(Presented at Harvard University in April, 2000)
HEALTH BENEFITS -BY-PRODUCT OF THE PRACTICE
In March 1999, Mrs. Song, a 65-year-old Chinese woman, came to the United States to visit her son and his wife. For ten years she had hesitated to leave China, where she was under the close care of physicians of both Chinese medicine and modern western medicine. She had a long-standing history of coronary artery disease with angina for which she had to take nitrates every day to control. She also had severe rheumatoid arthritis that she took a number of medications and Chinese herbal remedies. Despite such treatment, she had very low energy, shortness of breath with mild exertion, and swollen legs, ankles in particular. She could foretell weather changes according to the severity of her joint pain. She had eye surgery 35 years before, which left her with glasses and uneven vision. In addition she suffered nicotine addiction and smoked a pack of Chinese cigarettes every day for 35 years. Of course it did not help her poor lung and heart function at all. She had tried every possible way to quit with no luck before arriving in Minnesota.
With a promise of having a physician, with knowledge of both traditions of medicine, and secure with a three-month supply of all her medications and herbal formulas, and, believe it not, 20 cartons of Chinese cigarettes, she came with her husband (a smoker too!) for a three-month visit. As you can imagine, very soon, the whole apartment building smelled of smoke.
Both her son and daughter-in-law practice Falun Gong. They began to read aloud to their parents Zhuan Falun, essentially a transcript of Li Hongzhi's lectures in China, one chapter every day. Mrs. Song found the book very interesting and liked the reading very much. It reminded her of the traditional moral teaching she received from her mother when she was young. One day, when they read chapter 7, in which there are two paragraphs about how smoking negatively affects the practice of cultivation, it says, " I advise everyone that if you truly want to practice cultivation you should quit smoking from now on, and it is guaranteed that you can quit...When you smoke a cigarette again, it will not taste right. If you read this lecture in the book, it will also have this effect."
Mrs. Song was very excited about it and really wanted to practice it. However she did not expect this effect could happen so soon. That day after lunch, she habitually lit her cigarette, totally forgetting what she had read. Her son and daughter noticed, but said nothing. After several deep drags, she suddenly dropped the cigarette and rushed to the bathroom. She almost vomited. Apparently it was more than just " not taste right." She did not give up her skepticism and kept testing herself by putting the unlit cigarette under her nose and just smelling it. Every time she did that, it made her sick. She has not smoked since.
After reading the whole book and also watching the video lecture, Mrs. Song began to understand a lot of things she had neverknown, such as why people have to go through life stages like birth, old age, illness and death. She leaned that people should cultivate and practice in order to assimilate into the nature of the universe, to be mentally enlightened to the truth of the universe, and to be physically purified and transformed. She embraced the teaching and learned and practiced the five exercises every day, too.
One day after a group exercise practice, she suddenly had chest pain, which was new to her, as the medication she took should have prevented it. Feeling puzzled she began to remember the Teacher's words she had read, "I do not talk about healing illness here, nor will we heal illness. As a genuine practitioner, however, you cannot practice cultivation with an ill body. I will purify your body. The body purification will be done only for those who come to truly learn the practice and the Fa...." " ...We must dig it out and eliminate it completely from its root. With this, you may feel that your illness has recurred. This is to remove your karma fundamentally, thus you will have reactions."
She continued her reading and exercising despite her episodic chest pain. In about one week, all the symptoms disappeared, together with her joint pain and edema in her ankles. She bought, with happiness this time, herself a new pair of shoes, the size she had 20 years ago. She was amazed at the power of Falun Gong and began striving to live every moment of her life following the principles of "Truthfulness, Compassion and Forbearance." One morning in June 1999, she woke up and found her glasses broken under her, a kind of accident that had not happened to her before. She immediately discovered she did not need them to see clearly any more. On June 25, Mrs. Song gave a speech to share her experiences at a conference held in Chicago. On stage in front of a large audience, she read her paper wearing no glasses.
Such health benefits are common to practitioners of Falun Gong. In 1997, a group of scientist and physicians from top hospitals and medical research institutions in Beijing surveyed 12,731 Falun Gong practitioners about the health benefits obtained from practicing Falun Gong. According to the survey, out of the 12,731 participants, 93.4% had medical conditions, and 49.8% had suffered from at least three diseases before they began practicing Falun Gong. Through practicing Falun Gong, the total healing effectiveness reached 99.1%, among which the complete recovery rate was 58.5. %. The fraction of "very energetic" people increased to 55.3% after practicing, from 3.5% before practicing, 96.5% people also felt mentally healthier. Each one of them saved the state an average of 3215 Yuan of medical expense.
