Thursday, July 6, 2000

The mind body meditation system called Falun Dafa is gaining a small following in Calgary where practitioners meet to meditate and stretch

Curious passers-by gawk at a group of people who stretch and mediate to the soothing sound of Chinese music in the heart of Prince's Island Park. Chinese and English banners exhort them to join in and learn the "very powerful mind body mediatation system" called Falun Dafa or Falun Gong. Falun Dafa is based on the principles of truthfulness (zhen), benevolence (shan) and forbearance (zhen), according to the group's pamphlets. It's purpose is physical and spiritual enlightenment and the practice is gaining momentum in Calgary, says group leader Kai Liu.

The Forestry manager who was studying for a PhD in Environmental Science started doing Falun Dafa 18 months ago while a student in North Carolina. He claims to have experienced incredible physical and mental healing from the mediation and exercise.

He wants to spread the word.

The practice consists of 5 set of exercises. Participant also read from a text called Zhuan Falun.

Falun is a kind of Buddhist law, according to Liu. Dafa means supreme law, while gong is a generic term for exercise, he says.

A unique symbol combined with the yin and the yang represent the practice. "It's not a religion", says Liu. Just "a mean to upgrade oneself to a higher level. We don't worship anything," he says.

Liu says he started Calgary's Falun Dafa chapter of his own accord and that his own expense. There is no group hierarchy that sent him here, and participants do not pay to join. Neither are they solicited for donations, he says.

Alarm bells may sound in some people's heads at the mention of this group which is banned in China where it was founded in 1992 and where 90 per cent of its practitioners live.

In April 1999, Chinese authorities outlawed Falun Gong, accusing its practitioners of spreading superstition and fermenting social unrest in China.

Falun Dafa adherents in Calgary flatly reject this accusation and refute China's assertions that they are a malevolent cult. Yuxia Zhang, 65, a Falun Dafa practitioner for the past two and a half years, joined her daughter in Calgary this past May. Speaking through an interpreter, she says that she participated in an April 1999 rally at Chinese Communist party headquarters in Beijing where 10,000 Falun Gong followers asked for an end to state harassment. Chinese police broke up the rally.

Zhang was put under house arrest and told to stop doing the exercises she says have cured her high blood pressure, heart disease, ulcers and stomach aches. The police also demanded that she turn over any books that had to do with Falun Dafa.

Far from that repression, in a grove of trees near the Bow River, Zhang mediates alongside 11-year-old Delong Zeng.

"I come here because it makes me feel good," say the Grade 5 student who comes every Sunday either with his father or on his own.

"I come here because I like it," he says.

Aside from the weekend session at Prince's Island, Liu can be seen on weekdays leading stretches and mediating in Central park on 4th Street S.W. near 12th Ave. A picture of cross-legged meditators on Parliament Hill and bill-boards professing Falun Dafa's beneficits encourage passing cyclists, predestrians and inline skaters to join in.

It's interesting that it's happening in Calgary," says passer-by Melissa White, "and helps to dispel media constructed myths about Falun Gong". Most onlookers are at least temporarily intrigued by the site of the meditators. "I'd try it, but I don't know how long I'd last," says 30-year-old Anthony Best. A wary Val Reid says she would not try Falun Dafa "unless [she] knew a lot about it." "What they are doing for their minds is interesting as what they are doing for their bodies," says her husband Tony.

Approximately 100 million people in 30 countries practice Falun Dafa, according to the group's literature.

The Calgary group meets Saturday and Sunday morning in Prince's Island Park.