Modern qigong movements (Falun Gong, contested)

1. Introduction

Version followed: Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) as practitioner volunteer groups publish it (university practitioner-club pages); the five exercise names as given in the New Zealand government's interpreters' glossary; persecution as documented by the China Tribunal (2019), UN Special Procedures (2021), Freedom House (2017) and the US Congressional Research Service (2006); controversies as major news organisations report them. Contested points are attributed to whoever makes the claim.

What it is. Falun Gong is a modern Chinese spiritual and self-cultivation movement, not a therapy. It came out of the qigong boom in post-Mao China. Its founder, Li Hongzhi (called "Master Li" by practitioners), made it public in 1992. Practitioner groups describe it as five exercises plus moral cultivation guided by three principles: Zhen (真, truthfulness), Shan (善, compassion or benevolence) and Ren (忍, forbearance or tolerance). They call these the universe's supreme characteristic. The main texts are Li Hongzhi's Falun Gong (recommended for beginners) and Zhuan Falun. Practitioner groups state that instruction is free and that local volunteers teach the exercises [source: A Brief Introduction to Falun Dafa, umich practitioner group; Freedom House 2017]. Followers say it is not a religion, because it has no deity, formal hierarchy or church. Outside observers differ on how to classify it [source: CRS, Lum 2006].

Its own account of how change happens. The movement teaches that practitioners improve by "cultivation": living by Zhen-Shan-Ren and practising the exercises. The process is said to bring physical well-being, calm, moral growth and higher spiritual attainment. Adherents hold that turning the falun (法轮, "law wheel") in the body can cure ailments [source: CRS, Lum 2006; umich page]. These are the movement's own beliefs. No practice in this guide is presented as a treatment for physical disease. Evidence status: the movement's healing claims have not been shown to treat disease, and they are not a substitute for medical care [synthesis].

Historical context. In the 1980s and 1990s many qigong schools grew rapidly in China. Falun Gong received some state support and positive state media coverage in the mid-1990s [source: Freedom House 2017]. Over the same period, Chinese psychiatry described a "qigong deviation" syndrome (zouhuo rumo, 走火入魔). It entered the Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders in 1989, and the diagnosis remains controversial [source: Shan 2000, Hong Kong J Psychiatry]. In July 1999 the Chinese state banned Falun Gong. A sustained campaign of detention, coerced renunciation ("transformation") and reported torture followed. Human-rights bodies document it continuing into the 2010s, along with allegations of forced organ harvesting [source: Freedom House 2017; China Tribunal 2019; OHCHR experts 2021]. Outside China, practitioners run or are associated with media outlets (The Epoch Times, NTDTV, Sound of Hope) and with the Shen Yun performing arts company. The movement's critics and its supporters both contest press reporting on these organisations [source: CRS, Lum 2006; People/AOL 2025].

What this guide covers. The organisation's practice is given only as a public outline: what the exercises are, who teaches them and where. The inventory is the psychotherapist's own work with clients who practise Falun Gong, used to practise it, were persecuted for it, or live in families or workplaces connected with it [synthesis].

2. Framework

The movement's own structure (as published).

Entry: newcomers learn the five exercises free of charge from volunteer practitioners, at public practice sites (often parks or campuses) or from online video demonstrations. Learning in person is recommended as faster [source: Berkeley practitioner exercises page; umich page].
Exercises: five sets. The first four are standing exercises and the fifth is seated meditation. The exercises are described as gentle, slow and easy to learn. The time spent is flexible, and people may practise all or some of the sets [source: Berkeley page; umich page]. Names and the public outline are in section 4.1.
Study: practitioners read Li Hongzhi's books, chiefly Zhuan Falun, often in groups [source: umich page; CRS, Lum 2006] [uncertain: group-study format not verified in a primary text].
No paid tiers: practitioner groups say there are no fees or donations [source: umich page]. No certified-teacher or initiation tier is described in the sources.
Activism: since 1999 practitioners have run "truth-clarification" (public information) activities about the persecution, and the movement has associated media outlets [source: CRS, Lum 2006; Freedom House 2017]. The movement also has a practice called "sending forth righteous thoughts" (发正念) [source: MBIE glossary].

The therapist's framework [synthesis]. There are no phases, session counts or progression criteria for this work in any source. Treat it as ordinary psychotherapy with culturally informed adaptations:

Engagement and cultural assessment. Find out the client's relationship to the practice (current practitioner, former practitioner, family member, persecution survivor, or Shen Yun or media worker), and what the practice means to them. Move on once you know what role the practice plays in the presenting problem, and what the client does and does not want from therapy about it.
Safety and medical coordination. Screen for torture and persecution trauma, current safety concerns (including fear of surveillance), unmet medical needs and suicide risk. Set up a link with the client's doctor where health is involved. Move on once immediate risks are managed and there is a medical plan where one is needed.
Focused work. Choose the treatment for what the client presents with: trauma-focused therapy, grief, family conflict, adverse meditation effects, scrupulosity, or leaving a group. The client leads on how their practice is integrated into this work.
Consolidation and referral. Agree on the client's sources of support (practitioner community, family, torture-survivor services, legal or asylum support, meditation-difficulty specialists) and how to prevent relapse.

Format: individual or family sessions. Interpreters are often needed, and interpreter glossaries for Falun Gong terms exist for asylum settings [source: MBIE glossary].

3. Guiding principles

Describe, don't adjudicate. Present Falun Gong beliefs (falun, karma, de 德 "virtue", xinxing 心性 "mind or heart nature") as the client and the movement hold them, without endorsing or debunking them. In practice: reflect the client's words back and ask what a concept means to them before you say anything evaluative [source for glosses: MBIE glossary] [synthesis].
Attribute every contested claim. Chinese state claims (that the practice caused deaths by discouraging medical care, the "evil cult" label, xiejiao) are claims. Persecution findings come from tribunals, UN experts and NGOs, each with its own evidential limits. Movement media and Shen Yun are reported on critically by major outlets and defend themselves vigorously. In practice: never bring either side's narrative into the room as settled fact [source: CRS, Lum 2006; Freedom House 2017; China Tribunal 2019; People/AOL 2025].
No "cult" label. Freedom House reports that international scholars have generally rejected the "cult" characterisation, and that the Chinese state's English rendering of xiejiao was a propaganda translation applied after the crackdown began [source: Freedom House 2017]. In practice: use the client's own term for the practice; ask about specific dynamics rather than reaching for labels [synthesis].
Trauma-informed by default. Many clients from mainland China will have experienced or witnessed detention, coerced renunciation or torture. Some will have family members who were detained or died in custody [source: Freedom House 2017; CRS 2006]. In practice: give the client choice and control, pace disclosure, and never require a detailed account [synthesis].
Psychiatry carries a history here. Chinese forensic psychiatric literature labelled practitioners as mentally disordered because of their practice, and used this in criminal evaluations [source: HRW "Dangerous Minds" appendix III]. In practice: assessment of a practitioner must be scrupulously belief-neutral. Explain what you are assessing and why [synthesis].
Medical safety without medical advice. Where the client's health beliefs bear on care, encourage collaboration with their doctor. Never advise on medicines, and never present the practice as treating disease [synthesis].
Not the teacher. You are not a Falun Gong instructor, a spiritual guide or an arbiter of correct practice. In practice: send questions about how to do the exercises to the volunteer instructors at practice sites [source for volunteer teaching: umich page] [synthesis].
Confidentiality as a safety matter. Fear of surveillance and of reprisals against relatives in China is reality-based for many clients [source: Freedom House 2017]. In practice: discuss what you record and who sees it; check that interpreters are acceptable to the client [synthesis].
Respect the client's direction. Whether the client wants more practice, less, or none, that is their choice. In practice: explore ambivalence, never steer [synthesis].
Name no one. Do not identify other practitioners, victims or family members in records beyond clinical need [synthesis].
Even-handed competence. Professional ethics codes and spiritual-competence frameworks (for example Vieten et al. 2013) ask for respect for religious diversity and awareness of one's own biases [uncertain: not verified] [synthesis].

4. Intervention inventory

Falun Gong is a movement, not a clinical method. 4.1 gives the practice as the organisation publicly describes it, so you can talk with the client about it accurately. 4.2 onward is the psychotherapist's own work. Unless a source is given, the clinical procedures are [synthesis].

