Twenty years ago Bill Douglas decided to stop smoking. Nothing worked until he picked up a list of college courses that advertised Tai Chi 101 as being good for stress. 'I'd never heard of it - and I thought it was pronounced Tay-Ee-Chy - but I thought I'd give it a go.' This week, two decades later, Douglas is still trying hard not to be stressed - about a world event, promoting China's gentlest martial art, into which he has put his life savings and his full pushing hands energy.
World Tai Chi Day is next Saturday, April 8, and Douglas hopes the world - and particularly the world's health organisations and professionals - will join in.
Last year they had 108 events around the world - by coincidence a lucky number in Chinese tradition - and this year they hope to have as many as three times that - from Slovenia to South Africa, from Thailand to Tel Aviv.
But afterwards he found a note his mother had written just before the operation.
'She said she wished that a couple of years ago she had paid attention to the exercise I wanted to teach her: she said she wished she had done it so that she could see her grandchildren grow up.' It made Douglas think about how many other people he could help before it was too late: 'I wanted tai chi to be so widespread that nobody could think of it as weird.' With missionary zeal he began to teach the breathing and the movements in local hospitals, schools, medical universities and even in prisons where apparently studies showed violence to have decreased by around 70 per cent after tai chi classes were introduced.
'It shows people where they can use that excess energy, so it can be constructive,' he said.