Airbending



Airbending is a mystical martial art practiced by the Air Nomads. As members of the Air Nomads race, Airbenders, as the practitioners are called, are heirs to the aerokinetic ability to control currents of air.

Notable Airbenders

 * Fire Avatar
 * Avatar Yangchen
 * Avatar Kuruk
 * Avatar Kyoshi
 * Avatar Roku
 * Avatar Aang
 * Monk Gyatso
 * Sister Iio
 * Monk Pasang

Origin


Source: Air

Learned From: Flying Bisons

It is said that Airbenders first learned their Arts from the Flying Bison, a sacred creature in the Air Nomads' culture. The Bison typically use their massive beaver-like tail to create gusts of wind, and as the name suggests, can fly without any visible means of propulsion. It is also said that the Airbenders had borrowed the arrow mark from the Flying Bison for their tattoos. These tattoos symbolize a person's mastery of the Airbending art.

On Aang's wanted poster in The Blue Spirit and Sozin's scroll in The Avatar and the Firelord, the word Airbending is written as 截氣神功 (jié fēng shén gōng) which translates as 'the Divine Ability to Halt Air', while the word the word Airbender is written as 風脅功師 (fēng xié gōng shī) which translates as "'wind coercing master'".

Fighting style
Airbending is based on the Ba Gua style of martial arts with a small hint of Hsing Yi, also known as "mind heart boxing." These martial arts feature swift, evasive maneuvers that evoke the intangibility and explosive power of wind, drawing energy from the center of the abdomen.

Ba Gua, which utilizes circle walking, is known for its constant circular movement which makes it difficult for opponents to attack directly or land a blow. Maneuvers employ the entire body with smooth coiling and uncoiling movements utilizing dynamic footwork, open-hand techniques, and throws. A common tactic is to maneuver behind an opponent and mirror their movements preventing them from turning to face the practitioner. Aang has used this to great effect several times.

Unlike other bending disciplines, airbending lacks fatal finishing moves, being an almost entirely defensive art. None the less it is most dynamic and a bender could potentially hold there own in a fight without even attacking once.

Air Manipulation: By using circular, evasive movements, Airbenders build up massive inertia; this buildup of energy is released as massive power. It also allows for wind-based counterattacks that knock opponents off-balance, mimicking the sudden directional shifts of air currents. Attacks vary from simple gusts of wind to miniature tornadoes and cyclones maintaining there circular theme. Even a simple movement can create a air gust, and airbenders increase the power of their moves by performing larger sweeps and spins, using the momentum of their movement to simulate larger gusts. This is also demonstrated with their use of staffs or fans to increase or focus the air currents they create.



Air Shields: The most common defensive tactic involves circling enemies, suddenly changing direction when attacked and evading by physical movement rather than bending. However an airbender can still deflect as needed by throwing up gusts of air close to their bodies as a shield. This is rarely to stop attacks directly and more often pushes the attack aside and away, conserving energy and allowing them to turn the movement into an attack at the same moment. Since air can affect almost all physical objects it can also be used to enforce the momentum of thrown objects or manipulate other objects (though requiring a higher degree of precision).



Air Barrier: This is a more powerful defensive technique where the entire body is surrounded by a dome of air that deflects attacks from all directions.



Air Blast: A more offensive move involving a direct pulse or jet of wind from the hands or feet. The power is generated more from the benders own power than assisted by momentum. This direct blast can reach further with greater accuracy and is used to inflict greater damage.



Breath of Wind Very similar to standard air jet but created from the mouth and lungs. It requires extremely good breath control to employ effectively. Size and focus is more easily controlled, including narrow jets that can strike targets as small as insects, to large gale force gusts.



Enhanced Speed: Airbenders enhance their movement in battle, and can run swiftly by decreasing air resistance around them, and even sprint across or run up vertical surfaces by generating a wind current behind themselves to propel them along. Aang has been shown using this to run many times faster than an average human and maintain this for very long periods, allowing him to travel long distances even without gliding or jumping.

Enhanced Agility: Air movements can also be used a levitation aid. Airbenders jump high and far by riding on strong gusts of wind and can slow or deflect falls by creating cushions of air. The constant movement required by this art makes airbenders naturally flexible and agile. Even without actually bending they can easily maneuver around an opponent by ducking, jumping, and side stepping, appearing to flow around their opponents without expending any energy at all, letting the opponent tire themselves out and create exploitable openings. This conservation of energy combined with high stamina gives them an advantage in prolonged combat.

