Kufang

What is ST14?

ST14, called Kufang, is a Stomach channel point on the upper chest, in the first gap between the ribs, below the collarbone.

The name Kufang is usually translated as "Storehouse". In classical Chinese medicine it belongs to the run of Stomach channel points that march down the chest from the collarbone, and it was grouped with its neighbours for complaints of the chest: cough, wheezing, a tight or full feeling behind the breastbone, and soreness in the ribs. It is taught in most point curricula, but it is not a headline point, and practitioners reach for it far less often than for points on the arms and legs.

Two things are worth saying once, up front. Long use in a tradition tells you that people valued a point; it does not show that pressing it changes anything in the body. And age does not make a point safe either, which matters more than usual here, because ST14 sits on the chest wall over the lung and near the heart.

The honest verdict on the evidence is short. There is no controlled human research that tests ST14 on its own for any condition. What exists for acupressure generally is mostly small, short, and unblinded, meaning people knew what they were getting, which inflates reported benefit. A few points buck that trend — PC6 for nausea and vomiting has genuinely decent human trial support — but ST14 is not one of them.

That does not make it useless to know about. Gentle self-applied pressure on the chest wall is a low-cost thing to try for a mild muscular tight feeling, and some people find the slow breathing that goes with it calming. It is not a treatment for a heart or lung problem, and chest symptoms are the one area where guessing is a bad idea. Everything on this page is finger pressure, applied by you, to your own chest.

Where is ST14 and how do you find it?

ST14 sits in the first gap between the ribs, about four thumb-widths out from the centre of the breastbone, roughly in line with the nipple.

• Find the notch at the top. Put a fingertip in the soft dip at the base of your throat, between the two collarbone ends. This is your starting landmark.
• Slide down to the bony ridge. Run your finger straight down the breastbone about 5 cm. You will feel a slight horizontal ridge where the bone changes angle. The second rib joins the breastbone right there.
• Step up one space. The soft gap immediately above that second rib is the first intercostal space (the gap between the first and second ribs). That is the level of ST14.
• Move outwards. Keeping to that level, travel sideways about four thumb-widths from the midline — roughly 8 to 10 cm in an average adult. Classical texts place it 4 cun lateral to the midline.
• Check the vertical line. The point should fall on a line dropped straight down from the middle of your collarbone. In men this also lines up with the nipple; in women use the collarbone line instead, since breast tissue shifts.
• Feel for the hollow. Press lightly and you should feel a soft gap between two firm ribs, not hard bone. If everything under your finger is solid, slide up or down a few millimetres.

Keep your neighbours straight. ST13 (Qihu) is one space higher, tucked just under the collarbone. ST15 (Wuyi) is one space lower. LU1 and KI27 are different channels at similar heights, so a video showing a point near the shoulder tip or right beside the breastbone is not showing you ST14. Nothing on this page involves needles, depth or angle — you are only locating a spot for your fingertip.

How do you apply pressure to ST14?

1. Sit upright and uncover the area. Work on bare skin or a thin layer of clothing. Sitting rather than lying makes the rib gap easier to feel.
2. Use the flat pad, not the tip. Place the pad of your index or middle finger in the gap you located. A fingertip or a nail digs into the rib edge and bruises.
3. Press lightly at first. Sink in slowly until you feel firm contact and perhaps a dull ache. On the chest this should be gentle — far lighter than you would use on a shoulder or a calf.
4. Hold or circle for 30 to 60 seconds. Either hold steady pressure or make small slow circles about the size of a pea. Breathe out slowly as you press.
5. Do both sides. ST14 is a paired point, one on each side of the chest. Treat them one after the other, or at the same time with both hands.
6. Repeat sparingly. Two or three short rounds a day is plenty. There is no evidence that longer or harder does more, and the ribs mark easily.
7. Stop at these signals. Stop at once for sharp pain, a cracking sensation, breathlessness, dizziness, a racing heart, or pain that spreads to the arm, neck or jaw.

Keep the pressure where you can still breathe and talk normally. If you find yourself bracing or holding your breath, you are pressing too hard. Pressure that leaves redness lasting more than a few minutes, or any bruising, means ease off next time.

Do not press through clothing fasteners, jewellery or a bra underwire, since the hard edge concentrates force on one spot of rib. If reaching the point makes your shoulder ache, rest the opposite hand on the chest and let the arm hang relaxed rather than hunching over.

Finally, treat ST14 as a comfort measure, not a diagnosis. New or changing chest symptoms deserve a doctor's ear, not a longer massage session.

What is ST14 traditionally used for?

