On February 26, 2006, Falun Gong practitioners from Melbourne were invited to the Clayton Festival Parade for the fourth time. The festival is the most exciting event of the year in Clayton, a city to the east of Melbourne in Victoria Province. The festival has a long history but had stopped for ten years. Four years ago, the city decided to organize the celebration again, and the Falun Gong practitioners have been highly regarded for their participation each year.

The organizer said that this year's event was on a larger scale than previous years and would attract about 200,000 spectators. Eight groups participated in the parade and they came from different ethnic groups and different communities, which represented the diversity of culture of Melbourne.

Falun Gong's procession was the last of the parade. It was composed of a Waist Drum Section, Tang Costume Show, and Fan Dance. One spectator said, "What beautiful colors!" A woman with a Taiwanese accent said, "They look peaceful and elegant."

One Falun Gong practitioner said that a lot more people came to the Falun Gong booth to ask for truth-clarification materials this year than in the past. They liked the story of Fadu and "Petals of Peace."

Two young men who looked like students from China saw Western practitioner Kate in her Tang Dynasty Costume and wanted to take a photo with her. She agreed, and later when Kate performed the dance as a Falun Gong practitioner with three other practitioners, the two young men were a little surprised at first. They watched and became more and more joyful and gave them warm applause. When another practitioner handed them a truth-clarification flyer, they willingly accepted it.

While taking part in an activity to introduce Falun Gong in Leeds City Center on January 28, a lady approached me informing me that she was from Bank Side Primary School and that they were going to have a focus on health week. She asked if I would teach the set of five Falun Gong exercises to their sixth graders as part of the week's activities. I immediately agreed and after a few phone calls we arranged a date and time.

Several practitioners from the Leeds/Bradford area and I arrived at Bank Side Primary School on February 15 to teach three classes of 10-11 year old children about Falun Gong. Due to limited space we had to teach each class separately and would only have about thirty minutes to teach the exercises. I decided that the best way to introduce Falun Gong to the children was with a well-made video by FGMTV entitled "Introduction to Falun Gong." Afterwards the remaining time would be used to teach the exercises.

Video of practitioners from around the world performing the exercises

Practicing the Falun Gong exercises

The children were captivated by the beautiful scenes on the video of practitioners from around the world performing the exercises. They listened quietly about Falun Gong's main feature of being Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance, and how practitioners strive to become good people. The video had people from all walks of life performing the exercises. The children were of mixed races, and they saw that Falun Gong can be practiced by anyone, no matter what race, religion or culture they are from. After the children watched the brief video, we then asked them to stand up and taught them the exercises. (http://www.falundafa.org/eng/exercises.htm)

The children were very innocent and curious. They were well behaved and asked many questions. When I asked one of the children, while he was performing the second exercise, Falun Standing Stance, how he felt, he replied that it felt like he was holding the universe. At the end of the day we gave out many flyers to the teachers and the children, to take home to their families so that they could learn more about the practice and the terrible persecution that is illegally taking place in China against those who practice Falun Gong. We said our farewells and I felt happy that these future adults had been given a chance to glimpse this beautiful practice.