Zibby chats with bestselling author Bonnie Tsui about ON MUSCLE, a remarkable, mind-expanding exploration of the body, movement, and connection that will change how you think about muscle and how we move through the world. Bonnie shares how her relationship with her martial artist father inspired her to write this book, and then delves into how muscles shape our identity, our connections, and our shared humanity. She also recalls an intimate moment with her father-in-law, who has ALS, and shares insights from paraplegic yogi Matthew Sanford.

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Bonnie, yay On Muscle. So exciting, the stuff that moves us and why it matters. Congratulations. 

Bonnie: Thank you. It's great to be talking with you again about bodies in the world, you know? 

Zibby: Yes, exactly. After why we swim and you were a contributor to the anthology and all of the good stuff and your children's book.

Anyway, you've been just all over the place. Okay. I have to say, as I was reading the book, there was a part where you talk about the test, like the mortality test. If you can stand on one leg for 10 seconds. 

Bonnie: Oh yeah, that's. 

Zibby: So I literally got up, I was reading on the bed with my son while he was reading and I like holding the book.

Got up and started like balancing on one leg and then balancing on the other leg. And he's what are you doing? So then the two of us were balancing, I like, you're like.

Bonnie: We're gonna live forever. It's amazing. 

Zibby: I know. I was like, can I balance for 10 seconds? I don't know. Yeah. And then I end up like doing these yoga poses and he's what are you doing now? 

Bonnie: Oh my gosh. I love that. 

Zibby: Felt like your book made me move. Like I could not physically sit still while reading this book about movement and muscle and all of that. 

Bonnie: Mission accomplished. 

Done. Okay, great. Love it. My work here is done. No, that was, I'm it makes me so happy to hear that because I really wanted this book and it's funny because we often think about our brain and body as being divorced from one another, or at least not as unified. And I love hearing that when you were reading the book, you did wanna move and engage bodily with it, because that's how I felt when I was writing it. Like I wanted to transmit that sensory experience of what I was learning and feeling in my myself in onto the pages. And so I, that's just so heartening to hear that you felt that, aw, you were reading.

Zibby: You turn your sort of journalistic brain onto muscle in all of its different parts, even after the body has died or after, all of the full range. And that was very interesting.

But the overlay of the whole book was really like it could have been called like on my dad, because it was so much about your relationship with him, which was so incredibly poignant and the book felt to me like, like the Olive branch to like really connect with him in a deeper way. So talk about your inspiration for the bug, how your dad plays into everything and.. 

Bonnie: For obviously for so many of us our family right is, and our parents specifically have, they reach into our lives in ways that sometimes we don't even understand until later life. And so I think, I always felt, when I was a child, I felt really close to my dad. And you gathered that from the pages of the book and, he was the artist and the martial artist and the person who trained my brother and myself up in his studio to be like these.

These people who, these tiny humans who understood the power of physicality, but also the aesthetic appreciation of the body. And art. And I am, I'm myself because of that. And after my parents split up and he moved back from New York where we lived, and I was born to Hong Kong and then onto mainland China.

Where he lives now. It's hard. It's it's also hard when your parent, when your parents divorce, when, or separate when you're in your formative years, as a teenager, like a young teenager, and then through those that time into young adulthood and you are navigating that what the world is anyway for yourself.

And I was navigating myself, right? Who was I without this very signal person in my life? And I think I've spent, it's not. An exaggeration to say that I've spent the last many decades still trying to figure that out and also appreciate his influence on my life. Like even if he's not geographically near me or we aren't as close contact as we were when I was a kid, and, but those feelings.

Are powerful and they last a long time. I am, I have children of my own and I ha and I look at them and I think about what my influence on them will be. And so it's a very point, it's it's all full circle and all, I think for all of us to come together in various points of the book and to be able to like, 'cause I started writing this book during Covid.

And so I could not see him. And it really wasn't until the very, very end, almost when it was almost like missing the deadline to, to finish the manuscript. Like I, I wasn't sure if I could see him in person because China was the first place to shut down and then the last place to open up to the world, the rest of the world again.

And so that there was this funny irony of trying to figure out how to physically be in the same place as this person who the book as you so rightly point out is really about that relationship foundationally. 

