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.
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.