Though aikido is enmeshed a densely literate web — one has only to think of the tanka and other writings, not to mention the calligraphy of the Founder O Sensei himself — its primary mode of learning is physical.
It you are looking for an advance rational explanation, you are wasting your time. This is because aikido aims at inscribing its logic into your own bodies, where it will lodge until you transpire, or at least as long as your body responds to your mind.
That is the dilemma I in particular face returning to aikido in my late seventies. My thought moves faster than my body, though It too is destined to decay. Already is.
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There is admittedly something here of the zen master’s twacking with a stick the novice monk who is meditating rationally about the meaning of a koan. But aikido is not zen, zen is not aikido.