Zibby: Wow. Your dad was, very accomplished as a martial artist, as you said. And I think Brown belt or what?

Brown belt. 

Bonnie: Yeah. All the belts. 

Zibby: All the belts. All the belts. He was, and he, you have this through line of the book, making a muscle, and how, yeah, it starts there and it ends all the way. It was just like this perfect ending, the way you wrap everything up, but you talk about how his appreciation for the physical ran through everything, right? And when he did eventually see you and said, oh, you look strong, that was the highest praise ever. And that you were measuring your shoulders against each other to see the, how strong. 

Bonnie: This is what I grew up with, and it is funny. It is I look at the world differently now after like examining muscle in this 360 degree way, right? Like I wanted to. I wanted to be as curious about it as he seemed to have been for me, like when I was watching him, throughout my childhood. And so even now, yeah, like when we met up again at the end of the book, like I to understand that this is still something that preoccupies him.

He's like almost 80 and he still lives 

Zibby: this way. 

Bonnie: It's fascinating. 

Zibby: And you point out too, he was so far away and yet all of the modern conveniences like didn't deepen your relationship. Like you're like, he's not into FaceTime or email or whatever. He is not good on the phone. Like he's like, when you're with him, he focuses on you and you feel but like that's so hard to feel that there's, that something is out there but out of your grass.

Bonnie: Yeah, and I think all of us really had that presented in stark relief during Covid, right? Like that, that we did not appreciate and understand what it is to be in someone's presence and to feel physically connected with them, even if you're not touching, like tangibly touching someone in the room.

If I was in that room with you, we would be reading each other's body language or posture making eye contact. Maybe we, like a shoulder squeeze or something, and it's just, there's no, I get, I gave myself like chills up my spine just saying that because I do feel that connection is imperative to us as human beings. 

Zibby: Yeah. 

Bonnie: And so when we miss it and we don't get to have it, and then we do get to have it, it's just, there's no substitute for it. And that, and I think like examining muscle and what muscle enables us to do to, to physically move and to be closer and further away and from each other as individuals and then in community and moving together is so powerful.

I think that just made me, I wanted to communicate that through the book and and how precious that is. 

Zibby: One part. Was particularly just particularly poignant to me. It ends with you sitting with your father-in-law who has a LS, and I'm so sorry, as you detailed that diagnosis. 

Bonnie: Yeah. 

Zibby: And you have this really memorable scene with your father-in-law, in his wheelchair after getting all this knowledge about the body and movement from, I think his name is Matt, who is..

Bonnie: Yeah. Matt Sanford Uhhuh. 

Zibby: Matt Sanford, right? Yeah. Who is a quadriplegic who. Or paraplegic. Yeah, paraplegic. Okay. I no. He was a paraplegic, quite whatever. Anyway, relied on his, on yoga training to really make more connections throughout his body and to feel some of these shivers up, up and down his body. And that sometimes there are ways to use yoga and the body to do things that maybe science hasn't exactly brought to the forefront or said was impossible or whatever. And you have this scene with your father-in-law where your hands are on his knees and you're like, we're gonna go for a walk.

And he's in the wheelchair, but you just push down on his knees to make him feel like he goes on a walk and his whole face like lights up and then you're like, let we'll go on a walk another day. Oh my gosh, Bonnie. I was like crying. It was so beautiful. 

Bonnie: It was, and it's hard to, I think sometimes it's hard to know what to do to help someone and a LS is a big thing, right?

It's a big thing. And. I think you also have to understand, you have to hold at the same time the reality that you can't do anything to change the reality. And yet there is something that you can do in the moment physically to touch and to bring relief in some way. And that's what Matt Sanford taught me.

Like I was really, I won't ever forget. Like the time we spent together because he taught me not only the thinking behind adaptive yoga, but also. How we can better connect to each other, even through discomfort, even through not knowing the right thing to do. To keep trying to reach out to to try.

And I think that's, that really was a huge lesson to me. 'Cause we all exist on this continuum of like illness and health and ability to disability and life to death. And so to situate yourself on that continuum like, and you're constantly moving along. As you move through life.

