Gravity is like an invisible waterfall, falling at a constant speed. It is always there, always acting, and we have become so accustomed to it that we forget it exists. By remembering its existence, our aikido can shift to new levels of understanding and real effectiveness.
Moving from muscle power to effortlessness
When we first learn aikido, we engage our muscles to create movement: big sweeping gestures, lifting the attacker's arm, pushing them down to make them fall. Pushing down is a fair starting point; it gets the hands and the intent more or less going in the right direction. But at some stage the muscular effort needs to be released, and the downward force handed to gravity itself.
Stopping using strength is quite uncomfortable, especially for a higher grade practitioner. They have spent their whole aikido career relying on it, and the habit runs deep. There are a number of reasons to let it go, though.
The first is practical: using strength against uke (the attacker) means they can feel the localised pressure, sense where it is coming from, and resist it. This disturbs the flow. The second is tactical: nage (the practitioner) may come across an uke who is simply stronger, and the whole technique becomes a battle, which is antithetical to the spirit of aikido. The third reason is one that tends to catch up with us eventually: muscular strength declines with age. If we have been depending on it, that loss is quite unsettling.
But there is a fourth reason, and it is the deepest one. Letting go of strength is, in a precise sense, a defeat for the ego. Muscular strength is ego's primary tool for imposing will on the world, for doing things, throwing uke, being effective. To release that habit is to say that ego is no longer the boss. That is not a small thing.
And yet it is necessary, if we want to find what lies underneath.
Letting go of strength is, in a precise sense, a defeat for the ego. Muscular strength is ego's primary tool for imposing will on the world, for doing things, throwing uke, being effective.
Why posture improves downward force
Now, here is something interesting about posture. When nage lifts through the crown — opens the spine, raises the sternum slightly before initiating the drop — the power of the technique increases. This seems counterintuitive, but is something experienced swordsmen have demonstrated to me. Surely dropping means going down, and I should help it by bending my torso?
All too often you see aikidoists stooping to drop their uke, following them down. However, this not only weakens the drop, but also leaves them vulnerable to attack from others. In aikido, postural uprightness and situational awareness matter as much as the technique itself, and are not to be sacrificed by focusing solely on uke.
Lifting the posture organises the whole structure: the fascial web aligns, the body unifies, and the downward movement carries the weight of a connected whole rather than the partial effort of contracted arms. Posture is not separate from the drop. It is the precondition that makes a full drop possible. The waterfall needs the vertical cliff for it to exist.
How to tap into gravity
Get a partner to extend their arm out with a stable centre, and try pushing it down with strength. Notice how your weight shifts into the shoulders, the upper arms tense, the head leans toward the intended direction of fall, the elbow lifts to get leverage. It is effortful, and uke feels every bit of it.
The answer is to do the opposite: lift the posture, relax the shoulders completely, drop the elbow, release the neck and upper arms, and then let the hand fall onto uke's arm, softly and decisively. Uke goes down, with no resistance, because there is nothing to resist. There is only gravity.
10th Dan Koichi Tohei's warm-up exercise of dropping the arm — first left, then right, then both — is the best way I know to actually feel this. The arm drops not excessively slowly, not excessively quickly, but at a particular speed: the speed of the waterfall. Galileo established that everything falls at the same speed, a feather, a rock, an arm. To drop at that speed is to move with a universal constant rather than impose a personal one.
So when we apply kotegaeshi, iriminage, kokyunage or shihonage: lift the posture, relax the arm, connect uke through structure to gravity, and let gravity complete the work. This takes a lot of unlearning, and a lot of letting go. But also a firm, quiet intention.
Just as dropping the arm is effortless, dropping an attacker should be effortless — if we get out of our own way.
