When I landed in Singapore in the year 2011, enough damage had already happened to my cervical spine that I could barely look over my left shoulder. In my last year of living in London, I had worked from home a lot, sitting on a bed with a laptop propped in my lap. I had not connected the pain in my upper back to the bad posture I had perpetuated for months. When I finally could bear it no more and all my self treatment on the advise of many willing advisers offered no respite, I decided to get an MRI done. It turned out that there was a bulge of the soft tissue in my c5 and c7 discs. Physiotherapy provided only marginal relief. I had no clue how I would ever overcome the inability to turn my neck to the left. There were many a day when the pain just drove out any motivation to work. I engaged a trainer who started work on strengthening my core to counter the weakness in my neck and shoulder region. But he had to stop training me when I moved to the western part of the island and he passed me on to another trainer, Dexter, who was god-sent!

The purpose of strengthening the body, I have realised is to be able to find mental strength and mental strength provides the discipline required to pursue bodily strength. It is a virtuous cycle. The stronger you get physically, the more energy you have to improve mentally and the more you improve mentally, the desire for physical wellness strengthens.

In all these years Dexter has been a source of amazing knowledge of the physical body. Instead of going after the point where pain showed up, he would point out a seemingly different area to focus on and I would notice the pain magically disappear from the former area. Recently when I attended an advanced meditation program, I noticed my back had strengthened enough and my flexibility improved sufficiently to be able to sit cross-legged for 4 days at a stretch. This is indeed a source of great satisfaction. The knowledge that my meditation can be deeper because my body is stronger makes me want to pursue my physical fitness. And the fact that my body gets stronger with meditation helping me transcend barriers physically, keeps the newness in training alive, not to mention Dexter’s enthusiasm to treat every session as if he is starting anew with me. To be brutally honest, I start every Monday morning secretly hoping Dexter has cancelled on me so I can snooze an hour more. Dexter never fails to disappoint me at that unearthly hour and by the time the hour is over, I am glad he is so sincere.

I have teamed up with Dexter to unravel Mind & Body Matters in a session on 15th September. If together we can inspire you to take Mind & Body Matters more seriously, it would be 90 minutes well spent for all of us! Look forward to seeing you there!