Qihu

What is ST13?

ST13, or Qihu, is a Stomach-channel point on the upper chest, just below the lower edge of the collarbone, in line with the nipple.

The name Qihu is usually translated as "Qi Door". In classical Chinese medicine it belongs to a short run of Stomach-channel points that cross the chest, and it was grouped with breathing and chest complaints: cough, wheeze, a tight or full feeling in the chest, and hiccups. Older texts also mention it for pain under the ribs.

Here is the honest verdict on the evidence. Traditional standing tells you that generations of practitioners used a point in a particular way. It is not evidence that the point does anything, and it is not evidence that pressing it is safe for you. Those are separate questions, and this page keeps them separate.

For ST13 specifically, there is essentially no human research. No controlled trial has tested finger pressure on ST13 for breathlessness, cough or anything else. What research exists on acupressure in general is mostly small, short-term, and hard to blind, because a person usually knows whether they are being pressed. That is why this page grades the human evidence for ST13 as insufficient, which is the honest answer for most individual points.

What that leaves is a safe, low-cost self-care habit that some people find calming, used alongside — never instead of — the treatment your doctor has given you. Steady pressure on the chest wall with a few slow breaths is pleasant for many people, and that may well be most of the effect.

One structural point matters for safety. ST13 sits over the upper chest wall, close to the collarbone, the big vessels under it, and the very top of the lung. You will never be breaking the skin here, so the risks that worry acupuncturists do not apply to you. But the area is still a place where people have implanted devices, surgical scars, swollen glands and healing fractures. The "Who should avoid it" guidance further down is the part of this page worth reading twice.

Where is ST13 and how do you find it?

ST13 sits just under the lower border of your collarbone, roughly below its midpoint, in line with the nipple.

• Find your collarbone. Put a fingertip at the notch at the base of your throat, between the two inner ends of the collarbones. Then trace outwards along the bone towards your shoulder.
• Find the midclavicular line. This is the vertical line running down from the middle of the collarbone. In most adults it passes through or very near the nipple. Classical texts place ST13 four cun from the body's midline, and this line is the practical equivalent.
• Drop just under the bone. Where that vertical line crosses the collarbone, slide your finger down off the hard bone onto the soft chest wall immediately below it. ST13 is in that soft hollow, right against the bone's lower edge.
• Check the feel. You should feel firm muscle over the ribs, with the hard ridge of the collarbone just above your fingertip. If you are on bone, you are too high.
• Check you are below, not above. The deep soft dip above the collarbone is a different point. ST13 is below the bone. Getting this right matters, because the hollow above the collarbone is a much more delicate area.

Roughly in centimetres: in an average adult, the point is about 9 to 12 cm out from the midline of the breastbone, depending on chest width. Measure on your own body rather than using a fixed number.

There is one ST13 on each side. ST12 lies above it in the hollow over the collarbone, and ST14 lies below it in the next rib space down, so ST13 is the one hugging the underside of the bone.

If you cannot find a distinct hollow, do not hunt for it with hard digging. Use flat, gentle contact over the general area instead.

How do you apply pressure to ST13?

1. Sit upright and relaxed. Sit or stand with your shoulders dropped. A slumped chest makes the collarbone harder to feel and the area more tender.
2. Use the opposite hand. Reach across with the pad of your index or middle finger. The right hand works the left ST13 comfortably, and vice versa.
3. Use the finger pad, not the tip. Keep the nail off the skin. The flat pad spreads the pressure and is far less likely to bruise a bony area.
4. Press gently inwards and slightly upwards. Aim towards the underside of the collarbone, not deep into the chest. Pressure should be light to moderate — a clear sensation, never a sharp or stabbing one.
5. Hold and breathe. Keep steady contact for 20 to 60 seconds while you breathe slowly. Some people prefer small, slow circles instead of a static hold.
6. Swap sides. Repeat on the other side for the same length of time, so the chest feels even.
7. Repeat sparingly. One to three rounds per side, once or twice a day, is plenty. More pressure and more repetitions do not make it work better.

How hard is hard enough? On a 0 to 10 discomfort scale, stay at about 3 or 4. The chest wall over the ribs is thinner than the muscle of a shoulder or calf, so the same force feels sharper here.

Stop straight away and do not continue if you feel sharp pain, a shooting or electric sensation into the arm, pins and needles, dizziness, or any increase in breathlessness. Stop if the skin reddens and stays red, or if a bruise forms.

Do not press through clothing with a hard object, and do not use massage guns, pressure pens or hard balls on this area. Fingers only. Children, frail older adults and anyone with thin or fragile skin should use noticeably lighter pressure for a shorter time.

What is ST13 traditionally used for?

• Cough and wheeze. The classical texts list ST13 for coughing and for wheezing or laboured breathing, which is why it turns up in chest-point sequences online. No human trial has tested ST13 for either. Acupressure as a whole has some small, mostly unblinded studies in asthma and chronic lung disease, with mixed results and no clear role for this particular point.
• Chest fullness or tightness. Tradition describes ST13 as opening a "blocked" feeling in the upper chest. In practice, people use it as a place to rest a hand while breathing slowly. Slow breathing itself can reduce a sense of tightness, and that is a plausible, ordinary explanation rather than a point-specific effect.
• Hiccups and belching. As a Stomach-channel point on the chest, ST13 was associated with qi rising the wrong way — hiccups, burping, a sense of something pushing upwards. Human evidence for acupressure and hiccups is thin and mostly case reports, and none of it isolates ST13.
• Pain under the ribs. Older sources mention pain in the chest and under the ribs. This is a symptom with many causes, several of them serious. Nothing here supports using ST13 to work out what is causing rib or chest pain.
• General relaxation. Many people simply find slow, warm contact on the upper chest calming before sleep or during stress. This is the most defensible everyday use, and it does not require the point to be doing anything specific.