Master Airbender Level


Air Vortex: A spinning funnel of air of various sizes. This can be used to trap and disorient opponents or as a potent defense since it will deflect and repel any objects and can even throw them back at an opponent (as demonstrated by Aang in his duel with Bumi, the air column easy throwing aside a boulder the size of bus).



Air Funnel: Similar to an Air vortex but to a smaller scale, Aang inventively used this technique as a canon by creating a small air funnel through which small rock projectiles could be entered through the top and could be fired out of the opposite end.



Air Blades: A more offensive move than is typical of airbending principle, this involves a focus slicing air current that can cut through stone or timber with relative ease. This is frequently conjured with a staff rather than the body, using the narrow profile of the object to create a more focused air movement.

Avatar Level Airbenders


Tornadoes/Hurricanes: In addition to very large and powerful air movements, an Avatar level bender can create massive tornadoes and hurricanes at will.

Air Sphere: Similar to the air shield this powerful defense surrounds the bender in a sphere of spinning air that deflects anything coming in at them and can even disintegrate the ground beneath them. Aang sub-consciously uses this every time he enters the Avatar state when angered.

Special Techniques


Gliding: Although all Airbenders can levitate or extend jumps via Airbending, most if not all Airbenders possess a glider for mid range flight. These hand crafted portable wood and canvas structures can collapse into a staff for storage and as an aid when bending. In glider form it is used in conjunction with bending to fly as long as the bender has the strength to maintain the air currents. With stronger winds multiple people can be carried for short distances. As a normal staff, it can be used as a weapon in battle, to aid in bending, and even as a levitation aid when spun above the head like a helicopter propeller.

At the beginning of season 3, Aang destroyed his damaged glider, though it was replaced at the beginning of the invasion of the fire nation by a more advanced version created by the Mechanist and his son Teo.

When visiting Roku's past in The Avatar and the Firelord, Aang sees his then young mentor Monk Gyatso using a variation of the usual flying, using the glider as a makeshift board, surfing on air.



Air Scooter: The Air Scooter, a form of ground transportation invented by Aang himself, is a spherical "ball" of air that can be ridden balancing on it like a top. He has used the technique in many episodes, usually to provide quick bursts of speed as well as to overcome vertical surfaces, including in The Drill in order to scale the wall of Ba Sing Se. The Air Scooter is also shown to be capable of levitating in the air for short periods. The Air Scooter first appeared in, "The Avatar Returns", where Aang uses it to escape Zuko's ship.

It was Aang's invention of this technique that subsequently earned him his tattoos and title of a master at such a young age. In a flashback in the episode, The Storm, Aang tries to teach this move to his Airbending friends. They all fail, at first, but eventually they master the art and develop a game that requires the air scooter to play.



Cloudbending: In, "The Fortuneteller", it's shown that (because clouds are made of water in air) a skilled air or waterbender can manipulate them easily. In the same episode, Aang and Katara join their powers to created a giant skull form with the clouds who is the sign that the volcano will erupt, so the villagers will be safe. It's still unknown if an airbender can perform this technique without a waterbender and vice versa. But even if it's the case, the Avatar can manipulate that two kind of bending so it's not a problem for Aang.



Amplification: In, "The Tales of Ba Sing Se", Aang is shown blowing into his whistle and sending a high frequency sound wave through Ba Sing Sae to round up the animals. It may be possible for airbenders to control sound because sound waves travels through air.

Opposing Bending Art
Airbending is the most passive of the four arts, as many of its techniques center around evading and eluding the opponent (together with the Air Nomads passive teachings and pacifistic beliefs). Earthbending is the direct opposite of this. While the Airbenders avoid or deflect oncoming attacks, Earthbenders absorb them, or overwhelm them with superior force.

Like all of the bending arts, Airbending is balanced out as to not be more or less powerful than the other arts, though its is easily the most dynamic and agile of the four. The series has repeatedly illustrated that it is the skill and power of the user that determines victory.