• Cough and wheezing. Classical sources list ST14 among chest points used for coughing and noisy, laboured breathing. No controlled human trial has tested acupressure at ST14 for cough or asthma, so this remains a traditional claim only. Asthma and a persistent cough need medical management.
• Chest fullness and tightness. Tradition described a stuffed, blocked feeling in the chest and used points along this line to "open" it. Modern evidence for that specific effect at ST14 is absent. Any chest tightness that is new, worsening, or comes on with effort is a reason to be checked, not pressed.
• Rib and chest-wall soreness. Pressure on sore muscle between the ribs can feel temporarily easing, much like any self-massage. This is plausible and harmless at gentle force, but the relief is short and has not been measured at ST14 specifically.
• Difficulty swallowing or food not going down. Some older texts link the Stomach channel chest points with a blocked sensation in the gullet. There is no human research supporting this use. A persistent swallowing problem is a symptom doctors want to see.
• Hypochondriac pain. Tradition mentions pain in the side of the ribcage. Again, this is a text-based claim with no trial behind it at this point.
• General calming with slow breathing. Many people find that resting a hand on the upper chest while breathing out slowly settles them. The breathing is doing most of the measurable work here, not the point.

Put plainly: ST14 has a clear traditional role for chest complaints and essentially no point-specific human evidence. That is different from saying it does nothing — it means nobody has tested it properly. Where acupressure has been tested well, as with PC6 for nausea, the research exists and says so. For ST14 it does not.

Are there tips for using ST14 effectively?

• Map the point once, carefully. Spend a minute finding the sternal angle and the rib gap the first time, then remember the spot. Hunting around while pressing hard is how people bruise rib edges.
• Go lighter than you think. The chest wall has little padding. Pressure that feels mild on a thigh feels sharp here, and extra force buys you nothing.
• Pair it with a slow breath out. Press as you exhale over four or five seconds. Slow breathing has its own measurable calming effect and costs nothing to add.
• Use a warm shower first. Warm, relaxed chest muscles tolerate pressure better and the rib gaps are easier to feel.
• Keep sessions short and spaced. One minute per side, two or three times a day, is more sustainable than a long session that leaves the area tender.
• Track honestly for a week. Note the symptom score before and after, in one line. If nothing has shifted in a week or two, that is useful information — stop and try something else.
• Keep your real treatment going. If you use an inhaler, reflux medication or anything prescribed, carry on with it. Acupressure is an add-on at best, never a replacement.
• Ask first if your chest has history. If you have had heart surgery, a rib injury, breast surgery or radiotherapy, check with your clinician before working on this area at all.
• Switch to the arm points for nausea. If what you actually want is help with nausea, PC6 on the inner wrist has far better human evidence than any chest point.

One expectation to set: nothing here promises an outcome. Treat ST14 as a cheap, gentle experiment with a short trial period and a clear stopping rule.

What do people get wrong with ST14?

• Expecting a cure. The commonest error. ST14 will not cure asthma, resolve a chest infection or fix heart disease, and no honest source claims it does.
• Pressing a cardiac warning sign. Treating crushing chest pain, pressure, or pain spreading to the arm or jaw with finger pressure wastes the minutes that matter. That is an emergency call, not a massage.
• Landing on bone. Pressing the collarbone or the hard rib instead of the soft gap between ribs. You should feel a give under the pad of the finger, not a flat shelf.
• Confusing it with ST13 or ST15. ST13 is the space just under the collarbone and ST15 is one gap lower. Videos often show the wrong one. Count the rib spaces from the sternal angle.
• Using the nipple line on breast tissue. In women the nipple does not reliably sit at the classical level. Use the midpoint of the collarbone and drop a straight line down instead.
• Digging with a fingernail. The nail concentrates force on a thin rib edge and leaves a bruise with no added benefit.
• Pressing over hardware. Working directly over a pacemaker, defibrillator, chemotherapy port or implant. Move away from the device entirely and ask your team.
• Massaging a lump. Rubbing an unexplained lump or swollen gland in the chest wall or breast instead of getting it examined. Report it, do not knead it.
• Going daily for months with no change. If a week or two produces nothing, more repetitions will not rescue it. Stop and reassess.
• Copying needling videos. Clips showing insertion, depth or angle are describing a different practice entirely. Everything here is finger pressure on intact skin.

What does the research on ST14 actually say?

There is essentially nothing. We found no controlled human trial, and no published case series, that tests acupressure at ST14 on its own for cough, breathlessness, chest tightness, swallowing trouble or rib pain. That is the plain answer, and inventing a study to fill the gap would be worse than leaving it empty.

Chest points sometimes appear inside larger acupuncture protocols for respiratory complaints, where a practitioner uses six or eight points at once. Even when such a study reports a benefit, it cannot tell you what any single point contributed, and most of this literature is small, short and unblinded. Unblinded means participants knew they were being treated, which reliably exaggerates improvement in symptoms as subjective as breathlessness or chest discomfort.

It is worth comparing that with a point where the evidence is real. PC6 on the inner wrist has been tested in many randomised trials, including wristband studies for pregnancy sickness and post-operative nausea, and the overall signal for nausea is genuine even if modest. That is what decent evidence for an acupressure point looks like. ST14 has nothing comparable.

So what does the absence mean? Not that ST14 is harmful, and not that it is proven useless. It means nobody has done the work, and any claim you read about what ST14 "does" is coming from classical text or from a practitioner's impression, not from measurement.

If you want to try it, treat it as a personal experiment: gentle pressure, a fixed trial of a week or two, and an honest note of whether anything changed. Keep any prescribed treatment running alongside it. And because this point sits on the chest wall, let a doctor rather than a fingertip assess any new cough, breathlessness or chest pain.