4.1 Knowing the practice: public outline of the five exercises

Purpose: to understand what a client is describing, without teaching or correcting it.
Public outline: practitioner groups describe five exercise sets. Four are done standing, and the fifth is seated meditation. They are described as gentle and slow, and they are taught free by volunteers [source: Berkeley page; umich page]. The names are given in the MBIE interpreters' glossary [source: MBIE glossary]:
1. Fo Zhan Qianshou Fa (佛展千手法), "Buddha Showing a Thousand Hands";
2. Falun Zhuang Fa (法轮桩法), "Falun Standing Stance";
3. Guantong Liangji Fa (贯通两极法), "Penetrating the Two Cosmic Extremes";
4. Falun Zhoutian Fa (法轮周天法), "Falun Heavenly Circuit";
5. Shentong Jiachi Fa (神通加持法), "Strengthening Divine Powers" (the seated meditation). This guide gives no movement sequences, holding times or energy instructions. Clients who want to learn should go to a practice site or the movement's own video instruction [source: Berkeley page].
Steps: (1) Ask which sets the client practises, alone or in a group, and roughly how much time it takes in their week. (2) Ask about study of Zhuan Falun and other activities, such as "sending forth righteous thoughts" and truth-clarification. (3) Note what the client experiences during practice (calm, bodily sensations, distress).
Example language (illustrative): "I don't practise Falun Gong myself, so would you tell me what your practice looks like day to day, in your own words?"
Watch for: feeling pulled to evaluate the exercises; any sense that the client is performing for you or is guarded about being judged. It is working when the client describes the practice freely and links it to their own goals.

4.2 Cultural and spiritual assessment

Purpose: to map what the practice means in the client's life (identity, community, moral framework, coping, sources of strain), using the DSM-5-TR Cultural Formulation Interview and its supplementary module on spirituality, religion and moral traditions [uncertain: not verified; module wording not reproduced].
Steps: (1) Cover cultural definitions of the problem: how the client, their family and their practitioner community understand it (for example as karma, a xinxing test or persecution). (2) Ask about cultural perceptions of cause, context and support, including the practitioner community as support and any family split over the practice. (3) Explore help-seeking: what the client has already tried (more practice, study, doctors) and what they expect from therapy. (4) Map the practice history: when they started, its role through persecution or migration, and any changes in commitment. (5) Ask directly whether the practice is part of the problem, part of the solution, both, or neither.
Example language (illustrative): "Some people find their practice is their main source of strength. For others it has also brought strain, with family or work. How is it for you?"
Watch for: your assumptions either way, for example "all practitioners are victims" or "the practice must be the problem". It is working when the formulation includes the client's own explanatory model next to the clinical one.

4.3 Persecution, torture and detention trauma

Purpose: to recognise and treat trauma from the post-1999 campaign. Freedom House documents detention in prisons, "black jails" and "legal education centres". It also reports sleep deprivation, beatings, stress positions, electric batons, forced viewing of propaganda, coerced written renunciation (with renounced detainees pushed to pressure others), surveillance, loss of jobs and schooling, and deaths in custody [source: Freedom House 2017; CRS, Lum 2006].
Steps: (1) Screen gently and on a need-to-know basis: "Have you or your family faced detention or mistreatment because of your practice?" (2) Assess PTSD, complex trauma, depression, moral injury and grief, using your usual validated measures. (3) Assess moral injury linked to coerced renunciation. Freedom House reports that many practitioners later made "solemn declarations" retracting forced renunciations [source: Freedom House 2017]. Shame or guilt over having signed is a likely theme [synthesis]. (4) Choose a recognised trauma-focused treatment, adapted culturally. Integrating the client's practice as a resource is the client's choice. (5) Refer to torture-survivor services, and coordinate with asylum or legal representatives where the client consents.
Example language (illustrative): "You don't need to tell me details before you're ready. It may help me to know whether what happened involved detention, and whether you were pressed to give up your practice."
Watch for: retraumatisation through detailed retelling, especially where asylum interviews already demand it. Watch for dissociation in session, survivor guilt about others still detained, and fear for relatives in China. It is working when symptoms fall and the client can hold the history without being flooded.

