The Nature of Strength

The only condition for allowing your internal energy to develop, grow, and become strong is that you must relax yourself and yield to the universe. When you become soft and pliable, your internal energy will gradually begin to develop and accumulate. Eventually you will have the ability to become extremely hard and strong, when it is necessary to do so. To make metal into the hardest steel, you must heat the metal, make it as soft and pliable as liquid, and then refine it into the hardest steel.

—Waysun Liao's commentary on the T'ai Chi Classics

This is one of the seemingly paradoxical things about taiji. The kind of strength most people think of as "strength" is only good against those who are weaker in that kind of strength. Do you have strong muscles? Eventually you'll run into someone who has stronger muscles, or you'll grow old and the muscles will fade. Taiji's strength is something else entirely. It is the strength of bamboo in the hurricane, of pine trees laden with snow, of the wind against your face and the water on the rocks. The Tao te Ching observes that water is the softest of all things, yet it can wear down the rock, which is one of the hardest of all things. So it is with the strength of taiji. Relax, accept the force coming at you, and redirect it. The strength of song, alert relaxation, cannot be overcome. The harder you push on it, the stronger it becomes. And as soon as you stop pushing, it's as if there's nothing there. This is true strength and power. All else is illusion and tomfoolery.

Which reminds me... The taiji motto could easily be "Resistance is Futile." :-) When you resist, you are giving power to your opponent, giving him something to push against. When you accept the force directed at you, you can do anything with it (well, anything if you truly accept it and are truly relaxed; I am not yet able to do this consistently).