Keep to a yielding mind. This is the key phrase of taiji (as “Forget self and become one with the Tao” is the key phrase of Taoism). Yielding is the art of returning energy, of keeping energy continuous and circulating when it threatens to stop or escape. A yielding mind is one that is continuously returning as a flow or exchange of energy. So, a mind with the breathing is a yielding mind as long as it perceives and thinks the turns of the breath as continuous rather than discontinuous. The yielding mind relishes the point of return, the point where yin becomes yang, the point of transformation, and strives to make that point stretch and extend and engulf all that is static or inert or habitual. I don't keep to a yielding mind on the off-chance that I may be attacked and so need to use my ch'uan, but because a yielding mind keeps me passionately engaged with energy, and in particular, spirit. A yielding mind keeps life, in its moment by moment becomings, alive and worth living. Without a yielding mind I am carried by life the way a piece of driftwood is carried by a stream, intact and relatively unchanged. Instead I want, and need, to live a life where every part of me is challenged and stressed and forced to swallow life in great gulps, a life of such intensity that everything about it is threatening to break or rupture.