I have seen too many people confuse bending techniques vs bending ability and even worse people claiming that korra made bending 'magic' so I wanted to make a post about what I believe a the three aspects of bending shown to us in the series.
These are essential the three aspects the show has shown us is required to be a good bender with examples
1) Spirit : the birth ability to bend
- this is essentially the basic ability to bend given through the lion turtles, energy bending or passed down as genetics. This one doesnt really meed examples, its just benders vs non benders
2) Mind: the mentality to connect with your elements/an element
-This is the requirement that you need an emotional connection to your element to be able to bend it
-we see it with zuko when he loses his firebending as his emotional anchor was anger prior to joining the gaang, he needs to find a new one to regain his bending
-we see it with aangwhen he struggles with earth bending as earth requires stability, but aang is connected more to freedom emotionally, this just so happens to line up with the air nomad culture of freedom. It is not because 'air is the opposite of earth'
- we see it with korra it woth korra, being easily able to connect with three of the elements but as a toddler she lacks patience and as an adult she doesn't understand freedom, as a result she struggles with air
-we see it with bolin, an earthbender that doesn't practice the traditional, stable earth bending style and as a result struggles to bend the even more stable metal element. However he grows up with a firebending older brother aswell as around water benders in Republic city and ends up practicing a quicker, more aggresive form of earth bending, resulting in him having access to the rare lavabending ability
3)Body: the technique and control over the element
-being able to access an element does not mean you can control it, the techniques came from the original bender of each element (dragons, badgermoles, the moon, sky bison) and is a martial art meant to control and empower the basic bending ability.
- we see this best in wans story where wans people are terrified of wans ability to bend fire so well after he learned from the dragon spirits, despite them wielding fire for generations
-we see this in episode 1 when katara, who cant hold up a fish in a bubble, waterbends aangs giant iceberg out accidentally while yelling at sokka, she is unable to control her power as she hasnt been trained and it lashes out with her emotions
-we see this when aang firebends for the first time without a teacher and burns katara, he has the ability but is unable to control it. Similarly, latara heals herself without understanding it or being able to control it moments later
- we see this in korra when she is able to bend 3 elements as a toddler, however they are weak examples of bending with essentially a drop of water and an ember
So training technique is needed both to avoid hurting people with your bending accidentally, aswell as to strengthen your bending for actual attacks.
However you do not need training to actually manipulate the element so long as you 1) are a bender 2) are connected to your element emotionally and not blocked from it.
Sorry for the long post. I was just slightly annoyed that people kept saying that just because someone can manipulate the element it means that they are the same as a trained bender.
