A Story about how a Manager in Russia Started to Practise Falun Gong

The office building our company is situated in is new, accommodating over ten companies. It is well-decorated and has a tiny dinning room in it. The entire building is always clean and tidy, as some janitors regularly clean. We are a newly established small company with seven employees. Among them, five are working in the office while two of them work in the warehouse. The office covers an area of fifty square meters, while the warehouse covers three hundred square meters. All the contents of the office are new. With a broadband connection, we are easily accessible to the Internet anytime. So, basically, our company is quite modernised.

On the 3rd of January, Mr. Mila came to our company for a job interview. He majored in economics, and is nearly sixty years old, at most 165 centimetres tall and weighing about fifty kilogrammes. Our manager, in his forties, is 185 centimetres tall and weighs over ninety kilogrammes; he used to be a field officer in the army and still retains Russian soldiers’ characteristics of allegiance, obedience, seriousness and efficiency. I often felt like laughing when seeing them standing together. The manager is about twenty years older than Mila, but he is taller than Mila by a head and his weight is twice as heavy as Mila. After the interview, the manager was basically satisfied with Mila’s qualifications. What I overheard was nothing but some jargon. Anyway, I could tell they were talking about something professional.

Finally the manager asked: "What about your health?" Mila replied: "I used to be a person with many ailments and almost my entire body was not well, including liver, stomach, kidneys, joints, etc., but since I started to practise Falun Gong, I have never visited any doctors. It’s been nearly eight or nine years now, since I visited a doctor last and during this period of time I have never taken any medicine. Please rest assured that I won’t ask for sick leave.” Mila then handed a Falun Gong newspaper to the manger along with a flyer when he was about to leave. The manager asked Mila to contact him on January the 12th. People may wonder whether Mr. Mila had exaggerated his situation so as to get the job, while we held that human beings cannot get rid of getting sick since we are ordinary people who subsist on bread, milk, meat, vegetables, sausage, etc.

As a matter of fact, the manager contacted Mila and asked him to work with him one day before the 12th of January. The manager also asked a lot more about Falun Gong. Mila thus demonstrated the five sets of Falun Gong exercises in the office for the manager. After watching the performance attentively, I thought that they would be a kind of qigong¹ similar to gymnastic exercises and I didn’t see anything special. Mila gave the manager the main book of Falun Gong along with an exercise-teaching VCD. He also told us that if we were interested in the exercises, he was able to burn the VCD for us and send us the book free of charge.

Similar story with a different result

Russia in situated in the frigid zone with a long winter. In fact we keep warm with electric heaters, burning fires or thermal appliances in the winter season; otherwise we may not survive. Fortunately, our country has rich energy resources. The heating is available everywhere in subways, various vehicles, tramcars, trolley buses, government agencies, shops, factories, schools, kindergartens, hospitals and houses. Except walking on the streets, we stay indoors most of the time. Currently we even need to put on sweaters when staying indoors, as it is really very cold.

What a coincidence! It has been Russian’s harshest winter in ten years and the temperature dropped to a range between minus twenty five and thirty and Celsius. Do you know what it's like being exposed to such cold weather? When the temperature drops to lower than minus twenty, I can tell the temperature without having to listen to weather forecasts, nor checking the thermometer. By then, when exhaling, the breath will turn into crystals immediately and our ears and hands may freeze and ache. Inhaling isn't pleasant either, our nose hair may freeze, forming little needles that prick your nose. It's so cold that if you were to touch metal, you would instantly be attached like you would if you placed your hand on dry ice.

Once, by accident, both the manager and Mila had the experience of being on the street for over half an hour respectively. Mila got on a wrong bus one night. He was supposed to take bus number 3, but he got on bus number 75. When he noticed the mistake half way, he got off somewhere near the woods with very few people passing by, where he waited over half an hour for bus number 75 in the freezing weather. When bus number 75 finally came, he had to take the bus to the starting point so as to transfer to bus number 3. In total, it took him three hours home. When getting on the bus at the stop near the woods, he felt so cold that he was kind of shivering. But he almost forgot about it entirely, as if nothing had happened. As usual, he had his dinner first, and then took a shower. Before going to bed, he wrote something on his computer and practised the five sets of Falun Gong exercises. The manager was late on the morning of the following day and he felt very sorry about that. It took him over half an hour to wait for a bus in the freezing cold weather. When getting to the office, he felt very tired and dizzy. He seemed to be sick, as his entire body was tense and ached. Afterwards, the manager came down with a fever, whilst Mila was fine. The manager finally came to realise that this little old man Mila, who was twenty years older, a head shorter and twenty to thirty kilos lighter than him is really something.

“I’ll start to learn Falun Gong this coming Saturday”

Employees’ health does have much to do with business operations. It is impossible for a small firm to be staffed with a lot people and the number of staff would usually be commensurate with the firm’s business. As some container loads of goods would be imported overseas soon, a lot of work needed to be done, ranging from clearance, claiming the cargo, transportation, marketing, advertisement, playing orders, etc. Unfortunately, most of the employees got sick one after another. What’s more, the situation was going from bad to worse. In the end, the responsible and ambitious manager also fell ill. Eventually, the manager announced: “You see? Though Mila is about sixty years old, I don’t tell his age whatsoever. Starting this coming Saturday, I am going to start practising Falun Gong.” Upon hearing this we all smiled.

Afterwards we finally came to know that Mila often participated in Falun Gong activities, even in winter times. He often stands in the open-air for three or four hours, without wearing gloves, as it is not convenient for him to wear gloves to practise Falun Gong exercises and distribute flyers and other materials. I asked him if his hands ever got frozen and he said “never.” In fact, it’s a piece of cake for him to stand outdoors in freezing cold weather for over half an hour. But much to my surprise, one day I found that he wore few clothes, without wearing heavy trousers and gloves, though there were gloves in his back pack.

I used to have the notion that muscular people, fat people and young people would not feel cold. But what makes me feel strange is that Mr. Mila doesn’t belong to any of these categories. He is nearly sixty years old, not young at all; he weight is simply a little over fifty kilogrammes, he's not fat at all. According to him, he has maintained the same weight since graduating from high school. I also found that he is not muscular whatsoever. We are all familiar with the laws of matter conservation energy conservation. Mr. Mila always wears thin clothes, eats simple food and sleeps few hours. He practises Falun Gong exercises two hours every day, but he is always energetic and his face is always glowing with pleasure. I am curious about the reasons why he doesn’t feel cold and never gets sick, where the mysterious energy comes from. Is Falun Gong really so good? That being the case, we all need to practise Falun Gong!

Note:

1. Qigong: 'Qi' can be translated as 'energy' and 'gong' can be translated to 'cultivation practice'. Thus this term refers to practices that cultivate 'qi' or 'vital energy'