How does Falun Gong help with health & fitness?

Hey everyone. Well, I've just gotten a question that is right up my alley. Now, if you've seen a few of the other videos that I've made, just, you know, helping to explain different things from my perspective, from my humble perspective about Falun Dafa and all kinds of questions that everyone wants to ask and know about. The one that I've got today is how does Falun Dafa help with health and fitness? Well, this is a great one. Because I was a personal trainer for over a decade when I was young. And so my time with Falun Dafa actually was like a transition between being a personal trainer, which at that time was a decade's worth, and then moving on from there. And it's kind of similar to the other videos about how could Falun Dafa help or does Falun Dafa help with depression or Asperger's or, you know, different psychological things that we all go through. So how does Falun Dafa help with health and fitness? Well, of course, from my perspective now, after having practiced Falun Dafa for 20 years, and having gone through the tertiary education for the health and fitness industry, being in the industry for so long, and then coming out of the industry fairly soon after I started practicing Dafa, we call we call Falun Dafa, Dafa for short. The elements of an unhealthy body that I understand now begin with ourselves, very much so. And many of the clients that I had in the past would say to me, Mike, I know this is really bad for me, but I can't stop eating this thing or I just want to, you know, when I'm at work, I'm so busy, I don't even think about it. I just want to grab whatever food, you know, that tastes good, then come back and eat it. Or much stronger than that with clients who got into things which were a whole lot worse than just eating bad things. And of course, which would make a mess of their system. Now, that word your system, your body, your system, your mind, your system. This is something that is very powerfully taught in Falun Dafa. Who are you? What's your relevance? And your connection overall with everything around you, the people that you're with, friends, family, people you bump into, the things that you go through that are really unpleasant, the things you go through that aren't really pleasant. Because Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Dafa, explains everything in such a perspective where Li Hongzhi comes from different perspectives to explain so many things that we in our time, in this civilization's time, have called divine. And now a lot of people that I know, they don't really even like to use the word divine, it's more higher energies. I've had many people in my lifetime say to me, oh yeah, I guarantee there's higher energy out there. But I don't particularly believe in this, this or this. So we all know that we are connected to something, but all of us naturally like to perceive of it as we do. Well, that's actually a really good thing, to have your own mind, to believe in which directions or which things you choose to go for. And what I found with Falun Dafa is, because Li Hongzhi uses, you can almost feel him using everything he has to try to explain all of what could be coined as mystical, or religious, or divine, or this or that, all of those beautiful aspects actually, to help explain them in a way that encompasses them and then transcends them. It's bigger than them. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And I think that's one of the reasons why Falun Dafa has well beyond 100 million people globally practicing it. Because from my humble understanding, it's a true way of the Buddha school. In other words, the Buddha school encompassing us all. And so, so many people around the world of all walks of life have, like me, who never looked for things spiritually. My mother did. And she came across some pretty weird stuff. But not for me. I was, as you can probably tell going into the fitness industry, I was very externally orientated. But Falun Dafa, nonetheless, the teaching of Falun Dafa, called Juan Falun, just had me. First page, had me. It was like, this guy's speaking some pretty big stuff. That's what really came to my mind. And then as I kept delving through page after page, it just made so much sense. And made sense in a way that it spoke to every part of me. Not just whether I was, you know, spiritually seeking, or I believe specifically in this alien race, or whatever, you know, all these different tangents that we take at the moment. It spoke to so many different parts of me, and really encompassed a big picture. So with this question of health and fitness, those elements of our mind that we find very hard to control, decipher, choose from, all those thoughts, and feelings, all our feelings, our emotions, that naturally can be very good things. But on the other end of that, obviously, you know, can get you into some pretty hairy situations. All of those things are explained. And the connection, as quantum physicists are realizing, and also a lot of just general scientists are realizing, the mind is so powerful on your body. Incredibly powerful. And it precedes, in a way, your body. And so these, these, the mind being so powerful, is really a very core thing. When you're, when you're studying Jawan Falun, it's, you're being taught about how it is, and why it is, and how your character, when we say mind, individually, it's our character, how we are, how we choose to be, the things we choose to believe inside our little heads. And why those understandings are very important. And pretty much everyone who I've ever spoken to, that has practiced Falun Dafa, either for a day or a year or 20 years, like me, or 30 or 40 years, or actually has been around for 30 or 40 years. But what I mean is, you know, a lot of Chinese people who were amazingly fortunate to be in China when Li Hongzhi first started to teach this to the Chinese people, through those teachings, you become very clear about the health of your mind is incredibly important for the health of your body. And it doesn't just mean not getting as many colds, being more peaceful and balanced in your mind, overcoming a certain ailment. Li Hongzhi teaches you many, many, many, many layers deeper, and many, many, many, many layers higher, and lets you see how all that actually functions and works together. And that in and of itself is something immense. And it's something in from my own