Nowadays, given that we civilised creatures have forgotten how to fight, it seems a little silly to conceive of yielding as a means to winning the fight. Maybe it would be more helpful to think of yielding as a technique for pooling your spirit with that of another in order to break out of the external and into the internal. It is the fundamental contention of taiji that such a move is not possible without the other. Access to the Internal requires us to borrow energy – inspiration – from somewhere, from anywhere.