firmly about sites like this for good reason, and every recommendation on this page therefore leans toward lightness. Self-palpation needs no force whatsoever; patient fingertips meet the ribs at once and need nothing more.
Zhourong completes a tidy vertical ladder. The catalogue lists four spleen-channel points stacked along one line, all six cun from the midline: Shidou (SP17) in the fifth intercostal space, Tianxi (SP18) in the fourth, Xiongxiang (SP19) in the third, and Zhourong (SP20) in the second. Read the direction carefully: the smaller the space number, the higher the point sits, because the spaces count off downward from the top of the chest. The spleen channel — having climbed from the big toe, up the inner leg, and across the trunk — steps up this ladder through its closing stretch, and Zhourong stands on its topmost rung. One further point follows: Dabao (SP21), which leaves the line and settles outward onto the midaxillary line beside the armpit, in the sixth space. Knowing the ladder turns location into logic: find one rung confidently and every other address on the street resolves itself.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair, feet planted, shoulders heavy and released so the muscles between the ribs soften. Raise the left arm just enough to clear the side of the chest — laying the left hand on the opposite shoulder works neatly — and rest the fingertips of your right hand flat against the left side wall, about two thumb-widths beyond the line that drops through the nipple. Now count the soft grooves between the ribs, slowly, twice. Working downward from the top of the rib cage, the first clear groove your fingers meet is the first intercostal space, running just beneath the collarbone’s level; one groove lower still is the second intercostal space — Zhourong’s address, and the topmost stop on the spleen ladder. If counting feels fussy, borrow a confident neighbour: find Xiongxiang (SP19) in the third space by the walkthrough on its own page, then step up a single groove. Either route lands in the same place.
Confirm everything before pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare the two sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Breathe slowly and let the groove move beneath still fingertips — the gaps widen faintly as the ribs lift on each inhale. Check the horizontal distance as well: the site should sit far out from the breastbone, where the chest rounds toward the side, consistent with the recorded six cun from the midline. And sanity-check by height: two grooves down from the top of the rib cage places you distinctly in the upper quarter of the side wall, nowhere near the lower ribs or the waist. If your finger finds bare bone rather than a groove, slide half a thumb-width and search again — ribs never leave the gaps waiting for long.
Common mistakes wear familiar shapes. Stopping one groove early lands in the first intercostal space, above every point on the spleen ladder; sliding one groove low delivers you to Xiongxiang (SP19) — harmless under gentle surface contact, but worth correcting so the mental map stays honest. Drifting backward under the arm abandons the recorded line entirely and wanders toward Dabao’s midaxillary territory. Pressing while tense — shoulders shrugged, breath held — hides every groove at once. When lost, lower the arm, take three unhurried breaths, return to your most confident landmark, and recount slowly from the top. The ladder rewards patience and forgives restarts; precision here is a kindness to future sessions.
Reading the Name: Flourishing All Around
The two characters sketch an image of abundance. Zhou 周 belongs to the circle drawn whole: circumference, a complete circuit, everything taken together — the word behind compounds meaning thorough and considerate, leaving nothing out. Rong 榮 speaks of flourishing: the luxuriant green of plants in season, blossoming, glory and honour in their gentlest register. Read together, Zhourong suggests something like flourishing all around, or splendour reaching everywhere — a natural gloss rather than a quotation, offered the way later readers have always enjoyed offering such glosses. In a naming system fond of gates, valleys, courtyards, and storehouses, this name paints the rare picture of profusion: not a threshold or a container but a state of bloom spreading outward in every direction.
The position suits the picture. Zhourong stands at the very top of the spleen channel’s rib-gap ladder, the last stop on the line proper before Dabao branches aside — a summit where, in the traditional reading, the gathered momentum of the whole climbing channel opens out and radiates across the upper trunk. Classical teaching assigns the spleen the office of transformation and transportation: converting food and drink into qi and blood, then distributing them through the body. A channel charged with distribution ends its ascent, fittingly, at a point named for plenty spreading all around. The old complaints attached to this stretch read, in that same frame, as distribution stalled — fullness pressing across chest and ribs, qi rising against its proper course instead of descending smoothly. Name and neighbours tell one continuous story about flow restored to breadth.
