Rooting / Grounding

A couple of days ago I had my wife push against my arms in the ward off stance for fun. She was probably humoring me and not pushing very hard but she did push and it felt like I was able to withstand a certain amount of force without my structure collapsing. With my right arm out it felt like I could feel the force go into my back foot a bit and on the left side when she pushed I could feel my ribs compressing quite a bit. We have not really talked about rooting or grounding much in our training. Is this skill something that will just develop the more we progress on feeling the couples and the other stages or the training or is there specific stuff to learn to lead force down the body? Just curious