For years, Dr Leon Chaitow has been a force of nature in the field of manual and complementary medicine - the first, only, and definitive editor of our only peer-reviewed Journal of Bodywork & Movement Therapies. A prime mover of the early Fascia Research Congresses, many roads crossed in his wide scope of thought. Author of too many books to count, and instigator of so many others’ books, including my own. I am sure many besides myself saw in him their secret colleague and special mentor, as he contained so much and included so many in the wide circle of his boundless energy and intellect. He seemed so unstoppable and indestructible that if I had thought about his passing at all, I would have predicted he would outlast me by decades. Fare you well, old friend and sparring partner, may you find new worlds to conquer. Leon and I had heard of each other when we met, both on the ‘alternative medicine’ scene in London in the early 80's, in a meeting to discuss the ‘new’ European Union rules, which were going to impact everything medical. I was late to the meeting - the Underground had delays - and Leon chastised me from the podium. Leon was definite, in your face, occasionally peremptory, and loved an intelligent argument - but he was but always forgiving and willing to engage. By the end of the meeting we were fast friends, slated for projects which generally, as most things bureaucratic, came to nothing. But not our friendship, that flower continued to grow. When I burned out in ’84 - too many years of 35 rolfing sessions per week - I escaped to the ‘natural’ life in Greece, and stopped in Corfu for a visit with Leon and his gracious wife Alkmini, where I was chastised again for eating fish (delicious, but Leon was a strict vegetarian). “How can you run away from your practice?“ he asked, as I declared my intention to seek the rural Greek life forever, and he was right: after a six month idyll in a village near Olympia, I was back in London, and back at work at a more decorous, sustainable pace. Our relationship continued, and when he started the Journal in the mid-90's, Leon announced to me, in a tone that brooked no objection, that I was to have an article for his journal, ready for publication, by April 7th, no mistake. “Yes, Leon” was the only answer. As it happened, I have been working on seeing the system of longitudinal connections through the fascia called the myofascial meridians, and it was Leon's spur in my flank that made me sit down and write it out for the first time. Leon's blue pencil made it better, and it was so long he spread it out over the first two issues. The article got good notice (even from Vladimir Janda, I am proud to say), and Mary Law, who handled Leon's Journal for Churchill Livingstone, came out to Berkeley, CA for a congress at which I was speaking to urge me to turn those articles into a book. I was to learn much, much later that Mary and Leon were my champions against the more conservative forces at Churchill Livingstone's editorial board who were against taking on my book - no letters after my name, no credentials, unstandardised nomenclature, radical departures - but Leon and Mary saw beyond my unschooled ignorance and urged them to take me on. Churchill Livingstone (now entirely swallowed by Elsevier) has in fact made a lot of money from the successive editions of Anatomy Trains. Leon was a wonderful conversationalist (not above a bit of razor-thin sarcasm), a tireless advocate for the young (especially his daughter Sasha), and of course a prodigious writer and activist editor (I both feared and treasured his critique on my work, as I wrote around a dozen articles for the Journal). Leon was the most articulate spokesperson for the whole panoply of manual and movement methods that could be called ‘Spatial Medicine’, and there is no one person who could fill all the shoes he wore (and wore out - such energy!) Vale! Leon - Hail to you. Inspirer of so many, effective advocate, and such a very human person I was proud to call my friend. Written on 20 September 2018 shortly after the announcement of Leon’s passing, and published with permission in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies in October 2018.