Prevention is better than cure

Yesterday morning, when I woke up, my neck was in excruciating pain. I was having a stiff neck. I must have slept at an awkward position, thus twisted my neck and inducing the pain. I could not turn my neck to the left. I knew I had to get a massage right away, otherwise I would not be able to sleep in the night. I was getting fed up of having this problem every other month - be it backache or waist pain or shoulder pain or stiff neck. This is common for people who sits in the office whole day or those that uses the computer for long hours.

I went to one of those small massage joints. I did not want to go to the Katong one where I had my massages sometimes, as it would be crowded, and sometimes the assigned masseur was not that good. I have not found one masseur which was really very very good that could be considered my regular masseur yet. Each of their skill varies.

I went into this place where there was no customer, only the man (who was the boss) and a young girl (I think she was a Vietnamese because she spoke mandarin in a weird accent). I was ushered into the tiny room. She was quite friendly and chatty and I told her the problem. So she just concentrated on the areas around my neck, shoulders, back and waist. It was good to feel her fingers kneading steadily on those acupoints which were hurt. She said I had a hard stiff lump behind my neck which was causing the problem and had to be loosened. I was relieved with each touch and rub by her skilful fingers. At some stages, she climbed on top of me and used her strong hands and elbows to press on those painful areas. It was such a relief. No matter how good or how bad the skills of a masseur was, to me, it always felt very good to be massaged. I did not even mind the Thai style massage which could be quite hard and rough, all bone-cracking. Hee!

Last night although I felt better, I knew always after the massage ("treatment") it would still be painful when I sleep. But when I woke up this morning, I felt much better although I still could not turn at least 200 degrees with my neck. If it does not improve by tomorrow, I would go to the sinseh in East Coast for the massage "tui na" where I am going to get them to use the needles, cups, machines, and hands and everything else. I am one who always believe in massages as it would get rid of our body pains, as well as relieve the bad qi that was stuck inside the body. Having and maintaining good qi in your body is very important to me, then can we be healthy and be in luck for everything else. I always believe that prevention is better than cure. So I would try and do everything within my utmost means to prevent a bad situation from happening.