Large vessels run close by; not in pregnancy.
氣衝 Qichong
“Qi Surge” · ST30
Foot Yangming · 30 of 45
Where. Just above the groin, level with the top of the pubic bone, three finger-widths out from the midline.
For. A rumbling, aching belly, irregular periods.
Press. Light touch; if a pulse beats under the finger, move outward off it.
Caution. Large vessels run close by; not in pregnancy.
氣沖，在歸來下，鼠鼷上一寸，動脈應手按 · Press with me
Six slow breaths
About a minute. Press as you breathe out, ease as you breathe in.
鄰 · Neighbouring leaves
Where Qichong Sits Above the Groin
On the lowest stretch of the abdomen, Qichong occupies the recorded position: just above the groin, five cun below the centre of the umbilicus, two cun lateral to the anterior midline, level with the upper border of the pubic symphysis. A cun is the traditional measuring unit of Chinese point-location — proportional lengths taken from the person being examined rather than from a ruler. For the downward climb here, one old scheme helps: the traditional method divides the distance from the centre of the navel to the upper border of the pubic bone into five equal parts, so five cun below the navel is simply the whole descent — the very foot of that climb, where belly meets groin.
What lies near the fingertips deserves a gentler hand than most abdominal points ask for. Beneath the soft lower-belly wall runs the groin crease, and through that corridor pass the great vessels and nerve cords serving the leg — the busy crossing between trunk and thigh. Nothing bony shields the surface here, and the deeper structures sit closer to the skin than they do higher on the abdomen. The consequence for self-care is simple: every touch stays light and strictly superficial, and any spot where a pronounced beat pulses against the fingertip is a spot to ease away from, not press into. Crossroads country rewards patience, not determination.
The neighbours confirm the address. From the navel downward, the stomach channel keeps a tidy column two cun wide of the central line: Tianshu (ST25) level with the navel, then Wailing, Daju, Shuidao, and Guilai stepping down one thumb-width at a time. Qichong closes the row at the bottom, level with the midline point that crowns the pubic bone. Below this station the channel leaves the trunk altogether: classical texts describe the stomach meridian running down the whole front of the body from the face toward the second toe, and from here it crosses onto the front of the thigh. Finding Qichong therefore means finding the doorway the channel walks through on its way from trunk to leg.
A Self-Palpation Walkthrough
Lie on your back with knees slightly bent, so the lower belly softens. Find the pubic bone first: at the base of the belly, in line with the hip creases, you can trace a firm horizontal ledge of bone just above the genitals. Walk your fingertips up onto its upper border and rest them there — that ledge is the landmark the recorded location names. From the middle of that border, slide sideways two thumb-widths, roughly the width of your own thumb measured twice, keeping level with the bone’s edge. Settle into whatever soft tissue accepts the fingertip: neither on bone nor in the groin crease, but on the shallow plain just above them.
A few quiet confirmations help before any pressing begins. Compare sides with feather-light touch: many people notice a faint dull awareness at the true point and little sensation half a thumb away. Let a slow breath move under your palm — the lower belly rises on the inhale and settles on the exhale. Check the horizontal distance once more against the central line of the body. Then listen with the fingertip: if a strong, rhythmic beat pushes against the pad, lighten your touch and shift outward a fraction until the beat fades from under it, because the vessels bound for the leg run close by and deserve an unhurried, unweighted approach.
Two slips account for most misses. The first is measuring diagonally — the path from the navel must drop straight down the body, parallel to the midline, before sliding sideways at the bottom; angling toward the hip early lands the search too far out. The second is sliding too low, off the pubic bone and into the fold of the groin itself, where the tissue turns tender and nothing useful is served. Re-anchor often: back to the bony ledge, up onto its border, sideways twice a thumb-width. After two or three searches most people hold a reliable inner map of the spot, and the measuring becomes a formality rather than a survey.
Reading the Name: Qi Surge
The name moves quickly, like water. Qi 氣 is the breath, the vital energy itself — the word traditional medicine uses for the animating flow that travels the channels throughout the body. Chong 衝 speaks of something rushing onward: water forcing a passage, crowds pouring through a gate, and, in this full written form, the sense of a thoroughfare where roads converge. Together, Qichong reads as the qi surge, or the thoroughfare of qi — a place where the vital current gathers speed or crowds together on its way somewhere else. For a point standing at the doorway between trunk and leg, the image fits the geography almost literally.
