Dubai man turns disabilities into abilities with sheer will

Dubai - After returning to Dubai, he told his family and doctor that he was going to stop the medication and solely focus on brain training, but the news was not well received.

Shammi Kapoor loves a good work out. But it's not the kind of work out you're thinking of.  "I like to create a mental sweat," the 23-year-old said. "I call it going to the gym, but a gym which works on your brain muscle."
Diagnosed with autism, ADHD and depression at the age of 19, Kapoor told Khaleej Times the news actually came as a kind of relief.
"When the doctor first gave the diagnosis, I was shocked but I immediately thought, 'there are other people like me out there'. I felt like I finally belonged, like I finally found my own race of people."
And his journey since has led to a career in 'brain training' - a concept known as BrainRx.
The turning point
Growing up, Kapoor said he always felt like "an alien" compared to his peers. And the mainstream schooling process just heightened his anxiety.
"I would isolate myself and I often failed tests. If a teacher asked me to do something, I'd just mimic what the others kids were doing."
Growing up as an expatriate child in Dubai, Kapoor said many people just put his unusual behaviour down to being "lazy, rude and spoilt", but he said he always knew there was something deeper underlying.
"When that diagnosis finally came, it was like a eureka moment. I thought things would get better instantly."
With the option to self-control the conditions with medication or try an alternative concept called 'brain training', Kapoor decided to try both. "After just a few months I was functioning like a normal 20-year-old," he said.
But while visiting family in London one day, he forgot to take his medication and in his words, "couldn't function". "I was supposed to help my cousin at work but I just couldn't do anything without my meds. I just thought 'how can I wake up knowing I can only be as good as the pills I was taking'." And that's when the real change came about.
After returning to Dubai, he told his family and doctor that he was going to stop the medication and solely focus on brain training, but the news was not well received.
"My doctor made me sign a contract saying he was not liable for the psychological demise that would likely follow, but I was adamant."
After waiting for two weeks to enroll full time at a brain-training centre in Dubai, Kapoor said it was a testing time, without his medication.
But after three months of training, five hours a week, the brave step paid off. "I could do things I couldn't before. I could make eye contact with people, I could read, I could process what people were saying to me. It turned my life around."
After interning at the very centre, he undertook cognitive training and tests from the US-based company which bore the concept, and in May 2016 he opened Brain Abilitiez.
"I took this step because I don't want other people to struggle like I did, and who better to showcase just how life-changing brain training can be than someone who struggled before it came along."
A first-hand encounter
For a child who spent his whole life struggling and "under the radar", Kapoor says brain training is all about tapping into the tools which help you learn. "I was diagnosed with three conditions technically deemed incurable by modern science, but I overcame 90 per cent of mine because of this concept."
In areas like attention functions to memory capacity (both long- and short-term), to auditory, visual and logical processing, the brain isn't technically a muscle, but it behaves like one - so why not train it to be better. So much so, he challenged this Khaleej Times reporter to give it a go.
After 15 minutes of intense number recognition and short-term memory processing, it's safe to say I need a little more work, but in his words "it's the effort that counts.
"This centre is open to anyone and everyone. We work on improving weak cognition and what we try to do is fix the problem by training the brain."
kelly@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai