[craigzucchini]

While Yoga may be a great way to improve flexibility, among other physical benefits, prana is no more than a quack belief if I were to be generous. Unless you're thinking of something remotely testable/measurable/not rooted in a religious philosophy/not tied to breatharianism

[kaybe]

Disclaimer: I have no experience with the specific field mentioned here.

I do think these seemingly absurd images have tremendous value for learning. The openly visible motions and postures are easy to teach. But there is more to movement and the feeling of ones own body that that. As I see it at the moment, these images are shortcuts coded in emotion and in-body-experience-feelings to teach the things that are very hard to teach otherwise.

The way eg Ki is described does make it sound extremely unlikely to actually exist, but using the images while moving or just breathing is quite powerful, and one can become aware of things inside the body that are not obvious. (One can often clearly see and feel the difference when someone does or does not do this (during the actions that need them).)

I can highly recommend to try.

edit:

Thinking of examples, the exact tilt of my hip for whatever use is best controlled by emotion. I have control about muscles in my lower body area (?) that do things to the way my body moves and reacts, this works almost exclusively over images and emotion. My posture is subtly different when I use emotion/images to work on it. I can use a lot more force when the images are right (the whole body is used, no joints at a bad angle etc, things that are very hard to do consciously.) Things like this.

[djtriptych]

It's a mistake to limit your own understanding the universe to what can be measured by science, while surrounded by perceivable phenomena that science can't explain.

It's at the very least arrogant to reject wholesale the common experience of millions of practitioners over thousands of years. Yoga is not dogmatic. Try it and see for yourself.

As for my specific claim, science has neither proven nor disproven the perception of prana, though you might consider that it has been described in many unconnected sources across the written record of history.

[craigzucchini]

Again, I disagree. It's arrogant to say "Hey, X thing I believe in can cure you of Y disease because so many people think it can and you're just ignorant. Nevermind the fact that it's totally untestable or perferms equally to placebo, as long as you feel better it's working!". It's pretty not arrogant to say "Hey, you have a condition that science has at best a limited understanding of, but it might work based on the clinical trials and controlled studies that have been done. It's the best we have to go on, or you could pray."

I think you also mistake "understanding of the universe" for a perceived experience. Just because you did mushrooms at Shambala once doesn't give you a better understanding of anything except maybe why you made some stupid choices in the past.

Why would Yoga be dogmatic? It's exercise.

[djtriptych]

The tradition of yoga is far more than exercise. Many parts of it, including the exercise, deep breathing, and meditation, are indeed testable and outperform placebo.

Your concept of self is something that certainly happens but is largely outside the realm of science.

Doing mushrooms certainly might impart an understand of, at the very least, the experience of being high on mushrooms. Or perhaps which parts of your perception are merely the reflection of a specific neurochemical balance.

[unmole]

Thousands of practitioners and millions of users also believe in the efficacy of Homeopathy. They are convinced that diluting a substance actually increases its potency! It's not very difficult to find examples of millions of people believing in nonsense. The Placebo effect is very real.

Science hasn't disproven the existence of Invisible Pink Unicorns either. But I definitely would hold off on building unicorn crossings untill we actually have evidence.

[djtriptych]

Science has, on the other hand, often corroborated common wisdom arising from the yoga tradition.

It's up to you whether to trust the output of the generations before you. In my experience these traditions are rarely categorically wrong.