LLA Falun Dafa exercises Demo

Thank you Ben and thank you students of Little Lotus. If you could give a nice round of applause again. So Little Lotus is a private religious school that was founded in 2021 and it's about a mile from here at a building that used to be called Academy Elementary School I believe right on Academy Avenue and now in its fifth year the school has around 40 students grades pre-k to five. And as Ben said in his opening remarks every day the students do some version of these exercises that they're going to demonstrate for you. 动静随机 顶天不遵 牵手活力 预备式 两脚五肩通关 自然站立 全身放松 松而不懈 习惯不成滑溜状态 下颌微收 两眼微立 舌顶上额 牙齿微微移动 So the voice you hear in the background is that of Mr. Li Hongzhi and he started this exercise discipline spiritual discipline called Falun Dafa. It has a thousand year history thousands of years of history but began spreading widely in China in the 1990s. 握球拧掌 掌指牵棍 撑 放松 双手合十 金猴分身 撑 放松 双手合十 双龙下海 撑 放松 双手合十 These simple movements are actually very powerful from the perspective of Chinese traditional medicine. When they stretch they are opening up energy channels that exist in our bodies. Chinese medicine tells us that illness physical illness and even mental illness has its roots in energetic flow in the body being blocked and so the students in the background were in the standing up we're doing the first exercise of Falun Gong which opens up all the energy channels in the body. Now they're going to show you the second exercise of Falun Gong. 身跪正立 容心倾顶 四妙四目 法轮初启 双手结印 两手慢慢抬起 Now that the energy channels have been opened through stretching this second exercise in the back you can think of it as that energy is expanding outside of the body and is increasing its flow increasing its vitality. When the body is cold and when energy is flowing we arrive at a state of better health both physically and mentally and emotionally. Exercises like these have been practiced for thousands of years largely in China and also other parts of eastern Asia and they have known for these thousands of years that these meditative exercises work on levels that we cannot see with our eyes or we cannot even see with modern medical instruments but that still have an impact on the body. In recent years in the west we've heard of mindfulness and this is a growing trend. In fact there's a New York State booth out there that has a little flyer about mindfulness. People are actually bringing this into public schools around the country. Science in the west is recognizing in our lifetime in the last 10-20 years what the ancients in east Asia have known forever that there's this integration between mind and body. At Little Lotus Academy we have found that especially when the students are doing these exercises together you know the younger kids maybe do it for 10 minutes or 15 minutes a day the older kids can do it as long as 45 even and 60 minutes a day and we found that as we've integrated this into the curriculum their concentration is remarkable and they will talk about conflicts that they have with one another but them being able to resolve it not necessarily relying on the teacher's help to resolve The third exercise of Falun Gong the up and down movement is again activating energy channels within the body or an energetic flow within the body and when the hand goes above the head pathogenic qi or unwanted qi or sick qi this word qi in Chinese medicine is thought of as energy or life force and that qi can degenerate it can carry illness and expelling it from the body allows for a rejuvenation of healthy or clean qi from the outside of the body to come in the students in the front are doing the fifth exercise of Falun Gong as you can see it's a seated meditation the objective when doing these exercises is actually very simple anyone can learn the exercises anyone can do the exercises as demonstrated and the objective is very simple close your eyes and try to keep a calm clear mind people who regularly do these exercises attest to being able to go through their day with less sleep and more energy more focus personal conflicts the edge is taken off because there's a buffer between you and this conflict and you kind of take a step back and approach it more with more benevolence and wisdom we've also found that there is a correlation between the ability of these students to concentrate and self-regulate and their test scores students often come to us as you can see many of the students are from Chinese backgrounds and their parents they speak Chinese at home and they come to little lotus with deficits in their English with concentration as the foundation and a strong reading program the vast majority of our students exit ESL within one year because they're such strong readers and our math and science scores also they are testing 90 percent and higher when compared with their New York state and national peers and we believe that these exercises are really at the foundation it's being able to self-regulate and concentrate from a young age it's really wonderful to see and really a gift to be a part of if you go left down here there is a booth set up in the cafeteria where little lotus students work and a flyer that i'm holding can tell you more about our school it's open to people of all faiths we offer financial aid it is a private school there is tuition but we have financial aid available and we also have a summer program available for all people all children and at the summer program they'll do some exercises but the vast majority of the day is spent doing you know normal schooling stuff your math your science your reading your gym class your dance class your arts and crafts going outside but there's really truly something different about our school and if you come at the end of the day when they're doing these exercises you'll you'll really feel it for yourself and on the flyer there's contact information if you'd like to come visit our school it's possible that we can set up a visit so there you have it those are the quick demonstration of the five exercises of Falun Gong again there's a flyer outside of here in the cafeteria about little lotus academy a k through a pre-k through five school located right here in middletown it's a private school that's open to people of any faith and denomination and we welcome you to learn more about our school thank you for your kind attention and thank you students very well done so that's it for our demonstration and then we're going to hand it over to you thanks everybody happy new year we didn't exercise we didn't practice this part