Answer from Falun Gong talk page   Katsam Im a Falun Gong practitioner if youd like to listen to what i have to say i can answer your questions briefly from our point of view Many people see Falun Gong in different ways some criticize it and some other people practice it youll hear many things from many people but in the end its up to you to make up your mind about it Falun Gong or Falun Dafa is a cultivation system of mind and body there are the  sets of excercises to practice and there are the books for reading which contain the teachings of Mr Li  The purpose of our practice is to assimilate to the principles of Truth Benevolence Forbearance and letting go of attatchments all this is substantiated by the practice of the excercises which provides you with gong gradually cleans your body and evolves many things for you A religion can be a cultivation system but not necessarily a cultivation system has to be a religion so Falun Gong is in no way a religion of some sort we dont pray or worship any gods at all and there are no churches or enrollment sistems people practice voluntarily and you can start or stop whenever you want   You can practice wherever and whenever you want and as long as you want There are practice sites where you can go if youd like to share your practice and time with other practitioners too There are no ranks in falun gong there is an assistant who teaches the excercises to new people and coordinates the group practice Mr Li is often reffered to as the master by the students because of respect but he never asked to be called this way  According to our point of view to be practitioner is to be a person who wants to be better everyday and who wants to improve himself in all the aspects of his life but as you may have noticed not everyone is perfect and we can all make mistakes during the process of cultivation everyone has their own attatchments and personal problems that they have to overcome but with patience i think anything can be achieved so this is why some people feel compelled to practice it more than other types of Qigong  About the persecution our point of view on the matter is that there came to be so many falun gong practitioners in China that the government decided to supress them in order to prevent that the Chinese people would start following principles different from the Chinese Comunist ideology Supression or persecution however its called something is happening Some other people may deny it the government might say there is nothing going on but we believe its very clear that there is something going on You can identify the practitioners at the practice sites while they do the excercises or you can just ask true FG practitioners dont lie if they dont want to say something perhaps they wont say it but whatever they say must be true thats the way it should be But i wonder now how can you supress this practice by just telling people not to do it we think there is something beyond that which is torture If you want to legally forbid something you have to have a reason for it so if you dont have it you come up with it  Everything i just said is the FG practitioners point of view on the matter and in no way it represents the opinion of everyone present on this talk page perhaps later on you might listen to the critics point of view again all i can say is that its up to you to make up your mind about it If youd like to see some pictures or know more about the practice from the practitioners point of view you can go to this webpage wwwfalundafacom