However, if you ask Falun Gong practitioners if health is the goal of their practice, the answer may surprise you: "No, health benefits are only the by-products of our practice."
How could they obtain these by-products almost for free while, using the best that modern medicine has to offer, it takes a lifetime and an enormous amount of dollars and talent to obtain such an effect? Can we make sense of it from the perspective of modern medicine or even traditional Chinese Medicine?
MEDICAL PERSPECTIVES---- SCRATCHING THE SURFACE OF BODY/MIND RELATIONSHIP
What benefit people could be obtained from practicing Falun Gong? Following are some common answers:
Become more relaxed, clear-headed, and free of stress. Raise the quantity and quality of your personal energy. Give up smoking or other undesirable habits. Improve relationships with people around you, especially through learning how to handle interpersonal conflicts beneficially. Improve your health and increase your physical fitness. Understand more about what constitutes your "true self". Learn about fundamental natural laws and principles. Understand why tribulations enter our lives and how they can be useful. Learn about the relationship between mind and matter. Work on self-improvement while spending time with a group of compassionate, accepting, and likewise-committed people.
It is obvious that Falun Gong practitioners are free of stress and free of bad habits.
Modern medicine is embracing a biopsychosocial model. After investigating 170 sudden deaths over about 6 years in 1971, George Engel observed that serious illness or even deaths might be associated with psychological stress or trauma.
Emotional stress can contribute to wide range of health problems such as coronary artery disease, asthma, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, flare-ups of viral infections, likelihood of contracting infectious mononucleosis, cancer, AIDS and even Alzheimer's disease.
Bad life style causes 70-80% of all the illness. For instance, in United States, About 10% of women and 20% of men have met the diagnostic criteria for alcohol abuse. About 200,000 deaths each year are directly related to alcohol-related disorders such as suicide, cancer, heart disease, and hepatic disease. Alcohol abuse reduces life expectancy by about 10 years. The direct and indirect social costs of these disorders are estimated at more than $150 billion, about $600 per capita.
In this country, an estimated 61 million people were current smokers in 1995, 4.5 million adolescents. Every year, there are 170,000 new cases of lung cancer diagnosed, with about 150,000 deaths occurring each year. 80-90% of all lung cancers occurs among smokers. In China, there are 300 million smokers today.
Poor diet and lack of exercise and depression also lead to higher risk of heart disease. Despite the modern technology and health education, 400,000-500,00 people die from coronary artery disease each year.
While modern medicine looks primarily to mechanical or biophysical problems as causes of illness, in traditional Chinese medicine, body and mind has never been separated.
The organs are seen not only in terms of anatomical existence of the particular organ, but also in terms of the concepts of energetic networking and commanding sites of mental function.
For example, when the heart receives emotional stimuli such as joy, anger, sadness, fear and worry. These emotions then affect the energy of the heart, liver, lung, spleen, and kidney respectively. As a result, the physiological functions of these organs will also be affected, and a number of somatic dysfunction may manifest. Vise versa, if these organs are assaulted by other pathogenic factors, such as infection, vascular event, toxicity, trauma, etc., they tend to generate corresponding emotional changes.
For example, anger either toward others (irritability) or toward one's self (depression) will affect the liver. In traditional Chinese medicine, the liver regulates the energy flow smoothly, helps digestion, nourishes sinews and ligaments, stores blood and regulates women's menstruation, is in charge of the ethereal soul that relates to dreams, and is responsible for vision and eyes. Its meridian is connected, through its partner, gallbladder, with the shoulder and neck, temple area of the head. When the liver energy is disturbed, as in the condition of stress, one may have several illnesses, as explained by modern medicine, going on at same time. Chronic pains syndrome, fibromyalgia, migraine, PMS, irritable bowel syndrome, depression, nightmares or sleep disorders, dizziness and vertigo, abnormal menstruation and breast fibroids, etc. In traditional Chinese medicine it is all caused primarily by a single condition called Liver Qi Stagnation. It may not be just coincidental, that when Prozac was widely used for treating depression, people also found it very useful in treating PMS and migraines.
