Asked how he developed the power to break the steel bar, Yang firmly attributes it to meditation.  His hapkido teacher was a Buddhist, and besides holding special training each spring at a Buddhist temple, he instructed Yang in meditation.
     “He told me,” Yang recalls, “go into the mountains where there are big rocks.  Meditate.  Meditate until those big rocks look as small as your fist.  It took me a long time, but now those big rocks look as small as my fingertips.”
     Yang insists that meditation only imparts the power to make the break, it also gives his hand the strength to withstand the impact.
     What about breaking bottles over his head?  What’s the point in that when he sometimes cuts himself and it gives him headaches for weeks afterwards?  Simple. “It’s just to show you can overcome fear.”  And his feet?  Why don’t they get cut?  Yang says that normal training is sufficient to develop them.
     With 15 years experience as a self-defense instructor to the U.S. Army at Yong San Base in Seoul, Korea, Yang moved to Canada to open a school.  He recalls that when he first started at Yong San he didn’t know what to expect from the Americans.  He learned that there is a difference in body build that makes a difference in performance.  The Americans have longer arms and legs, compared to Koreans.  This meant that it took them longer to get started on some moves.  Once they had learned the moves, however, the longer arms and legs generated a power that he found unbelievable.  He insists that this difference is due not only to body size, but to the different proportions.
     We often hear that Asian instructors water down the training to suit Western students who won’t work as hard as Asians.  Yang says that his American students worked harder than Koreans once they got going at it.  But there were two requirements.  First, you had to get their interest.  They didn’t know about the martial arts, and often didn’t see the need because they had guns.  Once their interest was captured, however, he says they made better progress than Koreans.

  The other requirement was that they had a good instructor, one capable of translating arts designed for Korean minds and bodies. For the first few months, his Western students were slower, but after three or four months, when the interest grew in the history, customs and techniques, there was a change.
     It is not enough, according to Yang, to have your black belt if you want to teach.  Many martial artists achieve their first dan, second dan, third dan, and want to go out and open their own school.  They don’t realize that teaching is a separate discipline from just doing the techniques.  You have to be taught how to teach and he draws attention to his instruction certificates, which are separate from his dan rankings.   
Yang teaches his classes with a shinai in his hand, and he uses it occasionally to touch up his students.  When one of them accuses him of not teaching as hard as he was taught himself he denies it at first, pointing out that he hits with the stick and uses his foot when he hasn’t got the stick in his hand.  The student agrees, but points out that he smiles when he does it.
     When pressed on this point, Yang admits that he doesn’t run his classes as hard as the ones he took, but it would be illegal to hit his students with a baseball bat.  He recalls the WWII general who got cashiered for striking a private.  Anyway, that shouldn’t be necessary if you know what you are doing.
     Unlike a lot of instructors, he says, he wants his students to respect him, not fear him.  You can’t get their respect by insisting on a lot of bowing and then treating them like animals.  You have to get close to your students, learn who they are and let them learn who you are.  And when you hit them with a stick, you smile so that no one’s face is lost.  Then they’ll work hard.