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An Englishman on experience practicing Falun Gong

2008-01-22 Author:By: Sour Mango Powder

I decided to post this after reading a long thread on a martial arts forum about the Falun Gong movement. I wasn't able to join that forum as my ropey old laptop 'doesn't support Flash' or somesuch, so I'm posting here instead, and I can ramble on indeterminately about anything connected or unconnected that pops into my mind.

I work in a little wholefood shop in Brighton. I have made friends with lots of customers, and one day a regular customer came in and told me he had just been to a really intense 2-hour chi kung class and felt very invigorated and energised. I decided to go along the following week. It was supposed to be at that grumpy crystal shop on Ship Street (I applied for a job there once. The application form asked my what my Sun and Moon signs were, so I put Frog and Filing Paper. I didn't get the job). It turned out to have moved into a park on Dyke Road, and I just made it in time. I said to the teacher, 'Is this the chi kung?', and she said 'It's Falun Gong'. I had vaguely heard of a religious organisation called Falun Gong, mainly because of the terrible persecution inflicted on them by the Chinese government. I enjoyed the practice a lot and found it very relaxing. It involved lots of standing postures, which is something I do regularly anyway.

I went again the next week. This time it was upstairs in the grumpy crystal shop. I enjoyed the practice again, although I found it a bit more difficult this time. Then at the end I was talking to one of the other practitioners about martial arts. I guessed he was a martial artist from his body shape and the way he moved. As I told him I was studying traditional kung fu, someone else interrupted and said that if I seriously wanted to do Falun Gong I would have to give up martial arts. Her statement led to an argument between her and the instructor, in which I was hardly able to get a word in. It appeared that they were fighting over me, based on the teaching of the sect. It was not so much what they were saying that disturbed me - there is nothing very strange about being asked to give up one practice in order to start another one - but the way they were saying it. They were talking in a kind of semi-jargon language about 'tai chis and chi kungs', pompously rolling back their eyes as if receiving information from a higher source while repeating statements from some lecture or document such as 'There is no such master at this time. There is no such master at this time.' Finally the instructor said, 'Believe me, I know a lot,' which struck me as unlikely and somehow self-contradictory. I was thoroughly and finally put off by this behaviour. I know a couple of other people who have also brushed with Falun Gong and left for much the same reasons. One of them told me that the Falun Gong bible forbids practitioners from reading any other books. There was definitely something a bit nutty about the instructor and the other practitioner she was arguing with, not a state of mind I wish to emulate myself.

Obviously I am not condoning the horrible persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese state. But I do not feel it is a beneficial organisation and I would not recommend it. The practices may well be powerful but the organisation and its leader seem a little insane.

(Blogspot.com, Saturday, January 19, 2008)

Original text from: http://sourmangopowder.blogspot.com/2008/01/joy-of-sects.html

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