4.4 Organ-harvesting fears and collective trauma

Purpose: to support clients distressed by the forced organ-harvesting allegations about relatives or community members.
What sources say: the China Tribunal is an independent people's tribunal, initiated by the advocacy organisation ETAC and chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC. In 2019 it concluded that forced organ harvesting had happened on a significant scale, and that Falun Gong practitioners were "one and probably the main source of organ supply". Its conclusions rest partly on inference [source: Law Society Gazette 2019]. In 2021, UN Special Procedures experts said they were "extremely alarmed" by reports, which they described as credible information, that detained minorities including Falun Gong practitioners had been forcibly given blood tests and organ examinations. They called on China to respond and to allow independent monitoring [source: OHCHR experts statement 2021]. The Chinese government denies the allegations [source: CRS, Lum 2006].
Steps: (1) Validate the distress without debating the evidence. (2) Separate what the client knows about their own family from collective fears. (3) Work on intrusive imagery and on uncertain loss (a relative who disappeared). Use grief and ambiguous-loss approaches [synthesis]. (4) Connect the client with advocacy or community support if they want it.
Example language (illustrative): "Not knowing what happened to someone you love is its own kind of grief. Can we make room for that here?"
Watch for: the therapist being drawn into arguing about evidence, and vicarious trauma (yours). It is working when the client can grieve and function despite the uncertainty.

4.5 Belief-neutral mental-state assessment

Purpose: to tell clinical disorder apart from normative belief and experience, given the history. Chinese psychiatry used a "qigong deviation" category, reported as presenting mostly with acute psychotic, mood, dissociative or anxiety-type symptoms, such as sensations of qi rushing to the head [source: Shan 2000]. Chinese forensic literature also applied a disorder said to be "caused by practicing an evil cult" to detained practitioners, despite having no formal criteria for it [source: HRW "Dangerous Minds" appendix III].
Steps: (1) Assess the form and impact of an experience, not its content: insight, function, distress, sleep, disorganisation, risk. (2) Check the experience against the client's community norms: "Would other practitioners see this as part of practice?" (3) Ask about the onset: was it sudden, after intensive practice, and with prior vulnerability? (4) Where a religious or spiritual problem is the focus without disorder, consider the DSM-5-TR code Z65.8 (Religious or Spiritual Problem) [source: ICD-10-CM Z65.8]. (5) Where psychosis or mania is likely, arrange urgent psychiatric assessment, and explain to the client that their beliefs are not being diagnosed.
Example language (illustrative): "I'm not assessing your faith. I'm checking whether your sleep, mood and thinking are under strain, because that can happen to anyone."
Watch for: pathologising belief, or missing illness out of deference to belief. Clients who know about the Chinese psychiatric record may fear that diagnosis means persecution. It is working when the client understands why you are assessing and stays engaged.

4.6 Health beliefs and medical coordination

Purpose: to address situations where health beliefs affect medical care, without advising on medicine or disparaging belief. Adherents hold that the practice can cure ailments [source: CRS, Lum 2006]. The Chinese government has charged that the practice discouraged medical treatment and contributed to deaths. This is the state's charge, not an established finding [source: CRS, Lum 2006]. A 2024 New York Times investigation, as summarised by People, reported former Shen Yun performers' allegations that they were discouraged from seeking care for injuries and that illness was framed as a spiritual problem. Shen Yun and the Falun Dafa Information Center deny this, saying injured performers received treatment and that the reporting was one-sided [source: People/AOL 2025].
Steps: (1) Ask neutrally: "How do you approach illness and doctors alongside your practice?" (2) If a client is declining or delaying assessment or treatment for a serious condition, explore their reasons, fears (including fear of being seen as lacking faith) and ambivalence, using motivational interviewing [synthesis]. (3) With consent, contact the client's doctor. Never advise on medicines. (4) If the person concerned is a child or an adult lacking capacity, follow safeguarding and capacity law [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "Your practice matters to you, and so does your health. What would it mean to you to have a doctor look at this as well?"
Watch for: imposing your own view of medicine, and failing to act where the risk is serious. It is working when the client makes an informed choice and medical follow-up is in place.

