I knew a family that was heavily into this crap. They touted the health benefits of TM. Of course, anything that made you stop and do mind-numbing mental exercises to forget about the stress of your life for a half hour or more a day has to have some benefit.
For flying, the yogi-wannabees start by assuming that joint-hurting folded-leg position, then they start bouncing on a mat. (That’s gotta hurt) Doug Henning the magician IIIRC was one of these, claimed to have seen the truly advanced yogis graduate from the bouncing phase to zooming around the room. Nothing like that is on Youtube, of course. The skeptic types claim that in the few actual demonstrations, these guys have learned to “jump” pretty well in this pose and are just bouncing around the room like they were working a bouncy castle.
Well, let us put our minds to this, and propose various alternative theories about how yogis might be doing this, and then investigate what physics (or biology) would need to be adjusted to make it work. That is, we should first suspend disbelief in order to suspend a yogi.
I propose that it’s biology, as Chronos suggests. There is a certain small amount of naturally helium in the air, and I think yogis develop the skill to selectively inhale relatively larger concentrations of this and less of the other gases. After a certain number of minutes of doing this (depending on their skill), they will have accumulated enough helium in their lungs to float. With sufficient practice and skill, they can control their altitude precisely, so that they can remain suspended just a foot or two above the floor, rather than floating up to the ceiling or (if outdoors) out into space.
Or they could have expanded their lungs to fill almost all of their bodies. You can fill your lungs with helium, and you will just weigh a few grams lighter than when you fill them with air. To float you’d need to be nearly hollow.
That might work, even without the helium - turn yourself into a very thin film balloon representation of a human and you could push off from the floor and appear to float for multiple seconds at a time.
It seems like the same thing to me. The yogis are supposed to have… what, focus? spirituality? anyway, some quality that lets them defy gravity. In the case of Jesus and Peter, it is faith that causes them to defy gravity to walk on water. In both cases we gotta say, “nah, it doesn’t work that way. Good ethics/karma doesn’t ever counteract gravity”.
It would be awesome if deep meditation could give you enough insight into reality to reverse gravity though, or if your religious beliefs could persuade God to suspend the attraction between the Earth and your mass. A little hokum makes for a provocative story. Advanced Buddhists are supposed to gain the power of levitation too (but they aren’t supposed to use it :))
The observation was not about Yogis/Jesus/Peter - the observation was around how most people inside the faith approached the claims. In Abrahamic religions - the holy book/religious leaders or founders are all absolute and correct. In Eastern religions ,especially Hinduism, there is general acceptance among followers is that there is a fair amount of hokum and embellishment in the holy books and tales. Its not a deterrence to their faith.
Yogi is also a very loose term - literally it means a practitioner of Yoga. In most cases it means an enlightened person - the female yogi is called Yogini. Not trying to threadcrap and make this into a dissertation but yoga itself does not mean doing stretching exercises etc. A carpenter putting his heart and soul into her work is also an yogi - its equivalent to the concept of Flow. So in short - a person in Flow could be called a yogi.
Those “yogic” bouncing video clips around are pretty silly…they have contests for speed around the room etc…good workout I suppose!
I once got a free test many years ago, of those flotation tanks…extremely high salt content in the water gave you much more buoyancy…you felt like you were lying on TOP of the water, rather than in it…I’ve heard the Salton Sea feels the same…
When I was a kid we would try and run across partially frozen shallow lakes, with the ice bowing under our feet…kinda like walking on water:cool: Someone almost always broke through, filled up the boots, and home we went.
Probably not a good idea with deeper water…:smack:
Assuming they somehow need to de-gravitize their component matter, they could maintain stability in their levitated space by de-gravitizing only as much of their mass as would equalize the weight of the atmosphere that they displace,and distributing their weight distribution. They would then become a body in the air that was at equilibrium, like a hot air balloon. If the fluid atmosphere remain free of drafts, they could learn to hover. That would solve the problems of flying off into space or bobbing unceremoniously.
Just as some animals can walk on water, some things can be supported by the pressure of sunshine, although you’d have to redefine “walking.”. Gotta page a physicist on this one.
If levitation is done through manipulation of physical forces, then a scientific explanation would be required.
If your waterwalking depends on Divine forces (especially since Jesus is infinitely powerful [in the Bible ar least]), then bending/cancelling such physical forces is done through extraphysical means and science could not help us understand them.
