Origin from 1992
A set of five slow, gentle movement and meditation exercises taught by Li Hongzhi as the physical component of Falun Gong practice, generally named Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands, Falun Standing Stance, Penetrating the Two Cosmic Extremes, Falun Cosmic Orbit, and the seated meditation Reinforcing Supernatural Powers. Practitioners are taught that the exercises support the body and complement the practice's central moral cultivation of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, rather than constituting the whole of Falun Gong on their own, and Li's teaching holds the moral cultivation to be the more important of the two. The exercises are typically practised individually or in groups, often outdoors, accompanied by music, and instructional detail for performing them is disseminated by Falun Gong itself rather than reconstructed here.
Facts
Status
Status Within the TraditionPractitioners are taught that the exercises support the body and complement the practice's central moral cultivation of truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, rather than constituting the whole of Falun Gong on their own, and Li's teaching holds the moral cultivation to be the more important of the two. 1 Current StatusPractised openly by adherents outside China, where group exercise in public is among the most visible activities of the movement, and suppressed within it. 2 Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 2 Legal StatusProhibited in the People's Republic of China, where the movement was outlawed in 1999. 2 Practice
Category of Practice Who Performs ItAll adherents of the tradition 2 ObligationRecommended and meritorious, not required 2 Solitary or CommunalPerformed alone or together 2 Mode of TransmissionThe movement distributes its own instructional material without charge rather than licensing teachers. 2 Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginChina. The practice was taught publicly by Li Hongzhi from 1992. 2 Learn More
Five Exercises, and What They Are Subordinate To
Falun Gong's five exercises are the visible part of the practice and, by its own teaching, the lesser part. Four are performed standing, with slow arm movements and held postures, and the fifth is a seated meditation. They carry names given by Li Hongzhi and are performed to a fixed accompaniment, often in groups and often outdoors.
What the teaching insists on is the ranking. The practice's core is described as cultivation of character according to three principles rendered in English as truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, and the exercises are presented as supporting that cultivation rather than constituting it. A practitioner who performed the movements without the moral cultivation would, in this account, not be practising Falun Gong at all. David Ownby's study of the movement and Benjamin Penny's account of its religious content both stress that this ordering is not a rhetorical softening but structural to the teaching.
That is a genuine difference from most of the qigong systems Falun Gong emerged among, which offered health and energy benefits without a comprehensive moral and cosmological framework. Instructional detail for performing the exercises is disseminated by Falun Gong itself, free of charge, and is not reconstructed here.
From the Qigong Boom to the Public Square
Falun Gong appeared in 1992 into an environment that had been prepared for it. Through the 1980s China had seen an extraordinary popular expansion of qigong, with masters attracting large followings, state institutions taking an interest, and parks filling with people practising slow movement and breath regulation in the early morning. Li Hongzhi taught his system publicly from within that world, and its vocabulary of movement, standing meditation and seated meditation is drawn from it.
The public exercise session was accordingly the movement's most visible feature in China before 1999. Groups gathering in parks and squares, practising together in the open at no charge, were how most people encountered it and a substantial part of how it grew.
After the ban of 1999 that visibility became the point of contention. Practising in public in China ceased to be possible and became an act of defiance where it occurred, while outside China the same open group sessions continued and took on an additional role as public witness. David Ownby and Benjamin Penny both treat the movement's treatment in China at length. The atlas records the exercises as a practice and notes that their public performance has meant very different things in different places since 1999.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
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