Hi Jason,
I wasn't referring to AikiWeb, but to the writings that Chris has translated here. However, you are right -- what I stated could be applied to the IS/Aiki discussions on AikiWeb as well, although the "Watch my hands..." snippet doesn't apply at all -- no one here is intentionally trying to distract or mislead anyone. I addressed the reason why everything is written so vaguely, in response to your post on the "tomato, tomahto" thread (second part of my post) here:
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showth...375#post320375
The close-to-the-vest nature of Japanese (and other Asian) teachers who traditionally withheld knowledge intentionally from their own students, may rub many of us the wrong way, but I think we can appreciate why Sagawa and others who wrote of aiki would not disclose training methods publicly (in books, etc.) when they were considered so precious. Inventors take out patents and copyrights on ideas, but body methods are not protected that way.
I agree that it is often unproductive when we come to a public forum and allude to "special things," but then do not elaborate on what they are and how they work. But I also appreciate the reasons and have been "guilty" of it myself for the reasons stated. I do think that the greater idea behind some of these discussions is "There's some deep stuff out there, and we're willing to show it to anyone who sincerely wants to know, but we won't broadcast the specifics on a public forum."