Pinyin writes the name Zhōuróng. The first syllable, zhou, carries the first tone — high, flat, and steady, held like a sustained note. The second, rong, rises on the second tone, the melody of a question trailing upward. Say them slowly and the name lands easily on the tongue. The hanzi pair 周榮 is compact enough to memorise at a glance: a circle completed, a plant in bloom. Like the gates and storehouses scattered elsewhere across the point maps, the metaphor performs real work here — it records that the tradition regarded this high perch on the chest wall not as a way-station passed through, but as a place of release and suffusion.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough, rebellious qi, fullness of the chest and hypochondrium, intercostal neuralgia, and hiccups. Take them in the traditional register. Rebellious qi names a classical diagnosis of direction rather than disease: qi that should descend instead surges upward, and the tradition heard that reversal in coughing, hiccupping, belching, and queasy rising sensations. Fullness is likewise a texture, not a swelling — a subjective tightness or stuck heaviness laid across the chest and flanks, understood as movement failing. The hypochondrium is the old anatomical word for the side-and-flank territory this point overlooks, and intercostal neuralgia describes pain tracking along the grooves between the ribs themselves — the very seams in which this ladder of points is set.
Seen through that lens, the list coheres. Cough and hiccups were both read as upward rebellion surfacing at the chest region, and classical practice habitually reached for points on the troubled wall itself. Distending fullness across chest and hypochondrium was approached wherever movement could be encouraged nearby, and the four stacked points of this ladder — each set directly in a rib seam — made natural stations for such attention. Breath complaints recur along this closing stretch of the spleen channel, and the old records grouped under broad headings what modern readers would recognise as many distinct breathing patterns. None of this asserts what pressing the point achieves today; it lays out the internal logic of a historical system, kept here for understanding rather than prescription.
It bears saying plainly once more: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, presented for cultural and historical context. They are not claims that self-pressure treats disease, and nothing on this page replaces assessment by a qualified clinician — least of all for chest, rib, or breathing symptoms, where the threshold for seeking genuine medical evaluation should sit deliberately low. Where modern research touches self-applied pressure at all, reviews suggest effects are modest and heavily context-dependent, and evidence gathered at any single point remains thin. Hold the tradition lightly and hold the safety rules firmly; that pairing is the whole craft of visiting places like this one.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the second-space groove. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, then add small, unhurried circles, letting skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against a rib edge. Sensation should stay in the register of pleasant dullness or mild warmth; sharpness never belongs here. 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 — the point lives on both walls of the chest, and the sessions deserve symmetry.
Quality outranks duration and force combined. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing accomplishes nothing beyond bruised intercostal tissue and a body that learns to brace. Warm cold hands before beginning, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and treat the minutes as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the ribs travel beneath still fingers, deepen the pressure — such as it is — only on the exhale. People who keep such routines tend to anchor them to habits that already exist, morning washing or an evening wind-down, because what self-care traditions actually request is regularity, never intensity.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the upper chest feels less guarded, perhaps breathing runs freer while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent two minutes attending honestly to your own body. Every one of those outcomes fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pushing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, especially here, where the rib cage asks for gentleness outright. When curiosity pulls toward force, answer it with lightness, or simply finish for the day; the ladder will still be there tomorrow.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a firmer caution than most, stated openly in the licensed record: the site must not be treated deeply, and professional technique here is directed obliquely or transversely rather than straight inward. Geography explains the firmness. Along the upper side wall of the chest, the padding between skin and pleural cavity runs thin — muscle, rib edge, membrane, and then the lung. Damage to the pleural space can cause a pneumothorax, a collapsed lung, which is a medical emergency. Professional training manages that risk with precise, taught technique; home self-care manages it a different and better way, by never leaving the surface at all. Nothing in fingertip acupressure has any reason to approach the depth the warning addresses.