That was, that helped me understand so much about just who we are, like and also what we're capable of physically, over our lifespan. And also that, muscle is one of those muscle is so amazing because it is like probably one of the most adaptable tissues in the body is always changing.

And so that that philosophically teaches us that we can also keep changing and improving and doing better. 

Zibby: Yes. The story of Matt Sanford, maybe talk a little more about it. He was in a car accident. His, I think his father and sister were killed. 

Bonnie: Yes. 

Zibby: And he lost function of his body. And then, yeah.

Now he is a guru. So just tell us more because I summarized. 

Bonnie: Yeah. So this is in the flexibility section of the book. And so Matt Sanford is this like pretty renowned yogi I guess. And he's a yoga teacher who really specialized in pioneered adaptive yoga. And so when he was 13, he was in a car accident with his family as you.

Recalled and his father and sister were killed, and he lost the, he became paralyzed from the chest down and he, he was an athlete. He played basketball as a kid. He was just like very embodied. And I think like one of the things that he talked about when he was telling me about how he came to the practice of yoga and how to be doing what he's doing now, is that he remembered very vividly being told, now you have to focus on keep making your upper body strong, right? So and you would see, and he's and it was almost like a, doctors would tell him if you feel phantom sensations like down your spine and your legs that's not real, right? That's in, in a nutshell.

But and so he was always, he felt very. Shattered. Because you he's like that, that is, I do feel something, I feel something that's like a buzz or like a vibration or like some energy, electricity. And so he, for a long time he felt very divorced. Like he felt like he was like a not, he wanted to be integrated.

And so I think like this, we all wanna be a whole beings, but you can't ignore your, not your paralyzed body in favor of your par of your non paralyzed body. And so that's like a very, I think he was talking about how that was. Maybe that's ableist thinking, but that, that, that does, it's not true to his experience.

And so it's so interesting 'cause he talked about how he would have these sensations and it wasn't exactly, it's not like he's, we're not talking about like a spontaneous regeneration of nerves that have been severed. It's not that, but that we have knowledge in our bodies and information, not just proprioception, like these kind of receptors all over lar like generally speaking, like externally, but also like inside and interoception, which are other receptors, but that we're talking about how things that we're feeling, we feel hunger, we feel tired.

We have, muscle spindles are like, sensory, we get information receptors about when you're feeling like you're stretching beyond what your muscles can handle, that's interoception. So that's like information that we're getting from inside our body that we're not necessarily conscious of.

And what he was feeling, again, like the science is catching up. I love like when the science catches up to intuition that people have talked about for a long time, but it's about, it's all about like even when you move your body passively, if I move, and Matthew was explaining to me like, if I move my legs with my hands, my body is getting information about my body in space, even if my legs are paralyzed.

And so it's like interceptive information and again, we get into the weeds in this, in the book. But it's it just made me think about. Understanding the health of the body and mind. Like it, it is important to move even if you can't voluntarily move those parts of your body anymore, because that is about integrating your, all of the parts of yourself so that you feel whole, you feel balanced, you feel the energy flowing because the body still needs to move even if like certain muscles are not under your voluntary purview anymore.

I don't know. It was really profound and. Amazing to learn. 

Zibby: I found that so interesting and just so encouraging too for. Many people who might feel just so stuck and yet there's this other way, which maybe they already knew. But also I've spent a lot of time, and this is gonna be embarrassing Googling proprioception before the book, because I don't think I have proprioception. 

Bonnie: Oh no. 

Zibby: Yeah. I can't tell when someone's close to me at all. So I'm constantly being surpri, I'm constantly jumping and being like, ah, because yeah, you can come right next to me and I won't feel it. 

Bonnie: That's hilarious. 

Zibby: I don't know what's wrong with me and maybe I'm losing my hearing too.

And so people are just constantly surprising me that I like what is wrong with me. 

Bonnie: I thought you were gonna say something about running into things. 'cause I always run into things and that you do is yeah. Feeling your body and space is like the general explanation of, what proprioception is.

But I constantly run, like I know that the counter is there, but I constantly run into it with my hip. You know what I mean? 

Zibby: Me too. I have a bruise on my hip right now from walking in. Yeah. Right by. I'm like, what? Where do I end? And the world begins basically. 

Bonnie: Hey, we can still find we, we are doing great.

