A gentle breeze of interest in mind-body practices was already rustling through China in the late 1980s, when qigong schools were popping up like mushrooms after rain. Right in that fertile soil, Falun Gong sprang up in May 1992, when a retired public security official named Li Hongzhi introduced its core teachings in Changchun. Drawing liberally from ancient Buddhist and Taoist ideas, these exercises and moral principles offered a fresh twist on the century-old search for health and inner peace.

Teachers of that era often hawked their own versions of qigong, but Falun Gong stood out by emphasizing a “cultivation” path—what practitioners called xinxing, or heart-mind transformation—over mere physical fitness. The five gentle exercises, accompanied by lectures on truthfulness, compassion and forbearance, struck a chord. Word of mouth spread rapidly, and by the mid-1990s, tens of millions had joined classes under the umbrella of China’s official Qigong Research Association.

That doubling-down on spiritual values, though, painted a big target on its back once Beijing’s priorities shifted in the late 1990s. While the dramatic 1999 nationwide ban and ensuing tensions grabbed headlines, the seeds sown in 1992 continue to bear fruit among practitioners around the globe. Today, informal gatherings in parks from New York to Sydney still echo those original slow-motion exercises, proof that a small spark lit on a spring morning in Changchun can still glow decades later.