庫房 Kufang
“Storeroom” · ST14
Foot Yangming · 14 of 45
Where. On the chest, in line with the nipple, in the first gap between the ribs below the collarbone.
For. Cough, shortness of breath, a full, sore chest.
Press. Gentle pressure, about a minute each side.
庫房，在氣戶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 Kufang Sits on the Chest Wall
The dataset places Kufang on the chest, in the first intercostal space, four cun lateral to the anterior midline. Unpacked: rest a fingertip in the notch at the base of the throat where the two collarbones meet the breastbone, then travel sideways along the chest — the recorded four cun are proportional measures taken from the person’s own frame, and the traditional chest division counts eight cun across the two-nipple span, so the four-cun line runs roughly along the line of the nipples themselves. On that line, the first intercostal space means the very first groove between ribs encountered below the collarbone. Everyone carries the mirror image on both sides, and the record treats the pair alike.
What lies beneath deserves respect. From the skin downward a practitioner meets the broad sheet of the pectoralis major, then the two ribs that bound the first intercostal space with their intervening muscles, and beyond those only a thin membrane before the pleural lining and the lung itself. The lung rides close behind every groove of the front chest wall, which is why the licensed record warns practitioners plainly: do not needle deeply here. Professional training manages that margin with exact technique; home self-care manages it differently and far more simply — by never leaving the surface at all. Nothing about locating the point requires force; the landmarks announce themselves to patient, light touch.
The neighbourhood confirms the address. Directly above, at the lower border of the midpoint of the collarbone, sits Qihu (ST13), the Qi Door — a small shelf of chest right under the bone. One groove lower, in the second intercostal space on the same four-cun line, waits Wuyi (ST15); a further groove down lies Yingchuang (ST16), the Window of the Chest. Reading the stations together shows the channel stepping down the chest one rib-gap at a time, and explains the classic locating error: drop too far and you land in a neighbour instead. Counting grooves from the collarbone — first, second, third — keeps each point distinct.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Sit upright on a firm chair with both feet down and shoulders released, letting the chest muscles soften. Find the midpoint of either collarbone — halfway between the breastbone end and the shoulder end — and slide your fingertips to the underside of the bone there: that shelf is where Qihu rests. From it, walk straight down the chest wall until your fingers settle into the first groove between ribs below the collarbone. That groove-level spot, well clear of the breastbone, is Kufang. Repeat the search with hands swapped so the other side receives the same care, and pause before any pressing begins.
Two quiet checks help. First, compare sides with feather-light touches: many people notice a faint, dull awareness at the true point and almost nothing a thumb-width away. Second, let a slow breath move under your fingertips — the groove widens slightly as the ribs lift, confirming you rest in a real gap rather than on a bone edge. Check the horizontal distance too: the spot should sit clearly away from the breastbone, roughly halfway out toward the shoulder line, consistent with the recorded four cun from the midline.
The common slips come from hurry. Dropping past the first groove lands in the second intercostal space, which belongs to Wuyi; drifting outward toward the armpit leaves the recorded line; sliding inward brings you nearer the breastbone than the record allows. And the most important correction is not positional at all: the urge to press firmly to make sure is exactly what this location does not reward, with the lung so near. When in doubt, return to the collarbone, find the midpoint again, and count down one groove, slowly.
Reading the Name: The Storeroom
The characters sketch a building. Ku 庫 sets the character for a cart, 車, beneath the shelter radical 广 — a roofed structure — and in early usage named the place where carts and stored goods were kept: a warehouse of the household and state. Fang 房 joins the character for a single door panel, 戶, to a phonetic element, 方, and names a chamber or side-room of a dwelling. Set together, Kufang reads naturally as the storeroom — the chamber where things of value are gathered and kept.
