I came to Leeds in 2010 and it’s funny because I lived in France for 10 years and that felt like a really long time, but now time has just flown. I moved here from Plymouth . There I had the sea, but Leeds is nice because it’s very green and there's lots of parks.

Good stuff has happened since I moved to Leeds . I did tai chi in Plymouth and it was okay, and when I first came to Leeds I was looking around for tai chi classes and I did not really find a lot. And then I found a really good teacher from Huddersfield, a woman and I trained with her

Oh now we’re going back a long way. When I was young in the dim and distant past I did a lot of martial arts, and that was in France.

Tai Chi was frowned upon in those days- it was seen as geriatric kung fu! And it was very Dismissed . This is where you can learn that you can have an opinion but you might not necessarily be right . So to cut a long story short I was living in Ware and somebody said there is a tai chi class starting, well I just didn’t go, at least not for the first few weeks. And then when I finally did turn up the teacher said you can’t come now because it’s a beginners class and we’ve already started but I managed to convince her that from my past experience it would be alright so I joined and I’ve never looked back .

The daoist tai chi that I came across was fantastic. I was part of a collective where everything went back into the society so I did teach tai chi in Plymouth but I wasn’t paid. With the money we made we bought a centre in Colchester & a Centre in Edinburgh so all the money went back into the society. Which at the time I thought that’s really great. But as with all societies there was conflict, and some questions about where the money was going. And then there was a division you- know the sort of thing that happens all the time, some people left and some people went on and formed their own societies.

I was in Leeds looking for work and I didn’t wanna be a carpenter Joiner anymore.I did the gym instruction NVQ level two. So somehow I came across the old fire station I came to the gardening group as I like gardening and we got talking and they offered me the chance to teach tai chi here. Well that was May last year.

I also teach Chi gong . Chi Gong is really good for strengthening the core.A few years ago I had a stroke but I think I made such a good recovery because of the tai chi and the Chi Gong. Its a gentle type of exercise but it also helps keep you strong so I teach that as well.