(Minghui.org) Diet, supplements, exercises, and meditation—there are many things people do to keep fit. Despite all these efforts, gaining good health often seems impossible for many people plagued with incurable or stubborn illnesses.
But for many practitioners of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, regaining health has become achievable. Centered around the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, Falun Dafa was introduced to the public in China in 1992 and has since benefited about 100 million people all across the globe. The five exercises of Falun Dafa are easy to learn, and the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance are shown to have elevated people's character and bring them peace and happiness.
This article presents several survey results, publications, and personal testimonies on the health benefits of Falun Dafa.
Survey Results
The first survey started in May 1998 when the General Administration of Sports of China went to Changchun City, Jilin Province to investigate the health benefits of Falun Dafa. The agency surveyed 12,553 people in Changchun that September and found that 77.5% of the participants had completely recovered from their illnesses and 20.4% experienced improvement in their conditions. In other words, a total of 97.9% of the participants had benefited physically from practicing Falun Dafa. With average savings of 1,700 yuan in medical expenses per person each year, the 97.9% figure translated into a reduction of more than 21 million yuan in medical expenses.
“This extraordinary observation in Falun Dafa practitioners indicates this practice has outstanding benefits,” the report concluded. “It not only offers a path to health improvement but also points to a new direction of science and research.”
Similar reports came from other regions, such as Beijing, Wuhan, Dalian, Taiwan, and North America.
The survey from Dalian, for example, was conducted in 1998 on 6,478 people, 90.12% of whom experienced full recovery from their illnesses after practicing Falun Dafa. Additionally, a total of 6,327 participants (including the fully recovered) reported using less medical care, saving 15 million yuan in total (averaging 2,409 yuan per person) in the survey year.
In addition to the health benefits, Falun Dafa also focuses on elevating one's character, or mind nature. As a result, people become more honest, kind, easygoing, and considerate of others. They in turn became more productive at work and enjoyed better relationships with their families.
After the persecution of Falun Dafa in mainland China began in 1999, a survey was performed by Dr. Hu Yuhui from the Department of Economics at National Taiwan University. About 72% of the surveyed practitioners only used their medical insurance card once per year, which was a 50% drop from before their practice of Falun Dafa. In addition, about 81% of the survey participants quit smoking, 77% quit drinking, and 85% stopped gambling.
Dr. Hu's survey also reported significant improvement in people's mental health after they took up Falun Dafa. The percentage of people who had confidence in their health increased from 24% to 78%, and the percentage of people satisfied with their ability to carry out daily activities soared from 36% to 81%. In addition, 33% of the participants suffered from anxiety or depression before their practice of Falun Dafa, but less than 3% reported depression and anxiety symptoms after they started the practice.
Scientific Findings
One 2005 paper published by scientists at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas studied the positive effects of Falun Dafa exercises on people's health. Published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the paper was titled, “Genomic Profiling of Neutrophil Transcripts in Asian Qigong Practitioners: A Pilot Study in Gene Regulation by Mind–Body Interaction.”
The study compared a group of six Falun Dafa practitioners and a control group of six people who did not practice Falun Dafa. The researchers found that compared to normal healthy controls, Falun Dafa practitioners had “enhanced immunity, downregulation of cellular metabolism, and alteration of apoptotic genes in favor of a rapid resolution of inflammation.”
Journal of Clinical Oncology, a major publication by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, published a paper in May 2016 titled “An observational cohort study on terminal cancer survivors practicing falun gong (FLG) in China.” The authors included scientists from major pharmaceutical companies and universities, who collected reports from Chinese cancer patients between 2000 and 2015 via a web platform. The reports included diagnoses, Falun Dafa practice duration, Actual Survival (AS) till report date, symptom improvement, and Quality of Life. A total of 152 cases were included for the study, and the patients all had terminal cancer. Some of the patients practiced Falun Dafa while others didn't. The study reported that Falun Dafa practice was found to “help terminal cancer patients survive significantly longer, in addition to notable symptom improvement.”
Dong Yuhong, lead author of the study, also examined how Falun Dafa benefited people during the coronavirus pandemic. She examined 36 infectious cases from 6 ethnic groups and 6 countries and found that a significant portion of the patients greatly improved their condition through aligning themselves with Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, the principles of Falun Dafa.
Ms. Olesen, an expert in cell biology research at the Research Laboratory for Biochemical Pathology at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the coronavirus patients' improvement by putting their faith in Falun Dafa can be explained by the interplay of mind and body. That is, as one person recites the phrases of “Falun Dafa is good” and “Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good,” he or she would be connected with positive energy of the environment or the universe, which would improve physical well-being.
Personal Testimonies
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “mind and body practices are a large and diverse group of procedures or techniques that are administered or taught by a trained practitioner or teacher. Examples include acupuncture, massage therapy, meditation, relaxation techniques, spinal manipulation, tai chi, and yoga.”
There have been many stories published on Minghui.org about how Falun Dafa helps improve mind and body through its principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance and meditative exercises.
Below is one story published on Minghui earlier this year.
Deyuan was born and raised in Germany, and she is currently studying at a medical school. She was introduced to Falun Dafa by her parents in 1997.
Deyuan said that, in her first microbiology class in college a few years ago, each student was given a few agar slides and asked to put their fingers on the plate to see what bacteria were on their hands. After a few days of culturing in the incubator, most of her classmates’ slides had some bacterial colonies growing on them. But Deyuan’s slide was blank.
During the next class, the teacher asked them to test the bacteria on the surface of an object. This time, Deyuan went with a piece of a banknote, which is known to have many microorganisms on it. But to her surprise, her experiment “failed” again–nothing grew on the slide.
In her third experiment, each student was required to do a throat or nose swab on themselves and then culture the bacteria on the agar slide. Deyuan chose to do a nose swab.
This time, she finally saw a bacteria colony on her slide. She was very happy. The teacher identified the bacteria species for each student and talked about their bacteria's specific characteristics. While many of her classmates had a similar throat or nose microbiome, the species that Deyuan had, Staphylococcus lugdunensis, was different from all of them.
While talking about Staphylococcus lugdunensis, her teacher became very excited. He said that it was a newly-discovered species. Although it can cause severe infection in humans, this bacteria is also known to produce a novel antibiotic that can kill other pathogenic species.
More information about Falun Dafa and group exercise sites around the world can be found at www.falundafa.org.
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Category: News Commentary