4.7 Challenging meditation and energy experiences

Purpose: to respond to distress arising during the standing exercises or seated meditation, or any other qigong. A systematic review of 83 studies found adverse events in an estimated 8.3% of participants overall: 3.7% in experimental studies and 33.2% in observational ones. The most common were anxiety, depression and cognitive anomalies, and they also occurred in people with no previous mental-health history [source: Farias et al. 2020]. The Varieties of Contemplative Experience study (Lindahl et al. 2017) mapped meditation-related challenges in detail. Cheetah House offers consultations, support groups, crisis guidance and clinician training [source: Cheetah House VCE page]. In the Chinese literature on qigong deviation, reported risk beliefs include over-practice, inability to stop, practising alone without a qualified teacher, and prior vulnerability [source: Shan 2000].
Steps: (1) Ask in normalising terms what happens during and after practice. (2) Screen for sleep loss, dissociation, panic, intrusive memories, mood elevation and psychotic features. (3) If symptoms are mild, the client may choose to reduce the amount of practice, change the time of day, practise with others rather than alone, or use grounding (orienting to the room, the feet on the floor, movement, ordinary activity). Trauma-sensitive mindfulness (Treleaven 2018) gives principles for choice, eyes-open options and grounding [uncertain: not verified]. (4) If symptoms are severe, arrange urgent psychiatric assessment. (5) If the client wishes, they can consult experienced practitioners at their practice site about the experience. You do not adjust their technique. (6) Refer to specialists in meditation-related difficulty where available.
Example language (illustrative): "Strong experiences in practice aren't unusual. If they're keeping you awake or frightening you, we can look at how to steady things while you decide what you want to do with your practice."
Watch for: the client framing distress as a spiritual test that must be pushed through, versus your own urge to tell them to stop. Telling a spiritual or "dark night" crisis apart from psychosis, mania or dissociation depends on function, insight and risk, not on content [synthesis]. It is working when sleep and function recover and the client feels in charge of their practice again.

4.8 Scrupulosity and moral self-examination

Purpose: to recognise when cultivation of xinxing (心性) and concern about karma (业力, which the movement also describes as a "black substance") or virtue (de 德) becomes obsessional. Signs are repeated checking of one's thoughts for impurity, fear of "immediate retribution" (现世现报, a phrase listed in the glossary), and compulsive reassurance or redoing of practice [glosses: MBIE glossary] [synthesis on presentation].
Steps: (1) Separate shared community norms from the client's idiosyncratic rules, ideally by asking the client what experienced fellow practitioners consider ordinary practice. (2) If OCD criteria are met, offer ERP adapted for religious OCD. Agree in advance that exposures will stay within what the client's tradition permits, and never ask the client to violate their sincere values. Clinical sources such as the IOCDF describe consultation with a religious authority. Falun Gong has no clergy, so the client may choose an experienced practitioner to consult [uncertain: not verified] [synthesis]. (3) Target reassurance-seeking and mental rituals.
Example language (illustrative): "Your practice asks you to look at your heart honestly. OCD hijacks that and makes it endless. Let's work out which voice is which."
Watch for: the client experiencing ERP as an attack on their faith. It is working when the time spent on rituals falls and practice feels chosen rather than compelled.

4.9 Group dynamics, leaving and religious trauma

Purpose: to support clients troubled by pressures within the practice community, or who are leaving it, and to hear concerns about control without labelling the group. Reported features under dispute include devotion to the founder, whose statements some reports say followers treat as instructions [source: CRS, Lum 2006]. As reported by People (2025), summarising the 2024 New York Times investigation, former Shen Yun performers allege fear, emotional abuse, restricted outside contact and public critique sessions. Shen Yun denies this, stating that participation is voluntary, and over 1,000 current and former participants signed a petition calling the reporting distorted [source: People/AOL 2025].
Steps: (1) Ask open questions about the client's freedom to question, to leave, and to keep outside relationships, information and money. (2) Map losses on leaving: community, meaning, family ties and identity. (3) Treat shame, fear, spiritual grief and trauma symptoms with standard approaches, and help the client make their own meaning of the experience. (4) Respect clients who leave one setting (such as a performing company) but keep the practice.
Example language (illustrative): "You've told me what you're leaving behind. What do you want to keep from those years?"
Watch for: your own bias, or the use of media narratives as diagnosis. It is working when the client can speak of the experience in their own terms, both good and bad.