Weapons
Unlike other nations, who only rarely use weapons with their bending, airbenders commonly use their signature staffs to augment their powers in battle. This is usually done by enhancing the air movements created by sweeps or thrusts of the staff. With the staffs narrow profile the currents created can be be more accurately controlled and even shaped into cutting blades. Metal fans can also be used in combination with airbending as seen by Avatar Kyoshi and Avatar Aang.

Also Aang has proposed the idea of a weapon called a: Wind Sword, whilst the group were shopping in a weapons shop in the fire nation. Aang stated that an airbender uses a sword handle, channels air out and swings it around like a blade.

Weakness
Lacking Fatal Moves: Though it stands as the most dynamic of the Bending Arts, the primary weakness of Airbending is it lacks a fatal finishing move, being almost entirely a defensive art. This fact in itself is a reflection of the principles held by the Air Nomads, which instruct that all life is precious and conflict should be avoided whenever possible.



Enclosed spaces: Though rarely exhibited, an airbender would be disadvantaged in an enclosed space since it would restrict their movement and ability to dodge attacks. This wouldn't stop them however since it would focus any air movement. Airbending is different from the other arts in that it is virtually impossible to separate an airbender from their element, since even when their limbs are restrained they can still airbend from their mouths, and locking someone in a vacuum would kill them anyway.

Elemental Symbol
The symbol for Air and airbending is a closed, clockwise, inverted triple spiral triskele. This symbol is seen on the pendant on Monk Gyatso's prayer beads. It also seems to resemble a tomoe.

Spirituality and Airbending
Young Airbenders are raised in one of the four Air Temples, at each corner of the globe, hidden away atop mountain ranges on remote islands. The Northern and Southern Air Temples are exclusively male, and staffed by Airbender monks, who instruct young Benders in their art. According to reports from Comic Con 2005, the Eastern and Western Air Temples are exclusively female. However in "The Storm", it was decided that Aang would finish his training at the Eastern Air Temple, and it was at the same temple where he, along with several other young boys, was first introduced to his animal companion, Appa. Airbenders who have mastered the element are marked as such by blue tattoos striping along the head and limbs, terminating in an arrow on the forehead, backs of the hands, and the tops of the feet. Male monks sport completely shaven heads, and female Airbenders shave their foreheads, but leave the back of their hair uncut. Avatar Yangchen can be seen in the episode, "The Avatar State," Book Two, Chapter One. In "Appa's Lost Days", through a flashback, an Airbender nun, Sister Iio, is shown to be in charge of the Female Airbenders of the Eastern Air Temple.

Though this ritual is probably not exclusive to Air Nomadic culture, when the Avatar reincarnation is to be an Air Nomad, the Air Monks test Airbender children to see if they are the reincarnation of the Avatar by asking them to select toys out of thousands. If the child selects the toys used in previous incarnations, the Avatar has been found. Traditionally, knowledge of his or her identity as Avatar is kept from the child until age sixteen. (This same test is used by Tibetan Buddhist monks when a reincarnated Dalai Lama is expected.

Air Nomads generally espouse a philosophy of conflict avoidance and respect for all forms of life. This accounts for Airbending's stress on defensive maneuvers and its apparent lack of fatal finishing attacks. Due to the spirituality of the Air Nomads in accordance to the size of its population, every Air Nomad retains bending abilities. The Air Nomads have the smallest population but the most increased spirituality while benders in general make up only a small percentage of the larger, more populous nations.

The Last Airbender
A century before the time of the series, the Airbenders were the victims of genocide at the hands of the Fire Nation. The temples were invaded, and all the Airbender monks slaughtered in an effort to break the Avatar's cycle of reincarnation and ensure the Fire Nation's victory in their imperialist war.

Ironically, the only known survivor of the massacre is the very person the Fire Nation sought to kill in its quest for supremacy: the twelve-year-old Airbender and Avatar, Aang, had run away from home shortly before the war began in earnest and became trapped in suspended animation, frozen in an iceberg near the South Pole. He has since been awoken from sleep, and begun a quest to restore balance and peace to the warring nations.

The last known vestiges of Airbender culture include one surviving Flying Bison, Appa, and a winged lemur, Momo, both of whom are Aang's pets. The abandoned Northern Air Temple has since been colonized by displaced Earth Kingdom citizens, led by The Mechanist. The Eastern Air Temple is inhabited by Guru Pathik, who claims to be an old friend of Monk Gyatso.