Taken together, ST13 is a traditional chest point with no direct human evidence behind any of its claimed uses. That does not make it useless as a comfort habit. It does mean you should not expect it to treat a diagnosed lung, heart or digestive condition.

If you are using ST13 for breathlessness, cough that will not settle, or chest discomfort, treat it as something you do alongside proper medical assessment, not instead of it.

Are there tips for using ST13 effectively?

• Map the bone first. Spend ten seconds tracing your collarbone before you press anything. Knowing exactly where the bone ends stops you drifting up into the delicate hollow above it.
• Press both sides. Doing one side only often leaves the chest feeling lopsided. Matching the time and pressure on each side feels better and takes under two minutes.
• Pair it with slow breathing. Breathe in for about four counts and out for about six while you hold the point. If anything helpful happens here, unhurried breathing is doing a good share of the work.
• Keep sessions short. Twenty to sixty seconds per side is enough. Long grinding sessions on a bony area cause soreness and bruising, not better results.
• Warm your hands. Cold fingers on the chest make people tense and guard. Rub your palms together first.
• Use skin contact when you can. A thin layer of clothing is fine, but thick fabric makes it hard to feel the edge of the bone and encourages you to push harder than you need to.
• Keep a simple note. If you are using ST13 for a recurring symptom, write down the date, what you did and how you felt an hour later. After two weeks you will have a far better answer than memory gives you.
• Set a trial period. Give it two weeks. If nothing has changed, stop and spend the time on something with better support, such as breathing retraining or your prescribed inhaler technique.
• Go lighter if you bruise easily. People on blood thinners, people with fragile skin and older adults should use feather-light contact here, or choose a fleshier area of the body instead.

One last practical tip. If you find yourself pressing harder because nothing is happening, that is the signal to stop, not to continue. Pressure on the chest wall has a low ceiling before it simply hurts.

What do people get wrong with ST13?

• Pressing above the collarbone. The most common error is landing in the soft hollow over the bone instead of just under it. That hollow is a different, more delicate area. ST13 is below the bone's lower edge.
• Pressing on bone. Grinding a fingertip into the hard collarbone itself gives a sharp, bruising pain and misses the point entirely. Slide off the bone onto the soft tissue below.
• Digging too deep. The chest wall is thin here. People use shoulder-rub force and end up sore for days. Light to moderate pressure is the whole technique.
• Expecting a cure. No acupressure point cures asthma, chronic lung disease, reflux or heart conditions, and ST13 has no human trials behind it at all. Treat it as a comfort habit, nothing more.
• Replacing an inhaler or medication. Some videos imply chest points can take the place of a reliever inhaler. They cannot. Never delay rescue medication to press a point.
• Using tools on it. Massage guns, pressure pens, hard balls and knuckle-sized gadgets do not belong on the upper chest. Fingers only.
• Ignoring hardware under the skin. Pacemakers, defibrillators, chemotherapy ports and central lines are commonly placed right below the collarbone. People forget this and press directly over the device.
• Massaging a lump. A new lump or swollen gland near the collarbone needs a doctor's assessment, not finger pressure. Rubbing it is a way of putting off a conversation you should have.
• Assuming old equals safe. A point's long history tells you it was used, not that it works and not that it is safe for your particular body today.

If you are unsure whether you have found the right spot, the conservative move is to use flat, gentle contact over the general area below the collarbone and skip the deep hunting.

What does the research on ST13 actually say?

There is essentially nothing. We could not identify any published human trial — controlled or otherwise — that tested ST13 on its own, by acupressure or by any other method, for cough, wheeze, chest tightness, hiccups or anything else. That is the honest starting position for this page.

ST13 does appear occasionally inside multi-point protocols in acupuncture research on respiratory complaints, where several chest and back points are needled together in one session. Studies built that way cannot tell you what any single point contributed. If such a trial shows a benefit, the credit is shared across every point used, plus the practitioner contact and the expectation of help. None of that transfers to pressing one spot with a fingertip at home.

The broader acupressure literature is worth understanding, because it sets expectations. Most trials are small, run for a few weeks, and cannot blind participants properly — people know when they are being pressed. Results in areas like fatigue, sleep and anxiety are mixed and often fade when studies are better designed. The clearest exception in the whole field is PC6 on the wrist for nausea and vomiting, which has genuine controlled human trials behind it. ST13 has nothing comparable, and it is not fair to borrow PC6's credibility for it.

What does "no evidence" mean for you? It means no one can tell you ST13 will help, and it also means no one has shown it is harmful. Gentle finger pressure on the upper chest is a low-risk thing to try, provided you avoid the specific situations listed under "Who should avoid it". It is not a reason to delay seeing a doctor about breathlessness, a persistent cough, or chest pain.

If you decide to try it, run your own two-week check with a simple diary. That is a weak kind of evidence, but applied to your own body it is more useful than a confident claim from a video that cites no research at all.