4.10 Young people, performing companies and safeguarding

Purpose: to protect minors. As reported by People (2025), a lawsuit filed after the 2024 New York Times reporting alleges that vulnerable children were trafficked into unpaid or underpaid work, and that passports were confiscated. Shen Yun denies the allegations and says students receive full scholarships [source: People/AOL 2025]. These are allegations, not findings.
Steps: (1) When a client is or was a minor in a residential arts or school setting, assess for injury, untreated medical problems, coercion, isolation and the young person's ability to contact family. (2) Follow local child-protection procedures if there is current risk. (3) Get assent from the minor and consent from those with parental responsibility. (4) Do not name or investigate other individuals.
Example language (illustrative): "When you were there, if you were hurt or wanted to come home, what happened?"
Watch for: loyalty conflicts and fear of being seen as disloyal. It is working when the young person feels safe to talk and any protective steps are in place.

4.11 Mixed-belief families and information conflict

Purpose: to help families divided over the practice. Relatives may have absorbed Chinese state media's framing, and practitioners may rely on movement-affiliated media [source: CRS, Lum 2006; Freedom House 2017].
Steps: (1) See members separately and together as appropriate. (2) Help each person name their fears, for example "you'll be arrested" or "you'll refuse treatment". (3) Shift from debating information to agreed practicalities: health plans, safety, contact with relatives in China. (4) If a relative's opposition reflects a history of family members being pressured to report on practitioners, name it as a common experience of the campaign era [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "You each read different news. Let's leave the news aside for now and talk about what each of you is afraid of."
Watch for: triangulation, with each side recruiting the therapist. It is working when the family can negotiate practical arrangements.

4.12 Safety, confidentiality and interpreters

Purpose: to address the client's realistic fears of surveillance and of reprisals against relatives. Freedom House documents home visits, monitoring of phones and the internet, and geolocation surveillance inside China [source: Freedom House 2017].
Steps: (1) Explain your records, who has access, and your legal limits. (2) Agree what is written down. (3) Check whether an interpreter is acceptable, and use a professional interpreter who knows Falun Gong terminology (glossaries exist for this) [source: MBIE glossary]. (4) Offer to change interpreters on request.
Example language (illustrative): "Some clients worry about who might hear what they say. Let's go through exactly where your information goes."
Watch for: guardedness that is appropriate to the risk being read as paranoia. It is working when the client discloses at their own pace.

4.13 Therapist role, self-disclosure and ethics

Purpose: to keep your role clear. Follow your profession's ethics code. The APA Ethics Code's respect for cultural and religious diversity applies, but its wording is not reproduced here [uncertain: not verified] [synthesis].
Steps: (1) Decline requests to judge correct practice or to endorse or condemn the movement. (2) Disclose your own beliefs only where it clearly serves the client. (3) Avoid dual relationships, for example attending practice sites or events with clients. (4) Seek consultation if you have strong views about the movement or about China.
Example language (illustrative): "My job isn't to say whether your practice is right. It's to help you with what's troubling you, in a way that fits your life."
Watch for: countertransference driven by politics or the media. It is working when the client experiences you as neutral and safe.

4.14 Referral and collaboration

Purpose: to link the client with appropriate help beyond therapy.
Steps: Depending on the client's wishes, link them with: volunteer instructors at local practice sites for questions about the exercises [source: umich page]; the client's doctor for health matters; torture-survivor and refugee services; legal and asylum advisers; specialists in meditation-related difficulty such as Cheetah House [source: Cheetah House VCE page]; and child-protection agencies where there is a safeguarding concern. Falun Gong has no clergy, so collaboration with a religious authority means, at most, an experienced practitioner the client chooses [synthesis].
Example language (illustrative): "Would it help to bring in someone who knows the practice well, or would you rather keep therapy separate?"
Watch for: referral being experienced as rejection. It is working when the referral is taken up and coordinated with consent.

5. Handling problems

None of the sources gives clinical problem-handling guidance for this population. Everything below is [synthesis], built on the facts cited above.