Classical commentary adds layers that belong to tradition rather than measurement. Commentaries reading the old literature associate this spot with the chong vessel — the “thoroughfare vessel” of classical theory, imagined as a great rising tide of qi and blood. The same body of tradition speaks of streets of qi in this part of the body: crossings where several flows meet and mingle. None of this is anatomy in the modern sense; it is a map drawn in the language of traffic — junctions, gates, streets, surges. But the map consistently agrees on one thing: the groin was read as a busy interchange, and this point stood near its heart.
Pinyin renders the name Qìchōng, with a falling fourth tone on qi and a high, level first tone on chong. The hanzi pair 氣衝 is compact enough to memorise at a glance. Like many points named for movement and architecture — gates, valleys, courtyards, surges — the metaphor behaves like a set of instructions: it tells you where the point sits, at the crossing, and what the tradition believed gathered there, the surge of qi on its way through. Remembering “the doorway where qi rushes past” locates the point and summarises its classical character in a single stroke.
Traditional Indications, Explained
The recorded indications read: borborygmus and abdominal pain, hernia, irregular menstruation, infertility, impotence, genital swelling, and difficult urination. The first item opens the list in homely terms: borborygmus is the formal word for a noisy belly — the audible gurgling and rumbling of gas and fluid moving through the intestines. Classical practice traditionally paired those sounds with dull abdominal ache, reading both as turbulence in the gut’s passage. Framed as tradition rather than promise, the point was reached for when the belly grumbled and griped, its position over the lower bowel making it a natural candidate in such discussions.
The remaining indications gather around the groin itself. Hernia — in the classical records, the swellings and dragging sensations that descend toward the groin — belonged to a broad traditional category attached to exactly this territory. Irregular menstruation and matters of fertility were folded into the same conversations for women, as impotence was for men; swelling about the genitals and hesitant, difficult urination complete the register. The traditional reasoning is positional: the groin was understood as the crossroads where channels pass between trunk and limb, and where the sphere of reproduction and water metabolism pools closest to the surface, so a point at the crossing drew these threads together.
It bears repeating plainly: these are the traditional uses recorded in a licensed dataset and classical literature, offered here for cultural and historical understanding. They are not claims that pressing this point treats disease, and nothing in this guide replaces assessment by a qualified clinician — particularly for groin lumps, urinary trouble, and concerns around fertility, which genuinely deserve professional eyes. 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, hold the safety rules firmly, and let a clinician examine anything that lingers.
Self-Care Acupressure at Home
With the point located, settle in: lying down or reclined, hips relaxed, hands warm. Curl your index and middle fingers together and rest the pads — never the tips — on the spot. Begin with simple contact for a few breaths, then add small, slow circles, letting the skin glide over the tissue beneath. Pressure should register as pleasant dullness or mild warmth, never sharpness, and never a throb. A common home rhythm is one to three minutes per side, once or twice daily, matched where possible to slow exhales so each circle rides the breath out. Swap hands and give the other side equal time, keeping the two sessions symmetrical.
Setting matters more here than at many points, simply because the location is an intimate one. Choose a private, unhurried moment — a door closed, a screen set aside. Warm cold hands first, because chilled muscle guards itself, and keep fingernails trimmed so the pads do all the work. People who keep a routine often anchor it to an existing habit — after evening washing, before sleep — because consistency, not intensity, is what self-care traditions actually ask for. A minute daily beats ten minutes once a fortnight, and one calm session beats ten diligent scrubs.
Treat the exercise as a small ceremony of attention rather than a treatment session. Across weeks, notice what changes: perhaps the area feels less guarded, perhaps the lower belly settles while you press, perhaps nothing shifts except that you spend ninety seconds attending to a corner of the body usually ignored. Every outcome fits the honest scope of self-acupressure. What does not fit is escalation — pressing harder, longer, or deeper to force a result, especially over any lump, ache, or cycle change that keeps returning. When curiosity pulls that way, return to gentleness, or book the appointment you have been postponing.
Cautions and Safe Practice
This is a point whose geography asks for courtesy. The licensed dataset records no cautions for Qichong — an empty caution field is a record, not an invitation — but the anatomy speaks plainly enough: the vessels and cords passing between trunk and thigh run close beneath the skin of the groin crease, with little padding over them. Self-care therefore stays strictly superficial: skin and outermost tissue, finger pads only, no tools, no driving inward, and never firm pressure on any spot where a beat pulses against the finger. Lightness here is not timidity; it is the whole technique.
