In Tai Chi, there’s a principle called yielding. At first glance, it looks like giving way or stepping back. But when you practise it, you realise it’s not about weakness at all. Yielding is the art of staying soft when the world pushes hard. It’s the wisdom of recognising resistance and choosing to move with it, not against it.
This isn’t just something for the training hall. In work and life, we all meet obstacles. A tight deadline, a difficult colleague, a market that doesn’t respond the way we hoped. The instinct is to push harder, to resist, to tighten up. But often, that just creates more struggle.
What if you softened instead? What if you took a step back to see the bigger picture, to redirect your energy, to adapt? Yielding doesn’t mean you stop moving forward. It means you change how you move forward, with less force, more flow.
That’s mindfulness in action. It’s the same mind-body awareness Tai Chi develops, brought into the everyday. To notice where you’re tightening, to breathe, and to shift direction with intention. In doing so, you don’t just survive challenges, you transform them into opportunities for growth.
I’d love to hear from you: where in your work or life could yielding, softening instead of pushing, make things lighter, clearer, or more effective?