大包 Dabao
“Great Wrap” · SP21
Foot Taiyin · 21 of 21 · great luo of the spleen
Where. On the side of the ribs, straight down from the middle of the armpit, in the sixth rib gap.
For. Aching all over, chest and side pain, weak limbs.
Press. Gentle finger pads in the rib gap, one minute each side.
大包，在淵腋下三寸按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Dabao Sits on the Lateral Chest
The dataset places Dabao on the lateral chest, on the midaxillary line, in the sixth intercostal space. Every part of that address deserves unpacking. The lateral chest is the side wall of the trunk, the curved panel between the front of the chest and the back. The midaxillary line is an imaginary plumb line dropped straight down the body from the centre of the armpit, dividing the side wall into front and back halves; Dabao sits on that line. And the sixth intercostal space means the sixth soft gap between ribs, counting downward from the top of the rib cage — which puts this point distinctly low on the side wall, well below armpit level, near where the ribs begin their long inward sweep toward the waist.
Unlike its four neighbours higher up, whose recorded addresses measure them six cun from the anterior midline, Dabao is located by these two landmarks alone: the armpit-centre line and the counted gap. What lies under the fingertips asks for the same respect given everywhere on the rib cage. Here the surface layers belong to the saw-toothed muscles that cloak the side wall; beneath them run ribs separated by soft intercostal filling, and behind only millimetres of membrane, the pleural cavity and lung. Sitting in the sixth space, the point occupies a stretch of wall that travels visibly with each breath — set still fingers there and you will feel the gap widen gently on every inhale. Nothing about approaching this point needs force; patience alone reads the terrain.
A little map-making clarifies the geometry. Higher on the side wall, the catalogue stacks four spleen-channel points in one tidy column, 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. Dabao departs from that column entirely. As the channel’s twenty-first and final point, it steps outward onto the midaxillary line and drops to the sixth space — a closing gesture that swings away from the ladder before the pathway ends. Knowing the arrangement turns location into logic: the ladder runs high and forward, while Dabao waits low and back, alone on its own line.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair, feet planted, shoulders released, so the muscles of the side wall soften rather than guard. Rest your right fingertips flat against the left side of your chest and find the centre of the left armpit — the deepest point of the hollow when the arm hangs relaxed. From that spot, imagine a line drawn straight down the side of the trunk, and bring your fingertips onto it. Then count the soft grooves between ribs, working downward from the top of the rib cage: first, second, third — the spaces number off steadily — until you reach the sixth clear groove. If counting downward feels fussy, climb upward instead from the lowest ribs at the waist, pausing often and recounting as you go. Both routes land in the same place, and doing it twice is the confirmation.
Confirm before any pressing begins. Keep the arm relaxed — resting the hand on the opposite shoulder clears the side wall while keeping the tissues loose — and touch feather-light. Compare sides: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Breathe slowly and watch the groove move beneath still fingertips; the lower spaces travel more obviously with breath than the upper ones. Check direction as well as height: the spot should sit well back from the front-facing slope of the chest, directly beneath the armpit rather than forward of it, consistent with the midaxillary line. If what you feel instead is a bony margin sloping steeply inward, you have wandered below the edge of the rib cage — climb up one space and search again.
Common slips have familiar shapes. Drifting forward from the armpit line lands among the six-cun column where the four higher neighbours live — a gentle mistake, but one that blurs the mental map. Sliding up into the armpit hollow itself loses the rib grooves altogether, because the hollow is soft tissue, not wall. Miscounting is the likeliest error of all, since six grooves demand real attention; counting twice, once from each end, catches most mistakes. When lost, lower the arm, take three slow breaths, return to the armpit centre, and begin again slowly. For feather-light surface contact a small miss is harmless, but precision keeps the map honest, and an honest map makes every later visit quicker.
Reading the Name: the Great Wrap
The two characters sketch a generous image. Da 大 means great or large, and carries the fourth tone — a clean, decisive fall, like a hand settling firmly down. Bao 包 means to wrap, to envelop, to embrace, spoken on the first tone, high and level, sustained like a sung note; the character itself is a picture, a curled shape held inside an enclosing arm, and it survives today in everyday words for bundles and parcels. Read together, Dabao is the Great Wrap — sometimes rendered the Great Embrace — a name that promises containment rather than architecture. Where other points take the names of gates, valleys, courtyards, and storehouses, this one takes the gesture of arms gathered around something precious.
The name answers the point’s recorded category: the great luo of the spleen. Classical teaching assigns every channel a luo — a connecting branch that splits away to link its partner channel — and the old texts add that the spleen uniquely carries one further, grander vessel beyond these. Classical descriptions picture this great luo spreading from the final point like a net across the chest and flanks, the organ’s influence wrapped wide over the trunk. Those same records tied disturbances of the network to whole-body complaints: an unruly great luo to aching felt all over the body, a depleted one to weakness and slackness settling into the limbs and joints. Whether or not one follows the physiology, the image explains the name: the last point of the channel is the knot where the wrapping gathers.
Pinyin writes the name Dàbāo, and the catalogue records those very accents: a falling fourth tone on da, a high, level first tone on bao. Say it aloud and the melody falls, then floats — a short phrase ending open and unhurried. The hanzi pair 大包 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. Like so much of point nomenclature, the metaphor does real work: it says the tradition treats this spot not as a way-station things pass through but as a gathering place, the hem where a wide network of circulation draws closed. Names, in this literature, are instructions for attention.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: asthma, chest and hypochondriac pain, generalized aching, and weakness of the limbs. Unpack them in the traditional register. Asthma, in the old records, gathered under one heading what modern readers would recognise as many kinds of noisy, effortful breathing; classical discussions of breath complaints routinely visited the side of the chest, and this point stood at the far edge of that territory along its channel. The hypochondrium names the flank — the band running from the side of the chest toward the waist, exactly where Dabao overlooks — and pain across chest and flank was naturally approached at points set into that same wall. Each indication keeps house next to the point’s own geography.
