In fact it should read: “Please don’t offer so much resistance (because I want to hit you at last)!“ This is because there is a difference between a ”tensed up“ or “stiff“ opponent who tensions sets of antagonistic muscles at the same time, and who is therefore using his strength against himself, and an opponent who specifically targets his strength at our actions. Therefore it is often not the “rigidity“ of an opponent that impedes some of us, but rather his “resistance“ to our movements.
All the better for those WT people who have read my book “The Last shall be First“, and have therefore understood that someone who responds directly to the impulse of an opponent – and is accordingly "already there” – always has the advantage. Because resistance to him is simply not possible. In the final analysis the resistance we feel is our own, because we did not immediately give way to the opponent’s strength but were taken by surprise, and did not respond to the opponent’s change with a change of our own!

Remember this: If you work “with“ your opponent’s strength, he cannot offer you resistance! My teaching is based on this! This is precisely what I try to convey to you! 

As contradictory as the title of this month’s editorial may be in technical WT terms, it is all the more illuminating and revealing in a psychological sense.

Master Schulze is giving his favourite student a Chi-Sao lesson. He checks out his defences and is secretly pleased that the student is still no match for him. Schulze is in an excellent mood and feels secure in his superiority. He attacks rapidly and playfully, and his student defends with Bong-Sao. But he uses the energy-absorbing Bong-Sao wrongly, as a rigid, upward blocking movement.
How can he be so daft, thinks Schulze, Bong-Sao is supposed to give way and let the attack slide off it, not rise up. Anybody who raises a Bong-Sao is easy to beat ...
But Schulze catches himself reacting too late and pressing the Bong-Sao downward with brute force to prevent the student from making the move: “You idiot, don’t be so bloody rigid!“

Why does this stiff response by the student annoy the instructor? Because it prevents him from hitting the student. He is annoyed because he reacted too slowly, and also incorrectly. He is angry with himself. The teacher knows more than he can do, feels inadequate and thinks his mistake was visible to everybody. He is ashamed and translates this shame into activity, into distracting aggression against the person who has brought the feelings of shame about, namely the poor, innocent student. Better to be guilty than ashamed.
Unfair maybe, but understandable in human and psychological terms. Which of us teachers has not experienced this situation? But have you ever given it any real thought?
Once the chemical responses in his body have subsided, who has recognised that he made the same mistake as his student by answering rigidity with rigidity, rather than seizing the opportunity it offered and taking advantage of it? Did we have the courage and generosity to admit it to ourselves? Did we give our student a friendly hug half an hour later, from man to man? Or clap him on the shoulder to say sorry, or at least given him a wink? He would certainly understand.

Let me repeat: when a teacher gets angry about the student’s rigidity, then in his heart of hearts, and often without admitting it to himself, he is not angry about the student’s error but about his own inability to exploit the student’s rigidity rather than responding to it with his own shocked rigidity. In fact he is annoyed with himself, as he is conscious of his inability to apply the WT principle of adapting and giving way when the student ”flaps around” wildly.
Although (or because?) he has learned so many Chi-Sao sections by heart, he feels like a complete WT beginner. Paradoxically, the rigidity of a student is always welcome to some teachers when they can exploit it to defeat him, and they are only annoyed about this rigidity if they have missed the opportunity to use it to their advantage.  

If this truth were better known, teachers and students would not only learn ”from“ but “with“ each other in future. “In hac schola omnes condiscipuli sumus“ was one of the favourite sayings of Bishop von Hippo: In this school we are all students together. The teacher is merely better trained, presently has greater knowledge and should act as an adviser to the student. Both are working to achieve the great, shared objective of winning without effort with the help of the Taoist WT principles. Lifeless movement sequences learned by rote are of no help here, and neither are greater force or more speed. 

Dear readers, next time we catch ourselves getting annoyed and shouting ”Don’t be so rigid“, let’s simply laugh loudly at ourselves. Laughing at oneself weakens the ego, makes us more human and forms us into a unit with the student which learns together.
Finally another Latin saying: Discendo discimur: We learn by teaching!