For practice at home, the rules follow directly. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial; the intention stays within skin and superficial chest-wall muscle and never drives between the ribs. Use finger pads only — no knuckles, elbows, or tools. Skip the point entirely during acute breathing difficulty, feverish illness, or broken or irritated skin, and be cautious after any 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 — a rule that governs the whole ladder, not only its topmost rung.
And the widest rule stands over everything: this page is educational, acupressure is self-care, and neither diagnoses nor treats anything. Seek prompt medical care — not a pressure routine — for breathlessness at rest or on mild exertion, chest pain, coughing blood, a cough persisting beyond a few weeks, wheeze that will not settle, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the concern. The imagery of flourishing is lovely, but the safest gift Zhourong offers most visitors is a calmer, better acquaintance with their own chest wall — met kindly, and left on the surface.
Zhourong, All-Around Flourishing, crowns the short ladder of spleen points climbing the side of the chest, sitting highest at the second intercostal space. Classical practice reached for it when cough would not settle, when qi rose against its proper course, when fullness pressed across chest and ribs. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow, with an oblique or transverse angle.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- I find counting rib spaces confusing — can I still practice here?
- Yes, with adjustments. The ladder helps enormously: many people can confidently find the first groove beneath the collarbone’s level, and Zhourong waits exactly one groove below that. Alternatively, general gentle contact anywhere in the upper quarter of the side wall, within a thumb-width of the described spot, offers much of the comfortable experience without demanding professional precision. Precision matters greatly in clinical work; for feather-light fingertip rest, a kind approximation serves perfectly well.
- Why does this point carry a stronger caution than a hand or foot point?
- Geography again. Limb points sit over thick muscle padded onto bone; lateral-chest points sit over a thin wall guarding the pleural space and the lung. That is why the dataset attaches a depth caution to this entry and to every neighbour on the same rib ladder, and why this guide confines itself to purely surface contact. Treated lightly, the site is ordinary self-care territory; met with force, no part of the chest wall rewards it.
- What did classical practice actually use Zhourong for?
- The traditional record lists cough, rebellious qi — the classical picture of rising where descending was expected — fullness across chest and hypochondrium, pain tracking the rib spaces, and hiccups. Classical reasoning placed the point where these complaints lived: high on the side wall, atop the channel’s closing ladder. These are frameworks from a historical system, documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does the digestion-associated spleen channel end up so high on the chest?
- Classical channel theory draws the spleen pathway starting at the big toe, ascending the inner leg, crossing the abdomen and trunk, and finishing high on the lateral chest — twenty-one points altogether, with the four-point rib ladder and Zhourong’s topmost rung as its closing movement before Dabao steps aside. The tradition read deep connections between transforming food and circulating qi and blood everywhere, so the channel’s reach expresses distribution, not indigestion relocated. It is a map of relationships, drawn centuries ago on its own terms.
- Can pressing Zhourong replace getting a lingering cough or chest-wall ache checked?
- No. Self-acupressure offers comfort, never diagnosis. A cough lasting beyond a few weeks, chest or rib pain that worsens, or symptoms arriving with breathlessness, fever, or blood belong promptly with a doctor. Picture the arrangement honestly: daily surface care downstairs, clinical medicine upstairs in the consulting room you visit when symptoms persist or escalate — companions in a well-run house, never substitutes for each 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 SP20 Zhourong — 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/sp20/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/sp20/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/sp20/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SP20",
"name": {
"en": "Zhourong",
"gloss": "Flourishing All Around",
"zh-Hant": "周榮",
"zh-Hans": "周荣"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SP",
"order": 20,
"of": 21
},
"location": {
"text": "High on the side of the chest, in the second rib gap, two gaps above Tianxi (SP18)."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"a full chest",
"hiccups"
],
"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/sp20",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}