In the Internal Martial Arts there are three different kinds of yielding physical, mental, and emotional. Learning how to apply these different kinds of yielding into your everyday life can open up many opportunities.
Physical yielding is the easiest to understand, but very difficult to apply at a high level. If we are pushing each other and using nothing but force whoever is the bigger stronger person will usually win. When understanding how to use the physical art of yielding you can learn to defeat bigger stronger opponents without having to see who is the bigger meathead.
In order to be good at physical yielding, you need to be well rooted, your legs need to be strong and flexible so you can change your central equilibrium without getting tight. Your breath and body need to be relaxed, but active and alert. Lastly, your mind needs to be present and calm.
It takes years and years to get to a high level with all of these skills, but this is where it starts to get interesting.
When you start to become more in-tune with your mind and body and see things at a more subtle level this expanded awareness allows you to start to apply Mental and Emotional yielding as well which we will get into later.