Commentators in the point-name tradition have long noticed that the chest stretch of the stomach channel reads like a floor plan. Qihu above is the qi door; Kufang is the storeroom; Wuyi below evokes a roof with its hanging screen of shade; Yingchuang beneath that is the window of the chest. Read this way, the line of points becomes rooms arranged around what the tradition holds most precious — heart and lung enshrined at the centre of the house — with the storeroom gathering what keeps them supplied. Like the gates, valleys, and courtyards scattered elsewhere along the channels, the architectural metaphor teaches location first: a row of rooms, each with its own address.
In pinyin the name is written Kùfáng. The first syllable, ku, rides the fourth tone — a pitch that begins high and falls away firmly, the decisive drop dictionaries describe as sharp and emphatic. The second, fang, takes the second tone, rising steadily from the middle register toward the top, the lift of a question being answered. Spoken plainly, the name falls into two beats: a fall, then a rise. The hanzi pair 庫房 stays compact enough to recognise at a glance, and knowing that it means storeroom turns an abstract coordinate into a landmark worth remembering.
A Station on the Stomach Channel’s Descent
The site’s own registry sums the channel up in one sentence: the Stomach meridian runs down the front of the body from face to second toe. Classical texts elaborate the journey’s opening chapters — beginning beside the nose, looping through the gum and lip territory, climbing along the hairline to the forehead, then descending past the jaw and down the side of the throat. At the collarbone the visible pathway gathers briefly in the supraclavicular hollow of Quepen (ST12), crosses onto the chest at Qihu, and then steps down the four-cun line one groove at a time: Kufang marks the channel’s second station on the chest wall proper.
The numbering tells the story quietly. By station fourteen the channel has left the head and neck behind and stands barely two thumb-widths below the collarbone, with the long middle of its journey still ahead — down through the abdomen, along the front of the thigh and leg, out along the top of the foot to the second toe. Each stretch of the descent carries its own recorded cautions, and the chest stretch carries some of the strictest, because the lung lies close beneath this entire run of intercostal spaces.
Why does a stomach-channel point answer chest complaints in the old records? The traditional reasoning follows the map rather than the organ: within classical practice, any station along a channel could be reached for troubles arising along that channel’s route, and this channel threads precisely the throat, chest, and rib-side territories where Kufang’s recorded indications live. The framework is internally coherent in the old manner, tracing lines of influence instead of treating organs in isolation — and it explains both why the point sits where the records place it and why its historic portfolio looks the way it does.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The dataset records three traditional indications: cough and shortness of breath; spitting of pus and blood; and distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium. Framed as history rather than promise, these are the complaints classical practice traditionally reached for Kufang over. The first entry belongs to the old family of disordered-breath descriptions: coughs of many kinds listed alongside breath that comes short, tight, or effortful — grouped together by the old records wherever breath failed to move easily.
Two entries deserve unhurried explanation. Distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium describes a swollen, stretched, blocked-feeling ache across the front of the chest and the flank below the ribs — a subjective congestion the classical literature understands as qi and blood failing to move freely there. Spitting of pus and blood is historical vocabulary: the phrase ancient records used for raising purulent or blood-flecked sputum, discussed alongside suppurating lung conditions. Whatever it meant centuries ago, its modern meaning is unambiguous: coughing up pus or blood today is a red flag demanding prompt medical assessment, never a matter for self-care of any kind.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and described across the 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 dependent on context, 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 located by the walkthrough above, settle in: seated, spine tall but unforced, shoulders heavy. Rest the pads of the index and middle fingers — not the tips — on the groove, and begin with contact alone for a few slow breaths. Then add small circles, letting the skin glide gently over the tissue beneath rather than grinding against the ribs. Sensation should register as mild dullness or warmth, never sharpness. A conservative rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales; swap hands afterwards and keep the two sides symmetrical.
