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How My Family and I Began to Practice Falun Dafa

March 24, 2006 |   By Hongni, a practitioner from Canada

(Clearwisdom.net) My family and I were fortunate to be introduced to the Fa in 2004. It's so magnificent to get this precious opportunity that occurs once in millions of years. We are so thankful for Master's benevolence and to fellow practitioners.

For several years, practitioners clarified the truth everywhere. Every single thing that Dafa practitioners did for rescuing sentient beings was useful. Based on my family's experience of beginning Fa study, several truth-clarification flyers created the opportunity for predestined people to get to know Dafa.

During the past several years, whenever I passed by Chinatown and the university, I received truth-clarification flyers and CDs again and again. Although I didn't pay much attention to them, looking at the flyers and CDs, which had obviously been made with great effort, I felt that at least these Dafa practitioners were sincere and kind. I often saw them practicing and teaching the exercises in groups in the plaza and at the university. I saw with my own eyes that people who practiced Falun Gong were all very peaceful and orderly. Everybody did a lot of work quietly. After I read articles in the Dajiyuan (The Epoch Times) newspaper about how many had become better and healthier people after they started practicing, I became curious and had a favorable opinion of Dafa. Three, four years passed. Although I missed many chances to get to know Dafa, every single thing that practitioners did quietly planted seeds in my mind to help my family come to Dafa later on.

Because I saw with my own eyes practitioners' peacefulness and their devotion to their belief, I was empathic towards Falun Gong over its getting persecuted by the CCP for no reason. Finally I really wanted to understand what kind of belief made these practitioners so persistent and why the CCP was trying everything to persecute these kind people. Just then, I remembered the Dafa website listed on the flyers. I visited http://www.falundafa.org and downloaded the online version of Zhuan Falun. I was deeply attracted to the wonders of the book after reading just a few pages. I felt I was on a spaceship traveling into space and exploring the profound mystery of space. All of a sudden all my questions got answered. Who is good and who is evil all became clear. Black and white, truth and lies all became crystal clear.

After I was lucky enough to become acquainted with Dafa, I didn't immediately walk onto the cultivation path. It was a series of events that helped my family to finally commit to the Fa. It wasn't easy for the whole family to come to practice Dafa. Master's benevolent hints and fellow practitioners' help were behind every single event. When I found out Zhuan Falun was such a good book, I urged my father to read it, hoping it could help him, an honest person with a bad temper. But my father knew my intention, and he always tried to avoid it. Winter came in no time. One day he insisted on going skating. I was a little worried, but my mother and I didn't want to stop him so we let him go. Unfortunately, we got a phone call from a hospital emergency room that my father had broken a thighbone and needed immediate surgery. He was almost 60 years old. It was a big shock for the family. This looked just like a careless accident. But my mother and I understood that the root cause was because my father was never considerate. Now that he was lying in bed he was no longer that self-indulgent. My mother and I took good care of him, hoping he could recover quickly. But the conflicts between my mother and father persisted.

I was reading Zhuan Falun at the time. I understood that only Dafa could resolve the deeply rooted conflicts in my family, so I recommended the book to my father several times. Finally my father started reading. Right away he changed. His 58-years of bad temper improved greatly. He started being tolerant, even when having conflicts with my mother. His spirit improved. My mother benefited. There were fewer conflicts in the family.

Just like that, my father started practicing. We were all so happy for him. But I, as the first person in the family who got to know Dafa, didn't continue to study the Fa and practice due to laziness and excuses. Right then, a friend that I had not seen for a long time showed up and lived in my house for several days. Very soon we learned that she was a Dafa practitioner. With her help we learned all five exercises and together listened to Master's lectures on tapes.

Our whole family started practicing all five exercises. Very soon my father could stand up with the aid of a crutch. He persisted in practicing the standing exercises for two hours and the sitting exercise for one hour every day. My father's face looked younger every day. Even though he was almost 60 years old, two months after his thighbone fracture he could walk without any assistance. We couldn't afford medical insurance because my father was on a visitor's visa. It was a miracle that he could walk on his own without a crutch. Following that, my father was able to easily pass the physical exam for a visa extension. He had to bend and raise his legs in front of the doctors to be able to pass the physical exam. Due to this miraculous recovery after practicing Dafa, my father was able to successfully pass the physical exam.

Over the following six months my whole family practiced together. The first several months I often felt a warm stream going down from the top of my head and spreading all over my body. I felt wonderful. Later my father went back to China. My mother and I became lazy about practicing. I knew we shouldn't be like that and wanted to get in touch with the local practitioners so we could have a good cultivation environment to help improve ourselves. For various reasons I never got a chance to do that. Just then, a fellow practitioner we had never met called us. She called to greet my father. It turned out that my father, who likes reading The Epoch Times, withdrew from the CCP for our whole family after he read the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party.

Later I realized that this ordinary phone call marked a huge transition in my mother's and my cultivation paths. The practitioner encouraged us to participate in the group Fa study. The study site was very close to our house. At first we just thought we'd try it out, but we have never stopped going there ever since that first time. Every week we studied the Fa and shared our experiences with fellow practitioners. It became an important part of my cultivation. Under the influence of fellow practitioners I became very diligent in cultivation. Since then, Dafa has become part of our life. Our whole family walked onto the cultivation path.

Over a year and a half since I began Dafa practice, we experienced the greatness of Dafa. I had never been very healthy, even when I was very young. I had chronic tracheitis and perpetual allergic rhinitis. After I came to the West, for the first couple of years my chronic tracheitis didn't bother me much. But the perpetual allergic rhinitis gave me enough trouble. After several years I was used to having to breathe through my mouth, particularly after I started working as an information technology professional. My resistance to diseases decreased. I frequently had a cold that lasted for several months. My trachea became very susceptible because I breathed through my mouth all the time. Every time I caught a cold I coughed a lot, too. Plus, I was allergic to the air conditioning and used lots of tissues. Several years ago, after riding in a car with a coworker who smoked, my chronic tracheitis came back. If I walked fast, it was hard for me to catch my breath. I could hear the sound of my breathing through my trachea. Due to my dislike of Western medicine and therapeutics, I never officially took any medicines. I only took antibiotics a couple of times, but I was afraid of having to depend on them, so I ended up throwing them away. I got used to hearing the sounds from my trachea and I even didn't consider chronic tracheitis and perennial allergic rhinitis to be diseases. After I practiced Dafa for several months, I suddenly realized that all my symptoms had disappeared. The Fa principle of gaining naturally without pursuit reflected in me clearly.

There are so many good things about Dafa that I can't write about all of them. Dafa helped my family dispel conflicts that had existed for several decades. We all benefited from it, mentally and physically. We thank Master, Dafa, and all Dafa practitioners who clarify the truth and spread the Fa on every street and in every corner of the world. Some have even sacrificed their lives. Their kindness has helped hundreds of thousands of people obtain Dafa.

Friends, I hope you, too, could get to know Dafa and find the true meaning of life soon.