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Analysis of Aikido techniques and practice with the aid of Physics
As far as I know there's only one interesting book that deals with the Physics side of Aikido, 'Ratti, Westbrook':Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere', but it's just a description with nice illustrations; the few other essays I've met spend just a few and usually wrong words, using terms like 'lever' that are not correct. So I'll try to have an exchange that can make our knowledge of Aikido richer and also, I think, stimulating.
In these last years I spent part of the week teaching Aikido to Elders. In the beginning it was a Region's Course on Elders' health, focused on the prevention of falls; but since in Aikido the very first lessons teach you to roll while falling -a prerequisite of every technique- it was only natural to include Aikido in the teaching.
We used to talk before and after the lesson, and as things go this led me to delve in the most recent parts of neurophysiological research (with which I had some familiarity eons ago);
first thing we discovered was that many of the common held beliefs were no more true, especially one quite interesting for elders: it's not true that dead neurons are not replaced; research of the last few years in Italy ( ref 71)), Australia and United States had seen that in certain conditions that you find in some martial arts like TaiChi, Aikido and also in Yoga -namely physical activity together with mental concentration- neurons can regrow. And this opened a whole world of opportunities for prevention (and even healing) of degenerative illnesses like Alzheimer.
But this was only the beginning, since the research on brain, consciousness, healing has made some giant steps.
I'll try to sketch some of these (a complete reference is in my book 'The Physics of Aikido and the Body-Mind Unity) in the following posts, but the first thing to underline is that is not just the usual advice to make physical exercise in order to feel well and age well; the research
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Aikido is different from other martial arts because its core, harmony between man and nature's energy, encompasses also the opponent: so there no fight between enemies.
From a Physics point of view this is quite convenient, since it allows to resort to Relativity: Tori becomes the center of reference, and Uke is the only one which moves (in order to take Tori's movements into account you have to add the same movements to Uke, just reversed.
And this frame of reference allows to simplify all the Mechanics, to the point that you may derive general laws: the main one is conservation of Energy. It means that in Aikido Techniques there's no waste of Energy, and this is a beautiful result, since it confirms that Aikido is actually a way of harmony with Nature.
(The details can be followed in my paper quoted in the Introduction)
The technical form of all Techniques is based on Tensors (a Tensor is the combination of more Vectors); in our case Tensors correspond to Rotations, one or more, or a combination of.
This helps us to see that the most essential technique is irimi-tenkan, which gives way to all other techniques.
I'll start with a few examples:
1- lever
In Aikido there are no levers: when you apply a force to something or somebody (say uke) you have to take into account the overall reaction (a force from the earth passing through uke), so the result is a combination of two forces and an axis (it's called a tensor) whose effect is a rotation.
(To clarify things look at the way we walk: our foot pushes the earth (exerts a force downwards and a little backwards upon the earth) and the earth reacts with an opposite force through our foot, so our foot goes high and forward).
2- work
A force has two elements: intensity and direction, and can be represented by an arrow (usual name a vector); its effect in general is a displacement, which has similar elements, length and direction (still a vector). Work is defined as the product of the force for the component of displacement in the same direction.
It's interesting to underline that in Aikido force and displacement are in general perpendicular, that means that work is null. So Aikido techniques are generally made without effort.
3-energy
This is a term that is often used in creative ways, sometimes meaning force, other times something in other dimensions. In order to avoid misunderstandings we use the simple mechanical definition, that is, the ability to perform work.
This is also interesting for Aikido, since when work is null we have used/created/wasted no energy; so in general Aikido moves don't waste energy.
In a simple move (sa
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08-30-2024 08:57 AM 
