氣戶 Qihu
“Door of Qi” · ST13
Foot Yangming · 13 of 45
Where. Just below the midpoint of the collarbone.
For. Cough, wheezing, hiccups.
Press. Gentle pressure, about a minute each side.
氣戶，在巨骨下，輸府兩傍各二寸陷者中按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Qihu Sits on the Upper Chest
The licensed dataset places Qihu on the chest, at the lower border of the midpoint of the clavicle, 4 cun lateral to the anterior midline. Every element of that sentence is a landmark. The clavicle — the collarbone — runs like a shallow bridge from the hollow at the base of the throat out to the shoulder, and its midpoint sits halfway along that span. Dropping just below the bone’s lower edge at the halfway point lands you on the soft upper chest wall the record describes. Four cun sets the horizontal address: a cun is the traditional proportional unit of Chinese point-location, taken from the body being examined rather than from a ruler — the width of your own thumb is the classic working approximation. So the point stands about four thumb-widths out from the centre line of the chest: plainly clear of the breastbone, yet still well short of the shoulder, mirrored on both sides.
What lies under this patch of skin deserves particular respect, and the licensed record says so in its own voice: the caution attached to Qihu advises working with caution and never deeply, because the lung apex, the pleura, and vessels lie close below. High on the chest wall directly beneath the collarbone is exactly where the crown of the lung rides nearest the surface, rising further with every inhalation. Only muscle and thin membrane stand between a fingertip and structures that belong to trained professionals. None of that argues against gentle surface touch for healthy adults — it argues for keeping every practice on this page strictly superficial, unhurried, and free of force.
The neighbours confirm the address. Directly above, in the centre of the hollow above the collarbone, sits Quepen (ST12); directly below, in the first groove between the ribs, comes Kufang (ST14). All three stand in one vertical column, four cun from the midline, marching down the chest like stations on a single line. If your fingertip has settled into a rib gap instead of resting just under the bone, you have wandered one station low; if it rests in the hollow above the collarbone, one station high. Returning to the underside of the collarbone at its midpoint resets everything.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and shoulders released, so the chest muscles soften. Begin by mapping the collarbone with two fingertips: start at its inner end, beside the top of the breastbone, and walk outward along the top of the bone until it ends at the shoulder. Fold that distance in half — the midpoint is your landmark. Now slide the fingertips to the underside of the bone at that halfway point and let them slip just below its lower border, onto the soft tissue of the upper chest. That shelf of softness beneath the middle of the collarbone is the neighbourhood the record assigns to Qihu. Repeat the whole search with hands swapped, so the other side receives identical attention.
A few quiet confirmations settle the placement before any pressing begins. Touch feather-light and compare sides: most people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true spot and little sensation a thumb-width away. Let a slow breath travel under your fingertips — the tissue stirs as the ribs lift, a reminder of how alive this region is. Check the horizontal line too: the spot should sit well clear of the breastbone yet comfortably on the front-facing slope of the chest, consistent with four cun from the midline. If you feel bare bone, you are still on the collarbone itself; ease downward until the skin yields softly. If your pad has sunk into a groove between ribs, come back up to the underside of the bone before continuing.
Three slips account for nearly every miss. Drifting outward is the first — walking toward the shoulder until the collarbone runs out leaves the recorded address behind; the midpoint, not the far end, is the anchor. Dropping low is the second: the first rib gap below the bone belongs to Kufang, and the stations continue downward from there, so height matters. Pressing while searching is the third, and the most unnecessary — locating this point takes no force whatsoever, and force here meets exactly the structures the caution names. Whenever doubt arises, return to the collarbone, find its middle once more, and step down a single time, slowly.
Reading the Name: Door of Qi
Two characters, and one of them moves. Qi 氣 means breath, air, and by extension the vital energy that classical Chinese medicine places at the centre of life — the word from which the whole tradition borrows its vocabulary of flow. Hu 戶 means door, and specifically the plain single-leaf door of an ordinary dwelling — the everyday entrance of a home, later extended by easy steps to mean the household itself. Together, Qihu reads as the Door of Qi: the place where the traffic of breath and chest-qi was imagined to pass through a doorway on its way between within and without.
The image earns its keep on the map. Classical texts draw the stomach channel descending from the face, passing down the neck onto the chest, and continuing along this four-cun line toward the abdomen and eventually the second toe — the registry summarises it as running down the front of the body from face to second toe. A station set where the great road of breath crosses that downward journey invites the door metaphor on its own; commentators over the years have added a homelier picture, seeing the bar of the collarbone itself as the lintel above the doorway and the point as the opening beneath it. Whether read as poetry or as anatomy remembered in images, the name does what the best point-names do: it tells you the job the station was imagined to hold.
Pinyin renders the name Qìhù, and both syllables speak with the falling fourth tone — qi marked on the i, hu on the u. The hanzi pair 氣戶 is compact and can be memorised at a glance. Point names favour landscapes and architecture — gates, valleys, courtyards, pools, doors — and this one keeps pure company: the lung channel’s opening station down the chest styles itself a treasury, while this neighbour on the stomach channel contents itself with being a well-hung door. Doors ask less than treasuries: things pass through, and the passage itself is the point.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: cough and asthma, hiccups, and fullness and pain of the chest and hypochondrium. Framed as tradition rather than promise, classical practice traditionally reached for Qihu in coughs of many kinds and in wheezing, laboured breathing — the old records grouped under asthma a family of noisy, effortful breathing patterns rather than a single modern diagnosis. Complaints of the chest sat squarely in the territory of the chest-line points, and Qihu holds the topmost chest seat on the stomach channel, tucked directly under the collarbone.