The last two indications reach further than the local map, and the great luo supplies the bridge. Because classical texts describe the great luo as a network spread over the trunk, they read soreness felt everywhere at once as that network disturbed — the wrap gone tight or tangled. And because the tradition assigned the spleen governance of muscle and limb, nourished through its work of transformation and transportation, heavy, weary limbs were read through the health of the same organ. Generalized aching and weakness of the limbs therefore belong to this point’s portfolio not despite its corner-of-the-body address but because of the wide net the classics hung from it. That is the internal logic of a historical system, recorded here for understanding.
It bears repeating plainly: these are traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical context. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here replaces assessment by a qualified clinician — least of all for breath or chest symptoms, where the bar for seeking genuine medical evaluation should sit low. 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, spine tall but unforced, the near arm relaxed across your lap or resting on the opposite shoulder. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the sixth-space groove. Begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths, feeling the gap widen and narrow beneath still fingers; then add small, unhurried circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the rib edge. 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 long exhales. Swap hands and repeat, keeping the sessions symmetrical.
Quality matters more than duration or force. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing accomplishes nothing beyond bruised tissue and a wary body. Warm cold hands first, 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 side wall move under still fingertips, deepen the pressure — such as it is — only on the exhale. People who keep such routines often anchor them to an existing habit, morning or evening, because what self-care traditions actually ask for is regularity, not intensity.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the side body feels less guarded, perhaps breathing feels freer while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spent two minutes attending honestly to your own rib cage. Every one of those outcomes fits the scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pushing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, especially here, where the wall between skin and lung runs thin. When curiosity pulls toward force, return to lightness, or simply finish for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries a firmer caution than most, stated openly in the licensed record: the site is not to be treated deeply, and the angled, sideways-running approaches the record contemplates for professionals belong to supervised training rooms, never to improvisation at home. The warning follows from bare geography. Along the lower side wall, the padding between skin and pleural cavity runs thin — muscle, rib-edge, membrane, then lung. Injury 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.
For fingertip practice the rules follow from that picture. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial; the intention stays in skin and superficial chest-wall muscle, never driving 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. Give the wider neighbourhood its due respect too: any lump, persistent rash, or unexplained swelling in the armpit or breast region calls for medical assessment before any pressure practice begins. 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, acupressure is self-care, and neither diagnoses nor treats. 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, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent complaints deserve a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the concern. The embrace imagery is warm, but the safest gift Dabao offers most visitors is a quieter acquaintance with the side of their own chest, met gently and treated kindly.
Dabao, the Great Wrap, brings the spleen channel to its close on the side of the chest — out on the midaxillary line, in the sixth intercostal space. Classical practice honours it as the great luo of the spleen, the channel’s own embracing network, and reached for it when breath labored or the whole body ached. 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
- How do I find Dabao without knowing anything about cun?
- You barely need cun for this one, because the dataset gives its address in landmarks: the midaxillary line and the sixth intercostal space. Find the centre of the armpit, drop straight down the side of the trunk, and count six soft grooves between ribs, working downward from the top of the cage — or climb up from the lowest ribs and count to the sixth gap. Do it twice, once from each end. The spot should feel low on the side wall, directly beneath the armpit, well back from the front of the chest.
- Is pressing Dabao 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 aimed at this thin-walled stretch of chest — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately, and skip the point during acute breathing difficulty, fever, or broken skin.
- What did classical practice use Dabao for?
- The traditional record lists asthma-style laboured breath, chest and hypochondriac pain, generalized aching, and weakness of the limbs. Classical reasoning gave the point a wide jurisdiction: as the great luo of the spleen, its connecting network was described as spread across the trunk, so whole-body complaints were read through it. These are frameworks from a historical system, documented for cultural context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- What exactly is a “great luo”?
- In classical channel theory every channel sends off a luo — a connecting branch that links it to its partner channel. The old texts then add one further, grander vessel beyond those twelve: the great luo of the spleen, anchored at Dabao and described as spreading over the chest and flanks like a net. It is a piece of classical cartography rather than anatomy, but it explains both the point’s name — the Great Wrap — and why indications reaching the whole body were gathered here.
- Can pressing Dabao replace getting side-chest pain checked out?
- No. Self-acupressure offers comfort, not diagnosis. Pain in the chest, flank, or armpit that lasts beyond a few days, worsens, or arrives with breathlessness, fever, coughing blood, or pain on exertion belongs promptly with a doctor — full stop. Think of gentle surface practice as something that may accompany, never substitute for, proper assessment: daily care downstairs, clinical medicine upstairs, with the staircase clearly marked.
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, great-luo theory, and channel context.
- 03aijiu-mpvue (MIT License) licensed dataset, entry for SP21 Dabao — location, point class, 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/sp21/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/sp21/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/sp21/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "SP21",
"name": {
"en": "Dabao",
"gloss": "Great Wrap",
"zh-Hant": "大包",
"zh-Hans": "大包"
},
"channel": {
"id": "SP",
"order": 21,
"of": 21
},
"location": {
"text": "On the side of the ribs, straight down from the middle of the armpit, in the sixth rib gap."
},
"for": [
"aching all over",
"chest and side pain",
"weak limbs"
],
"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/sp21",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}