The COMPASS experiment at CERN reports in a recent Physical Review Letter the first precise measurement of the electromagnetic polarizability of the charged pion. Pions, exchanged copiously between the protons and neutrons in a nucleus, are the lightest particles that undergo - in the nucleus effectively mediate - the strong interaction. Their stiffness against deformations, showed by the electromagnetic polarizability, is therefore a direct measure of the strong binding force between the constituents. This and other very interesting non-perturbative QCD effects will be presented and explained, knowing that while the Higgs boson accounts for the masses of the fundamental particles, the bulk of our mass comes from the binding energy of the strong interaction in the low energy regime.