Hiccups look like an odd companion until the traditional frame is restored. Classical teaching read hiccups as qi rebelling upward — breath and stomach-qi rising when they ought to descend — and the stomach channel’s own classical route travels down the chest toward the abdomen, so its chest stations joined discussions of whatever rises when it should settle. Fullness and pain of the chest and hypochondrium belong to the same vocabulary: fullness is the traditional concept of an oppressed, stuck quality across the chest, understood as qi failing to move freely, and the hypochondrium names the flank regions below the ribs. A line of points running four cun from the midline stands between breastbone and flank — geographically, if nothing else, midway between the two complaints it was reached for.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing here 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 tied to any single point remains thin. Persistent cough, breathlessness, or hiccups that will not settle within a day or two belong with a clinician promptly. Hold the tradition lightly, and hold the safety rules firmly.
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 spot. Give yourself several breaths of simple contact first, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the ribs underneath. Sensation 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, 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, and nowhere more than on the upper chest. Light, patient, regularly repeated contact fits the wellness register this page practises; hard jabbing causes harm and teaches nothing. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards. Choose a quiet corner over a screen and let the practice double as a breathing pause: inhale through the nose, feel the upper chest stir under still fingers, 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. Across weeks of gentle practice you may notice the area feels less guarded, that pausing to breathe comes easier, or nothing measurable at all — every outcome fits what self-acupressure honestly offers. What does not fit is escalation. Harder, longer, deeper in pursuit of a result is exactly the wrong instinct at an address whose own record warns against depth; when curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness or stop for the day. The door imagery helps here: a door opens to a light hand and resists a shove.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point earns its place among the more cautiously treated stations on the chest, and the licensed record states why without decoration: work with caution, never deeply — the lung apex, pleura, and vessels lie close below. The geography is plain. High on the chest wall directly beneath the collarbone, the dome of the lung rises nearer the surface than almost anywhere else, climbing higher with every inhalation, and vessels share the crowded neighbourhood. Professional training manages that proximity with exact technique; home self-care manages it differently and far more simply — by never leaving the surface at all.
Translated into household rules: use finger pads only, never elbows, knuckles, or tools; keep pressure light and strictly superficial, with no intention directed inward between the ribs. Skip the point entirely during 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. Pregnant readers, and anyone living with lung or heart conditions, should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice. Sharp, electric, or radiating sensation means stop at once, and do not try again that day. Dizziness or worsening discomfort during practice receives the same answer: finish immediately.
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, hiccup bouts that persist for days, or any symptom that frightens you. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, Western medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The safest gift Qihu offers most people is a calmer acquaintance with their own upper chest, treated kindly.
Qihu — the Door of Qi — waits on the upper chest directly below the midpoint of the collarbone, where classical practice imagined breath passing through a doorway. The old records reach for it in cough and wheezing breath, hiccups, and fullness and pain of the chest and flanks. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it gently.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Needle cautiously and shallowly, keeping clear of the top of the lung, the pleura, and the vessels.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Qihu without measuring anything?
- Let the collarbone be the whole ruler. Trace it from the hollow at the base of the throat out to the shoulder, fold that span in half to find the midpoint, then slip your fingertips just below the underside of the bone at that halfway point, onto the soft chest wall. That spot — clear of the breastbone, well short of the shoulder, mirrored on both sides of the body — is the address the dataset records. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmarks in proportional language.
- Is pressing Qihu 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 the caution names. The recorded warning concerns deep professional techniques that reach toward the lung apex and pleura — a category home acupressure never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp or radiating sensation, dizziness, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately and try nothing further that day.
- What did classical practice use Qihu for?
- The traditional record lists cough and asthma, hiccups, and fullness and pain of the chest and hypochondrium. Breath complaints anchor the portfolio, matching a point set at the top of the stomach channel’s descent across the chest, and the name itself — Door of Qi — preserves how the tradition imagined the station’s work. These are frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context, not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does a stomach meridian point sit up on the chest dealing with breath?
- The registry describes the stomach channel running down the front of the body from face to second toe, and the descent crosses the chest on a line four cun from the midline — Qihu’s own street. Classical texts draw the route leaving the face, passing down the neck, spreading across the chest, and continuing toward the abdomen, so chest-level stations stood where the road of breath crossed the channel’s path. The tradition filed its chest-and-breath discussions under exactly these addresses, and Qihu holds the topmost chest seat of the line.
- Can acupressure at Qihu 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 — or hiccups that refuse to settle needs professional assessment promptly. Think of the two as different rooms in the same house: daily self-care lives in the kitchen, and clinical medicine keeps the consulting room 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 ST13 Qihu — 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/st13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st13/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st13/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST13",
"name": {
"en": "Qihu",
"gloss": "Door of Qi",
"zh-Hant": "氣戶",
"zh-Hans": "气户"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 13,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "Just below the midpoint of the collarbone."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"wheezing",
"hiccups"
],
"press": {
"text": "Gentle pressure, about a minute each side.",
"seconds": 60,
"sides": "both"
},
"cautions": [],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st13",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}