Editor's note: What has attracted over a hundred million people to Falun Gong, since May 1992, when it was first disseminated in Changchun? Apart from publishing articles related to practitioners' experience during the Fa rectification period, we will continue to publish selected cultivation experiences from practitioners in China before the persecution started. Irrespective of where the writers are presently and what their health status is, the events documented in these articles are truly valuable eyewitness accounts of this period of history.

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This year, I am turning sixty and I am a senior engineer working in a certain city in northern China. For the last twenty years, my health was a mess. In 1976, I underwent a surgical operation in which a large portion of my stomach was removed due to a gastric ulcer. In 1986, I again suffered from acute arthritis, vertebrate inflamation, de-pigmentation, gallstone, and I had a low bone density problem. With so many diseases all over my body, my suffering was beyond words. When I walked, I had to bend down low, and my head could not move freely. I could not climb up or down the stairs without assistance, or get in and out of bed. In all those years, I had never been able to lie down in bed on my back.

Whenever a disease attacked me, I would be admitted to the emergency unit in the hospital. I received countless doses of injections and spent thousands of Yuan on medical fees. Not only was I unable to work normally, but I had also given my family and work unit a heavy financial burden. (Note: In China, the work units used to be responsible for the medical welfare of their employees) Those who knew me often said, "Mr. Ma really pays for his sickness."

In early 1996, three colleagues from work introduced me to Falun Gong, and they also kindly gave me a copy of Zhuan Falun. The more I read the book, the harder it was for me to put it down. In just twenty-four hours, I finished reading the whole book. I then watched the video lectures of Teacher Li, listened to his tape recordings, and practiced the exercises whenever I could.

After one or two months, miracles began to appear one after another. First, it was about a month after I got into the exercises seriously. One day, I had a long and heavy session in the toilet emptying my bowels. Amazingly, the action did not weaken my body, but on the contrary, I felt light and comfortable after that. I quickly realized that my body was being purified. Since then, I was more dedicated in my practice. About two and a half months after I started, my spine suddenly became straight while doing the sitting meditation with a large group of practitioners. Seeing what had happened, all of my fellow practitioners were happy for me, and they glorified the power of Dafa. For twenty years, I had been suffering from a crooked back and now I could walk straight with my chest up.

Ever since then, I never missed a day's work because of illness. For the first six months, all of my sicknesses and their symptoms were like the annual rings on a tree trunk; they just kept pushing out to the surface one by one. I can only attribute all these to the power of Dafa, as it was Dafa that enlightened me, improved my Xinxing (mind-nature), purified my body and converted my karma into virtue.

Following a trial period in my cultivation practice, my celestial eye opened very quickly. My company once sold a piece of equipment to a steel company in 1996. Not long after, this equipment caught fire. During a meditation exercise, I suddenly saw the cause behind the accident with my celestial eye. After speaking to the designer who was present at the accident, I found out that the cause I saw matched with their description. Hence, I suggested a preventive measure to overcome further accidents. After repetitive verification to prove the implementation, we had saved over twenty million Yuan on the contract with the steel company.

At present, I am always full of good spirits, and my body is light. I even feel healthier than I did twenty years ago. In late October this year, I participated in a clean-up campaign for the first time in twenty years. Like everyone else, we started from half past eight in the morning and ended at half past twelve. For a total of four hours, I helped with the digging, shuffling, and hauling loads in a wheel barrow without a break in between. My colleagues said, "We can't imagine a year of practice in Falun Gong could turn you into a new person." Nevertheless, my muscles were sore that night. After all, I hadn't done any exercises like that for twenty years. That night, I got up and sat for half an hour in meditation. After that, all the soreness in my legs and back disappeared. The next morning, my sore arms returned to normal again after the Dafa exercise routines. What a wonderful experience it was!

After a year of Falun Dafa practice, I was totally intrigued by its profundity, and the uncommon scientific principles. It has the capacity to remove the practitioner's karma, but more importantly, it provides a path for the practitioner to continuously upgrade his Xinxing (mind-nature), enrich his wisdom to integrate with the universe and advance further towards higher levels of realization.