All these interactions are realized through an energetic networking system called meridians. Meridians have their representative points on the surface of the body, which you can stimulate with different tools such as needles, pressure, moxa, etc to modulate energy dysfunction of the internal organs. For thousands of years, traditional physicians have been helping people with their Qi by using acupuncture, herbal formula, Dao Ying (like Qi gong today) and in particular by telling people to stay emotionally peaceful.
However, the secret to optimal health is to have a "clean heart and few desires". In the Yellow Emperor s Internal Classics of Medicine, "Heart is the organ of Emperor, when emperor is not wise, the other twelve organs will be in danger". But how can one come to have a clean heart and few desires?
CULTIVATION PRACTICE---- SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
When you see our demonstration, you may find the movements are very graceful and soothing. However you may not find it particularly different from other forms of Qi Gong ,Yoga, and Tai Chi.
How come this practice has attracted such a large population within such a short time? How come its practitioners claim such wonderful, sometimes miraculous healing effects?
While the term qi, life force or energy, is becoming popular to many everyday Americans, Falun Gong practitioners are trying to get rid of the qi and replace it with what is called Gong. Described in Mr. Li's book Zhuan Falun, Gong is a higher energy from the universe. While qi is subject to all kinds of dysfunctions (what are described in Traditional Chinese Medicine as qi deficiency, rebellious qi, sinking qi, stagnant qi, collapsed qi etc.), gong is seen as a higher level of energy from the universe that is resistant to any kind of pathogen. However, Falun Gong holds that the only way to obtain this higher form of energy, or gong, is to cultivate one's spirit and mind to assimilate to the nature of universe; Zhen, Shan and Ren. Practicing the five sets of Falun Gong exercises is said to enhance and accelerate the process of Gong development, but only if one accompanies the exercises with cultivation of one's heart and mind in daily life.
So, is this belief true? And what exactly happens if gong is in fact developed? Professor Lili Feng and her assistants at the Scripps Research Institute in California are studying 17 Falun Gong practitioner's lymphocytes' efficacy against HIV virus in vitro, and the preliminary results have been very impressive. Some of these cells have been proven to be resistant to HIV viral infections. Accidentally, another scientist in the group found the practitioners' neutrophils, white blood cells which have a key role in fighting bacterial infection, live 30 times longer than average cells, and also remain in high function during their extended lifespan. Currently this molecular biologist is expanding her study samples to include more practitioners' data. She could not explain her findings using science's current understanding of such things. She told me, "it can only be explained by the teachings in Zhuan Falun."
According to the Buddha school, bad karma accumulates from wrongdoing in this and past lifetimes, causing suffering. Falun Gong holds that the suffering from illness results from karma, and that through self-cultivation this karma may be eliminated, bringing one to an illness free and ultimately enlightened state. In Zhuan Falun, Mr. Li states, however, that: "cultivation depend on one's self, and a cultivation system depends on one's teacher". So it is understood that through obtaining the right teachings and through self-cultivation, one may not only reach an illness-free state, but enlightenment.
When a practitioner follows the right teachings, miracles can happen. This is the way I understand what happens in Falun Gong practice. They begin to be fully aware of their personal, ethical shortcomings, and make improvements. They begin to understand how to live a truly meaningful life, and for this they are rewarded. It becomes very clear to them that without the health of one's spirit; one's mind and body can never be healthy.
Starting 1949, when the Communists took power in China, any belief in enlightened beings, divine beings, demons, or gods were totally regarded as backward and superstitious. In fact, every aspect of traditional Chinese culture was viewed this way. The people who dared to hold onto their beliefs were severely punished; many were even executed. Since the Communist party has controlled the educational system and media since that time, and due to their exalting science while doing away with traditional beliefs, very few Chinese of recent generations believe in anything beyond what exists in this material world. A quote from Jiang Zeming , the president of China, represents this view well: He asked, " Why do many Americans, living in such a scientifically and technologically advanced society, believe in God?"
In the last 7 years over 100 million people in China and abroad have become spiritually renewed through practicing Falun Gong. For them, though, it hasn't been simply faith that has led them in this direction, but incredible personal experiences, including healing of chronic, and sometimes so-called incurable illnesses, and enlightenment to the truth of the universe. Because of the power of such experiences, upon facing severe punishment and even threats of death, practitioners have not given up, but instead have become more persistent. They return the government's fabrications with stories of truth; they return the persecution with compassion and tolerance.
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Category: Health Benefits