The client suspects you hold the Chinese state's view, or the opposite political view. Name neutrality explicitly, ask what made them wary, and repair. Do not offer political opinions to win trust.
The client tests you about the "cult" question. Answer that your role is not to classify their practice. Ask what it would mean to them if you did hold a view. Do not use the label yourself.
Persecution memories overwhelm the session. Stop the narrative, ground the client (orientation, breathing at a normal pace, no retention), and return to stabilisation. Resume trauma processing only when the client is within tolerance. Coordinate with asylum processes so the client is not retelling everything in several places.
The client cannot discuss coerced renunciation. Treat shame as central. Normalise renunciation under coercion, using Freedom House's documentation of quotas and torture as context, and work on self-compassion within the client's own moral framework.
The client says illness is karma being eliminated and declines medical review. Avoid arguing. Explore their values, fears and any community pressure. Ask permission to involve their doctor. If the risk is serious and capacity is in question, follow capacity and safeguarding law. If a child is involved, act on child protection.
Non-adherence to homework or trauma exercises. Check whether the exercise conflicts with the client's practice, for example imagery that resembles meditation, or a perceived clash with forbearance. Co-design alternatives that fit their framework.
The client uses more practice to avoid distress, or pushes through destabilising experiences. Explore the meaning of "enduring hardship" in their framework. Offer choices about how much and how intensely to practise, and screen for adverse effects (4.7).
Ruptures over news or media. If the client brings in movement media, or a relative brings in state media, stay curious about why it matters to them. Do not debate sources.
The client is in a dispute with a movement-linked organisation (for example a former performer). Support the client without investigating third parties. Name no individuals in your records beyond clinical need, and refer them to legal advice.
Interpreter mistrust or a community overlap. Change interpreters. Consider whether the interpreter and the client move in the same community. Confirm confidentiality obligations.
Your own vicarious trauma or political strong feelings. Use supervision and consultation, especially after hearing torture or organ-harvesting accounts.
Suspected psychosis presented in spiritual language. Assess as in 4.5. Explain the process, involve family only with consent unless risk requires otherwise, and refer urgently if risk is present. Reassure the client that their beliefs are not the target of treatment.
The client asks you to help them practise "correctly". Decline kindly and refer them to practice-site volunteers. You can help with obstacles such as sleep, anxiety or time pressure that get in the way of the practice they choose.

Sources

Online sources:

A Brief Introduction to Falun Dafa (University of Michigan practitioner group)
A Brief Introduction to Falun Dafa, PDF (University of Michigan practitioner group)
Falun Gong Exercises (UC Berkeley practitioner group)
Glossary for refugee interviews: Falun Dafa/Falun Gong terms (NZ MBIE Interpreters Online Toolkit)
China continues to kill prisoners for organ transplants, tribunal concludes (Law Society Gazette, Ireland, 2019)
China: UN human rights experts alarmed by 'organ harvesting' allegations (OHCHR Special Procedures statement, 14 June 2021)
The Battle for China's Spirit: Falun Gong (Freedom House, 2017)
Lum, T. (2006). China and Falun Gong, CRS Report RL33437 (Congressional Research Service)
What Is Going On with Shen Yun? (People, 2 April 2025). This summarises the New York Times August 2024 investigation and the responses from Shen Yun and the Falun Dafa Information Center [uncertain: New York Times original not checked].
Dangerous Minds, Appendix III: Crackdown on Falun Gong (hosted by Human Rights Watch, 2002) [uncertain: authorship not verified]
Shan, H.H. (2000). Culture-bound psychiatric disorders associated with Qigong practice in China. Hong Kong J Psychiatry 10(4):12–14
Farias, M., et al . (2020). Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies: a systematic review. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 142(5):374–393 (Coventry University repository)
The Varieties of Contemplative Experience (VCE) Study (Cheetah House)

Books and papers cited:

Li Hongzhi. Zhuan Falun; Falun Gong. The publication year of Zhuan Falun is given by CRS as 1992 [uncertain: edition and date not verified].
Lindahl, J., et al. (2017). The Varieties of Contemplative Experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE 12(5): e0176239 (citation as given by Cheetah House).
Treleaven, D. (2018). Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness [uncertain: not verified].
Vieten, C., et al. (2013). Spiritual and religious competencies for psychologists [uncertain: not verified].
American Psychiatric Association. DSM-5-TR, including the Cultural Formulation Interview.
ICD-10-CM Z65.8, Other specified problems related to psychosocial circumstances (includes 'Religious or spiritual problem'), https://www.unboundmedicine.com/icd/view/ICD-10-CM/945432/all/Z65_8___Other_specified_problems_related_to_psychosocial_circumstances

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