By CAROLANNE MURRAY
Northeast News
July 17, 2013

Falun Dafa, a self-cultivation practice to improve one’s mind and body, is being taught for the first time at the North-East Public Library, 6000 Wilson Rd.

Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, is a practice in which the practitioner cultivates the mind and the body to achieve spiritual perfection and enlightenment. Falun, or “law wheel,” is a high-energy entity that is planted in the lower stomach of the practitioner and rotates constantly to either bring salvation to the practitioner by rotating clockwise or gives salvation to others by rotating counterclockwise.

Falun Dafa practitioner and class instructor Barbara Gay knows firsthand the powers associated with Falun Dafa.

“When I was 23 years old, I became chronically ill. Over the next few years, I became unable to work and I was eventually diagnosed with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and vasculitis,” Gay said on a Facebook post. “By 1999, the vasculitis had become quite bad. I would often break out in large hives all over my body, and would get large spontaneous ‘bruises’ on my legs and arms that were not the result of any trauma and which took an unusual length of time to heal. I knew that this could not go on indefinitely, and so I had come to accept the fact that the length of my life was severely limited. In early 2000, I found a Falun Dafa pamphlet, and inside was a contact name and number. I can’t explain it, but I just felt it was something I had to find out more about. I started practicing Falun Dafa within days. Within weeks, I was able to stop taking all of my medication, I became free of my illnesses, and I was eventually able to go back to work and be a productive member of society.”

Along with the cultivation of the mind, Falun Dafa features five exercises – four standing and one sitting – that help with the cultivation of the body. The cultivation of one’s body provides him or her with Gong energy that strengthens his or her supernatural abilities.

Falun Dafa practitioners live by three principles: Zhen or truthfulness, Shan or compassion and Ren or forbearance, which help them at home, work and in society.

The class was brought to the library after Gay and other Falun Dafa practitioners participated in a mini-health fair and were asked to instruct a class regularly.

Falun Dafa practitioners and anybody wishing to learn the ways of Falun Dafa are welcome to join Gay every Tuesday at 5:15 p.m. at the North-East Public Library.