EDITOR'S NOTE: Stanford is about to study the theory, but when it comes to practice George Leonard is hard to beat. At 76, he is comfortably a master of aikido, and convinced it is the key to health. PNS contributor Eve Pell is formerly the number one ranked woman road runner over 60 in the United States, and writes a regular column on veteran athletes for Pacific News Service.

"Aikido prevents aging," asserts 76-year-old George Leonard, who took up the martial art at 48, earned his black belt at 52 and has been teaching it for 25 years at his dojo (studio) in Mill Valley, California. "And Stanford University has just received a large grant to study this."

Indeed, Leonard's startling theory underlies a study about to be undertaken by Stanford's Center for Research in Disease Prevention. A group of men and women 55 years old and up will follow a regimen inspired by aikido principles, then be tested physically and mentally to see whether the normal deterioration of aging has been slowed or arrested.

Leonard, a leader in the human potential movement and co-founder of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, has led a remarkable life. A 19-year-old attack pilot in the Pacific in World War II, a Southerner who reported on the civil rights movement for Look magazine throughout the sixties and seventies, he has immersed himself in the issues of his time. He has written 12 books on topics including education, sex, masculinity and sports.

Not least of his accomplishments is the pure athletic ability he displays in the course of conducting aikido classes. At an age when many people boast of taking regular walks, he battles young opponents, takes hard falls, rolls over backward and comes up standing and smiling.

His school, Aikido of Tamalpais, occupies a large space above an art gallery. The atmosphere is spare and Asian. A shrine centered along the front wall honors an old Asian man with a white beard, a vase of flowers and a small potted plant beneath. Other walls display framed calligraphy; a shoji screen and a small wall of woven bamboo add to the ambiance.

On a Saturday morning, ten pairs of students, the younger ones in their 20s, the older ones in their 60s, are practicing. One attacks, the other defends -- in back-and-forth maneuvers that end with the attacker being thrown, usually quite gracefully, to the floor.

Barefoot, they wear white jackets, with long, dark, wide trousers, and sashes tied around their waists.

As the class progresses, the exercises become faster, the falls more spectacular. Some people are flying through the air, rolling diagonally as they land and instantly up again. The room resounds sharply with slapping sounds like beaver tails on water as the fallers slap the mat with their palms when they hit.

Then Leonard begins a more advanced exercise: he stands alone on the mat, fending off three or four attackers who come at him, one right after another. He throws, evades, turns, moves sideways, whirls an attacker around and down.

The wide legs of his trousers furl like a long skirt, his carriage remains erect, arms and legs moving with deceptive speed and efficacy, a broad smile on his face. Suddenly, Leonard drops swiftly to the floor as an unsuspecting attacker rushes in, tripping him like in a Bruce Lee kind of move, then leaps to his feet, centered and ready for the next one.

Striding like a pantalooned stork among the diligent pairs, he watches them intently. "Blend," he tells a young man. "Relax, so the ki can flow." When he illustrates a move, it looks incredibly easy -- his attackers go down so swiftly it is hard to see that he has done anything at all.

Sometimes he speaks to the class as he demonstrates how to move an arm or shift one's weight -- explaining and defending at the same time, effortlessly. During an interview after the class, Leonard said he quickly realized that aikido had far more to offer than a mere physical discipline. "I went beyond the physical, straight into the mental," he said. "Through classes, workshops and books, I have introduced these ideas to more than 50,000 people over the years."

In his most recent book, The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei, Leonard takes the principles of the martial art out of the dojo and into everyday situations. Aikido contains principles that will help non-practitioners both in their own lives and for the benefit of society, he believes.

"In aikido, there is no competition. O Sensei, the founder, forbade competition. The point is not to struggle, but to reconcile the world, to promote love in the world. Aikido is a very radical martial art." Leonard contrasts aikido with jujitsu and sumo, where the goal is to defeat the opponent. The word itself means "the way of harmonizing with the spirit of the universe."

But he doesn't see aikido as a means of reconciling human beings to the aging process; rather he sees it as a deterrent to aging, a subject about which he has strong opinions.

"In the past, there were no more sports after high school and college for the average person, that was just for the upper class with their horses and tennis courts. I remember my father running a sprint across the grass at 40 and turning green," he says.

But, he asserts, that attitude toward getting older is the result of false assumptions, of measuring the condition of a sedentary population that did not exercise. He cites recent experiments showing how strength and muscle mass of men and women in their 80s and 90s increased with weight training.

At this point, Leonard gets a little embarrassed. "I don't want to be an egotist, but I have to tell you that my balance now is better than it used to be, because I practice it. When I am taking walks, if I see a curb, I walk on it. It's not just to stay the same. I am better at playing the piano, and at public speaking."

The body does age, he concedes with reluctance -- the lung capacity goes down, for instance. "But so many things you don't have to let go of," he insists. "I have the most fun at aikido eluding people. I don't feel my age is any factor at all. I can't be as good as a 20-year-old but I can be very good." He believes that the Stanford study of aging will prove his theory that aikido keeps people young, and that may well provide the subject matter for yet another book.

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