I certainly recommend practicality as well! Kundalini is a most real, practical phenomenon, and its consequences. What I've discovered is that some ways do work for me that have worked for a lot of others, and it doesn't get much more practical than that. That is why these things are passed down -- because people find they work.
If you look at worldwide spirituality, no one dogma is going to get you to the truth of what 'everyone' experiences and practices. Assuming that one pattern will hold good everywhere just isn't useful, nor is assuming that there are no connections at all. The only way that you can make simple ideas like that stick is by ignoring the actual evidence to the contrary!
For example, we know chakras don't exist in every system -- but on the other hand, they do exist in
some systems. One certainly couldn't say "chakras are Hindu and that's the end of it"! For example there is
some rather good evidence that the Hopi Indians in their system have spiritual centres at head, forehead, throat, heart, and navel, and that they use them in a way not dissimilar to the yogic methods. (Although this is also contested by others...)
OTOH, take the Taoist system which involves three so-called 'tan tiens' or cauldrons, the most important one being at the navel. Perhaps some would glance at those and say they are like chakras -- but they aren't! And if you actually learn to make use of those energy centres in the Taoist manner, you will see that they operate differently from chakras. They have an inner-alchemy method that works in some ways similarly to kundalini on a broad level but it goes through a different process.
Furthermore, we can't say that the tan tien is
only Chinese. Some have told me there is evidence for it as far afield as in the Hebrew, the Norse and the Greek traditions! I'm not able to check it all... but one I have checked for example is the early modern German mystic
Johann Georg Gichtel, who was also alchemically orientated (from a Western point of view, he had no knowledge of China) and who wrote for example:
That could be a Taoist alchemist talking, and he claims to get his clue from the Old Testament! (I haven't looked up the Song to check...)
Then again, Gichtel knew about chakras too from internal observation, only he placed them
off-centre in some cases, which is a theme throughout the western use of energy centres too.
I could go on... the point is, the more you actually listen to people's experiences, the more convoluted the connections and differences become. They don't respond to a single overall pattern... there is no point pretending it's 'the same for everyone' or 'different for everyone' when clearly it isn't like that.