Why six people, and never more

I taught a class of forty once, in a hotel gym in London, and I remember it because I could not see the back row. I do not mean it metaphorically. There was a pillar. I called out adjustments to people I had never looked at, and they nodded, and I have no idea whether any of it helped.

Six is the number where I can see every hip and every shoulder from wherever I am standing, walk the room in the time it takes to hold a pose, and put a hand on someone's shoulder blade rather than describing where their shoulder blade ought to be. It is also the number where people learn each other's names by the second week and start turning up for each other, which does more for attendance than anything I do.

It costs me, obviously. Six people at eighteen pounds is not forty people at twelve, and the barn would fit twelve at a push. But the class I am proud of is the one where the person who has never done this before gets exactly as much of me as the person who has done it for years, and that only happens in a room I can actually see.