Set the practice aside entirely during acute trouble in the territory: a newly painful or changing groin lump, an episode of urinary difficulty, acute genital discomfort, a feverish illness, or any break or irritation in the skin. Stop at once on sharp, electric, or radiating sensation, and do not retry that day. Pregnant readers should consult a qualified practitioner before adding any new point practice, as should anyone living with a diagnosed urinary or reproductive condition or recovering from pelvic or groin surgery. These rules are few, and all of them are absolute.
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 a groin bulge that turns suddenly painful, hard, or will not settle back; for inability to pass urine; for sudden or persistent swelling of the genitals; for lower-abdominal or groin pain that worsens; and for menstrual patterns that change markedly and stay changed. Persistent complaints belong with a licensed practitioner, medical or East Asian medical as suits the situation. The surge imagery is vivid, but the soundest gift Qichong offers most people is a kinder acquaintance with their own lower belly, treated gently.
Qichong, the Qi Surge, stands at the bottom of the stomach channel’s long descent down the trunk: a spot just above the groin crease, level with the top edge of the pubic bone. Classical practice reached for it amid rumbling bellies, groin complaints, and unsettled cycles. This guide walks through finding it by touch and pressing it safely.
Self-care limits
Frequently asked
- How do I find Qichong without knowing anything about cun?
- Use the pubic bone as the whole map. Lie back, find the firm horizontal ledge at the base of your belly, and rest your fingertips on its upper border. Slide sideways two thumb-widths from the middle of that border, staying level with the edge, and settle into the soft tissue just above the groin crease. That spot — level with the top of the pubic bone, clear of both the bone and the crease — is the location the dataset records. Cun measurements simply encode the same landmark sequence in proportional language.
- Is pressing Qichong myself actually safe?
- For healthy adults, gentle fingertip pressure held on the surface is generally reasonable self-care, and the licensed record notes no specific cautions for this point. The one local courtesy is vascular: large vessels run close beneath the groin crease, so keep pressure light, never press into a spot where you feel a strong beat, and skip the point whenever the area feels actively unwell. Respect the stop signals: sharp pain, radiating sensation, or worsening discomfort mean finish immediately.
- What did classical practice use Qichong for?
- The traditional record lists borborygmus and abdominal pain, hernia, irregular menstruation, infertility, impotence, genital swelling, and difficult urination — a register gathered almost entirely around the gut, the groin, and the reproductive and urinary sphere. Classical texts treated the groin as a crossroads of channels, which made a point at the crossing a natural candidate across such discussions. Those are traditional frameworks for understanding the body, documented for context — not evidence-backed treatment claims.
- Why does the name describe qi rushing?
- Because the tradition read this corner of the body as a place of movement. Chong carries the sense of surging forward, and classical commentary associates the point with the chong vessel, imagined as a great thoroughfare of qi and blood rising through the trunk. The groin crossing, where channels funnel between trunk and leg, gave the surge image a literal home. The name compresses geography and theory into two characters — a reminder, not a prescription.
- Can acupressure at Qichong replace seeing a doctor about groin or cycle problems?
- No. Self-acupressure is a comfort practice, not a diagnostic tool, and this particular territory deserves genuine caution: a groin lump that changes, urinary difficulty that persists, sudden genital swelling, or menstrual patterns that shift and stay shifted all need professional assessment promptly — several of them urgently. Daily self-care and clinical medicine occupy different floors of the same building; with anything involving a lump, the waterworks, or the cycles, keep the upstairs consulting room well visited.
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 ST30 Qichong — 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/st30/leaf.json
- GET /zh-hant/points/st30/leaf.json
- GET /zh-cn/points/st30/leaf.json
- /llms.txt — the index of every leaf
- JSON-LD in the page: MedicalWebPage, MedicalEntity and FAQPage
{
"id": "ST30",
"name": {
"en": "Qichong",
"gloss": "Qi Surge",
"zh-Hant": "氣衝",
"zh-Hans": "气冲"
},
"channel": {
"id": "ST",
"order": 30,
"of": 45
},
"location": {
"text": "Just above the groin, level with the top of the pubic bone, three finger-widths out from the midline."
},
"for": [
"A rumbling",
"aching belly",
"irregular periods"
],
"press": {
"text": "Light touch; if a pulse beats under the finger, move outward off it."
},
"cautions": [
"Large vessels run close by; not in pregnancy."
],
"source": "Zhenjiu Jiayi Jing, book 3",
"url": "https://acupoints.com/en/points/st30",
"lastReviewed": "2026-08-24"
}