Not categorically - I wasted years trying out visualization based qigong... I've met dozens if not hundreds of people who have too... some for decades.   When I finally got introduced into the authentic Daoist circles it became plainly obvious the difference between where visualization gets you and where following the classic principles gets you. Worlds apart.   However hard you try to harness a misunderstanding you won't get real results...   It's like the difference between a law of attraction aficionado who imagines millions of $ in his bank account VS an actual millionaire who does the actual work that makes the millions of $ in her bank account.     That's true if you assume that Yi is intention as 'a directed focus of awareness'... it will certainly cause problems.   But Yi is a lot more nuanced than that - it's the underlying quality of your mind - not the direction you focus. Yi is achieved with letting go or release... visualization and 'directed intention' are achieved with adding a willful mental action - which is directly the opposite of release.   When you can perceive Qi directly, it becomes really quite obvious... When someone is happy and social, their Qi is expanding outwards... when someone is sad their Qi contracts inwards... When someone is still and mentally quiet their Qi brightens - when someone is still and absorbed in an action or in a form (like their body) the Qi thickens and becomes denser.   But when someone is imagining their Qi expanding, it goes to their head (and around)... when they imagine their Qi contracting inwards - it goes to their head... when they imagine it circulating around their orbit - it's just in their head... When they imagine their Qi is brighter, it goes to the head etc etc etc... Almost always the same (sometimes heart area).   Some people do manage to harness the movement of Qi with focused attention (I've never seen it happen with visualization)... However, this often results in stagnation... One of my teachers was an expert at helping with Qi deviation and 'meditation sickness' etc... Most people who had terrible stagnation were ones who strongly focused their intention (usually on the LDT)... and it can take years to clear stagnation like that.