Nature of Yield

This arrived from a student in my email, a day before yesterday. Here it is in its entirety.

Nature of Yield

I always find pushing hands challenging. I feel exposed and vulnerable, but more unsavoury and personal is that I feel something inside of me that I don’t like to acknowledge – aggression. If my partner is quite good at yielding, I find it especially frustrating. I want to feel something solid in the person standing in front of me and maybe I’m offended if I can’t make contact. At any rate, the better someone is at yielding, the more I feel a certain aggressive desire to make contact – to push. When attending a session with Mark, I ended up in tears at this perceived ‘ugliness’ within me because I found it frightening and unworthy of who I want to be. I took away a lot to think about from my session with Mark. How does one genuinely learn to not care about defending against the push, to become truly interested in where the push originates, to preserve self without seeming to defend self? For me it is elusive, but tantalising – both in the practice of T’ai Chi and in my attitude toward daily living.

How do you learn from a master? How many years, how much practice does it take to learn to really yield? I hold the lesson in a certain reverence which one grants something particularly wise. About a week after my session with Mark I had a graphic lesson in the nature of yield from my 15-year-old nephew which humbled me:

Jamie has always been the smallest boy in his class, and for a long time was the smallest boy in his school. He lives in a rough area of Aberdeen; he has real working-class roots. He’s a quiet young man (in front of me at least) and as I rarely see him, he seems a bit unknowable. What I did know was that his doctor had put Jamie onto some hormone treatment to help him grow and his school had called meetings with his parents several times to discuss the psychological impact that being tiny might have on Jamie and to offer counselling. I heard my brother-in-law dismiss it as ‘unnecessary’ and I wondered if he were right to do so.

It was Hogmanay and we were at my brother-in-law’s house with his wife, his two sons and a few other couples. Everyone had been drinking except the kids, although I think that Jamie at 15 had been given one alcopop. I had never met one of the couples and during the course of the evening wandered into the kitchen and ended up listening to a ghost story of sorts as told by this big, burly man. He swore it was true, and on the basis of his story-telling I liked him and started to feel comfortable with he and his wife. He ended up sitting next to me in the living room, showing me photos of his son on his mobile. Jamie was sitting in a chair quietly playing a game on his mobile. This big burly man of 36 started tormenting Jamie to my surprise and horror:

“How come yer wearin’ pink, Jamie? You a pouf?”

no answer, just a little look up from his mobile. I turn on Jock (– yes, that was his name) blustering to Jamie’s defence, “It’s the fashion!”

“Nah, no self-respecting man wears pink. Come now, yer a wee poufter, aren’t yah Jamie?”

A little smile and back down to the game.

It got worse: “There’s no shame in admittin’ it, there’s lots of queers around nowadays, go on tell me.”

The baiting continued, Jock attacked Jamie’s hair, because it had blond highlighted tips. He asked Jamie if he had a girlfriend. Jamie said no and Jock asked if that was because he was so small, no girl would look at him. It continued. I was mortified for Jamie and had jumped away from Jock once he had begun. I tried to cajole Jock out of picking on Jamie and tried to pick back at him. Finally, I was upset enough to leave the room to find Peter, my brother-in-law, to put a stop to it. I was shaky, and my stomach knotted with worry that this horrible person was a friend of the family. I didn’t know how to treat him, I was in someone else’s house. I got Peter and told him that Jock was being horrible to Jamie. (I tattled!) Peter looked at me a little quizzically and assured me that Jock was just like that and I shouldn’t worry. Nevertheless, he wandered into the living room and sat down next to Jock. Jock continued on the same vein. Peter looked at Jamie and Jamie shot a look at his dad. They exchanged a smile. Nothing happened. Jock had pretty much worn himself down. I could make neither head nor tail of the entire situation. Why was I the only one who was upset?

The next morning I asked Jamie, “Did you really not care about all that stuff Jock was saying to you?”

“Nah. That’s Jock”

As Jamie sat quietly listening, I told Peter how upset I was the night before, to which he smiled and replied, “That’s just Jock. He’s always looking for a reaction.”

I protested that it was unfair for a 36 year old to do that to a 15 year old. Peter laughed and said Jamie had the unfair advantage over Jock. Jamie giggled. Peter explained that Jock liked to boast that he could turn his 17 year old son into a 3 year old with just a few words. He laughed and said Jock still couldn’t understand how it didn’t work on Jamie. Jamie laughed. Finally I blurted out, “Well it worked on ME!”

Peter just tutt-ed at me and said, “That’s just Jock, you have to know how to take him.”

That I had witnessed something to do with ‘yielding’ and understanding ‘the source of a push’ dawned on me. I was disappointed with my response to a push. I realised that Jamie had a far better grasp of the true nature of yielding than I did, without T’ai Chi without any particular named philosophy to pin to it; he just understood. Peter understood. They both still seemed to like Jock. I felt like the slowest disciple. I flashed back to a childhood of witnessing the damage that cruel words did to my single mother. I understood the source of my defensive energies. Jamie hadn’t needed my protection the night before, my reaction was probably amusing enough to keep Jock going. I had inadvertently prolonged the verbal attack. I was the only one who seemed hurt. I was the only one reacting. My 15-year-old nephew painted a lesson for me in vibrant colours, the nature of yield, keeping his own integrity, not caring about the push because the push couldn’t hurt him, he understood the source. They still liked this man. I stood in awe. I still can’t like Jock after the way he attacked Jamie, maybe I still haven’t learned the lesson, but it is so tantalising, so worth pursuing.