Quality outranks duration everywhere in self-care, and doubly so on the chest wall. Warm your hands first if they are chilled, because cold muscle guards; choose a quiet corner over a screen, and let the minute double as a breathing pause — inhale through the nose, feel the ribs move under still fingers, ease the pressure on the long exhale. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after washing, before the morning coffee — because regularity, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. Skip the session entirely whenever you feel unwell, feverish, or short of breath.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks you may notice the area feels less guarded, that breathing feels smoother while you rest there, or simply that you spent ninety seconds attending to your own chest — 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, least of all over ground where the lung lies near. When curiosity pulls toward force, take it as the signal to return to gentleness or to stop for the day.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This point carries an explicit caution in the licensed record: practitioners are warned not to needle deeply here, and the record reserves its remaining technical directions for trained hands. The reason is plain geography. Along the whole front of the chest, only muscle and thin membrane separate skin from the pleural lining, and the lung lies immediately behind; the margin grows no wider for enthusiasm. Professional training manages that margin with exact technique. Home self-care answers the same anatomy conservatively: surface-only fingertip contact, and nothing ever directed inward between the ribs.
For fingertip practice the rules deserve listing in full. Keep pressure light and strictly superficial, with the intention staying in skin and superficial muscle. Use finger pads only — never knuckles, elbows, or tools. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Skip the point entirely during acute breathing difficulty, feverish illness, or over broken or irritated skin; leave the whole region alone 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.
And the wider rule stands over everything: this page is educational, and acupressure is self-care, not diagnosis or therapy. Seek prompt medical attention — not a pressure routine — for breathlessness at rest or on mild effort, chest pain, fever accompanying a cough, a cough lasting beyond a few weeks, and above all for any coughing up of blood or pus, which needs assessment urgently. Persistent symptoms belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the complaint. The storeroom imagery is charming, but the safest gift Kufang offers most people is a calmer, better-informed acquaintance with their own chest wall — treated kindly, and treated lightly.
Kufang, the Storeroom, sits in the first groove below the collarbone, four cun out from the breastbone, one of several chest points the stomach channel names like rooms of a house. Classical practice traditionally reached for it amid cough, short breath, and distending chest pain.
Cautions from the classical sources
- Keep insertion shallow, angled obliquely or transversely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Kufang without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the collarbone as the whole map. Find the midpoint of either collarbone, slide your fingers to its underside, then walk straight down the chest wall into the first groove between ribs you meet. That groove-level spot, well clear of the breastbone, is the location the dataset describes. The four-cun figure simply encodes the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Kufang myself actually safe?
- Gentle fingertip contact 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 practice never approaches. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or discomfort that worsens all mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Kufang for?
- The traditional record lists cough with shortness of breath, spitting of pus and blood, and distending pain of the chest and hypochondrium. The breath-and-chest flavour follows the channel map, since the stomach channel threads these very regions on its descent. Those entries are traditional frameworks documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims — and the pus-and-blood entry belongs firmly to medical history, not home diagnosis.
- What should I do if someone actually coughs up blood or pus?
- Seek medical care promptly — urgently if the amount is more than a few flecks, or if it comes with fever, weight loss, or breathlessness. The phrase in the old records is history; the same sign in real life needs proper clinical assessment and decisions made by professionals. Acupressure plays no role here, at this point or anywhere else on the body.
- How is Kufang different from Qihu above it and Wuyi below it?
- They form a vertical ladder on the same four-cun line, one rib-gap apart each: Qihu on the underside of the collarbone, Kufang in the first intercostal space, Wuyi in the second. Their recorded indications overlap heavily — all three carry breath-and-chest entries — because neighbouring stations serve neighbouring territory. Home practice applies the same gentle rules to each, and counting grooves down from the collarbone is what tells them apart.
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 ST14 Kufang — 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/st14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st14/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st14/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST14",
"name": {
"en": "Kufang",
"gloss": "Storeroom",
"zh-Hant": "庫房",
"zh-Hans": "库房"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 14,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "On the chest, in line with the nipple, in the first gap between the ribs below the collarbone."
},
"for": [
"cough",
"shortness of breath",
"a full",
"sore chest"
],
"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/st14",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}