I remember clearly my first Taiji class with John Kells. His presence – a perfect mix of softness and sobriety – inspired, or rather demanded, a level of attention that I had never previously given anything. My foremost concern, at that first class, was to concentrate hard so that I could recall the work and the words (I didn't know about energy at that point) and practice them when I got home. I came to Taiji to learn something that I could work on, and with, in my own time, that would, unequivocally, help me become a whole person and therefore a better person. And so, my unwholeness, my unwholesomeness, my maladjusted autism worked in my eventual favour because without it that persistent dull ache for transformation, which I had, have, felt, for as long as I remember, would have been the last thing in my fledgling heart.