feelings, very much worth your while just to have a look at the rational nature, the level headedness that Falun Dafa is taught in by Li Hongzhi, the way Li Hongzhi brings all of these huge things to a modern people, we are a modern people. We're not like we were two and a half thousand years ago, when Buddha Shakyamuni was here. And we went off into a cave or into the forest, and just meditated. This is also very good. But we're as a society, we're quite a fair distance away from that now. And so with the teaching of Falun Dafa comes that level headedness of the modern age. So, again, it's one of the reasons why doctors, lawyers, I think I shared on my last video, one of the men that I met was homeless. The man was homeless, Craig. And the way he started Falun Dafa was he saw a Chinese man practicing the five exercises of Falun Dafa every day in this park that he would frequent at in Melbourne, Australia. And so you know, everyone that I know, including myself, when we start to practice these five exercises and retry Falun and begin to start to align our minds and our hearts, excuse me with really understanding these virtues of the Buddhist school, which is what Falun Dafa is, it is a true cultivation way of the Buddhist school. When you start to do that, all of a sudden, you live what people talk about, when they share about all these changes that happened to them, once they started to develop a virtuous heart. And it goes from being something that you just heard about in the past. And actually, to be honest, before I started practicing Falun Dafa, when I heard about these sorts of things, because as I said before, my mother was a bit of a spiritual seeker. And so she would tell me these different things about monks or people that she spent a little bit of time with that were spiritually cultivating, and some stories about the things they went through. Amazing, beautiful, absolutely beautiful things. Well, you go from hearing about that, which I, when I listened to my mother, I believed what she was saying, other than the fact she was my mother. But I could hear that it was genuine, what these people went through. You go from that to actually experiencing it. And those experiences can seem very subtle. Like, I can tell you, my health, as a physical body, I feel the tremendous wealth of health that I have now, tangibly, every day, since I've been practicing Falun Dafa. But at the same time, I know that it is immensely part of the health of my mind, which I also, I was lucky enough to do another one of these little sharings about Falun Dafa on mental health. So you might want to have a look at that as well. At the same time, I tangibly gained a rational conscious awareness of my spiritual health, all at the same time, even though I wasn't searching for spirituality. And so this is a beautifully encompassing practice. My wife, my 16-year-old son has been practicing since he was five, my wife, my in-laws. And the stories are pretty much always the same, that just with the study and the practice, you feel like you're being revolutionized. You feel like you're being just made so much more peaceful and calm. You know, you are actually in control of your own emotions. Whereas generally, we feel like we are controlled by our emotions well and truly. When I'm angry, I'm just damn well angry. When I'm sad, when I'm depressed, when I'm happy, when I'm joyous, why am I bouncing up and down from one to the other so harshly all the time? You feel as though you are naturally beginning to be in control of your heart, mind, and body. So this is something amazing. And it was a bit unexpected for me, because I only went and did the five exercises when I first heard about Falun Dafa, because a friend of mine heard about Falun Dafa and went and did them. And I was living with that friend at the time. And so Steve comes home, and I said, how did you go? How was this Falun Dafa thing? And he said, amazing. So I don't yet know exactly what it is. He said, but it's just lovely. It's the most unique, peaceful thing. And of course, Steven, like me, that was 20 years ago, and we're both still practicing. So, you know, it really is an all-encompassing thing, Falun Dafa. And it will most certainly help with health and fitness. And refreshingly, though, and these are the last things I'll say on this particular subject is, everything comes down to us. And teacherly explains that very clearly. That, of course, a spiritual or divine path or teaching, as he is teaching, has immense properties, energetic properties, immense. And they are what they are. But if we ourselves, if we ourselves as a person can actually commit to, I guess you could almost say excelling ourselves in the virtues of our hearts, following that cultivation way of the Buddhist school, naturally, those elements won't come about those changes and those beautiful things. It's refreshing in a way, because there's a lot of stuff out there that says, you know, pay $1,000 for a course, and you can heal yourself of everything. But to be honest, I've instinctively never gone along with those things simply because I didn't believe that something truly good in a spiritual way would have that kind of value or that kind of rhetoric. And so again, it was refreshing to hear Li Hongzhi speak very candidly about the realities of spiritual cultivation. And yeah, those things need to be known, even though they can feel a little bit, a little bit hard hitting in the way of, oh, can't I just chant a mantra? And everything's, and then I'm on my way to the paradise of whatever. Now these things, you know, they're, they're great, and they're wonderful, but they're good and serious as well. So, you know, you have to truly put that effort of changing yourself in. Then comes quite a lot of benefit. And of course, I've experienced both ends. You know, in my practice, I've experienced me slacking off during different stages of the last 20 years. And I felt that, that peace, that element of energy that is so characteristic to all of the people who truly practice Falun Dafa. I felt that part of energy begin to weaken because I myself was letting myself down. So, you know, and again, Li Hongzhi teaches why that is, how the two work together to be able to make, you know, a true progress forward. So, yeah, that's, that's a very refreshing, rational, and very strong and beautiful part of the practice of Dafa as well. Thank you. See you later.