The OA: 9 Crazy Fan Theories That Might Actually Be True

The movements, which are ostensibly channeled through the captives to open up rifts between dimensions and bring people back from the dead, but are really just interpretive dance moves, are one of the hardest parts of the show to buy into.

However, one Redditor did note a lot of similarities between the movements and a ritual called mudras. It's not a full explanation as such, but does shed some more light on them and may make them more palatable to skeptics.

Used in both Hinduism and Buddhism, mudras sometimes involve the whole body, but most just rely on the hands and fingers. They're used for spiritual reasons, believed to influence the energies of the body and the cosmos, but have also been used to aid with physical ailments as well.

The show has borrowed a lot religious iconography, and obviously the creators did their research, so it seems a fair bit that mudras were a strong influence behind the movements.