Even if you're, it's fine if you're running into things you, yeah, you're still like, it reminds you, your body in the world. 

Zibby: But you, but I am not surfing. Like you have another piece of the book, and this is, I guess back to the combination of muscle and your dad and everything. But. 

Bonnie: Yeah.

Zibby: You've used your muscle to literally walk on water, right?

You talk about surfing, and what it feels and how you've mastered that. And then you have this connective moment again with your dad where he's talking about how before anyone's awake, where he lives, he goes on these dark morning runs and you like to be out on the water and you both are finding quiet in the world through movement and that was just so beautiful. 

Bonnie: Thank you. And and it was funny to be talking to him about that because in the beginning of the book I talk about how when we were kids after dinner at 10 o'clock at night. He would take us in the dark to run like a mile to like our pediatrician's office to the parking lot. 'cause there was a parking lot where he could run around and do his exercises and then my brother and I could play. But we would do the, and it was funny because when I was talking about this with him, like the surfing part.

And when he would get up in the pre dawn light, pre dawn night like I would to exercise now it totally, I realized as we were talking about this later on, that I thought, oh, this is what we used to do. This is what we used to do. And so it felt connective in a way that, maybe we didn't realize consciously in the moment, but it was, it did feel.

And it did feel, again, over this gulf between, of distance, ge geographic distance. I live in California, who lives in China, that we can still, there's a echo, there's like a echo of these movements passed and I think that's helpful to me. I don't know. 

Zibby: Yeah, it's beautiful and inspiring.

And you talk about all the feats that the body can actually accomplish. None of which I have accomplished either, by the way. So just like how people can push themselves and develop their muscles and just do all these, it's amazing what people can, what the body can do. That sounds so obvious, but you really spell it out for us. 

Bonnie: Oh, I think that I wanted to include those stories of these great, stories of people who both ordinary and extraordinary, who could do incredible things, who accomplished incredible things. But that, those stories tell you how much power and possibility you hold in your own body.

And I think that's what I want, would want people to take away from the book, right? That, that they are inspired by not just learning about muscles and what, how important muscles are in their own lives. Your own lives, our own lives. But that to know, to learn what someone else went through, could be galvanizing to try something new or get up and take a walk or, try just to keep trying. And I think that's to keep pushing against all the forces that would push you down, I guess is the thing. And that's what that's what we were resisting. We, it's resistance against all the things that would be difficult and even though you feel like you're getting pushed back down that you keep rising.

Zibby: I love that. I know every chapter  is like a metaphor for life. 

Bonnie: Yeah. 

Zibby: It's all.

Bonnie: It was Zibby that was so fun to get to do, by the way, like to understand how our language betrays our thoughts, like how we talk about the body and be like, grit through it. Like muscle through it and we're like, no, relax.

Like all that. All of those words are like bodily states of muscle. Like it's, isn't that interesting? 

Zibby: Yes. Crazy. I know basically we have no original thoughts. We have to just,.. 

Bonnie: Our body's talking to us. 

Zibby: Yeah. Our body. Okay. So what else are you working on? Not that you need to be working on anything else, but what's coming next for you and all of that?

Bonnie: I this book has been a really heavy lift. I keep thinking that is just like such a good metaphor that I'm just. You and I are talking and it's like a little over a month out from publication and I'm trying to tamp down my anxiety by going for swims and serves and like lifting weights.

And I'm just hoping to enjoy the ride, like when it comes because it's, books take. So long and that you put so much of your heart into it and then when you put them out in the world, you don't have control over that baby anymore and the uncertainty around it's safe passage into the world.

So I just I'm very appreciative of you for.. 

Zibby: Oh, thanks. 

Bonnie: Being part of that journey of safe passage into the world and I just hope that people read and enjoy the book. 

Zibby: Yeah. They will all be jumping in, which also have a whole chapter on jumping. And this one man who like jumps into the water every single day and the power of jumping.

So we will be jumping into your book and thank you so much for talking about it with me. And yeah, it was just yes, I learned. But I'm telling you, these moments, these poignant moments in the book were unexpected. And not totally unexpected 'cause you're a beautiful writer and I knew that, but.

That you've weave them in so well and make us really feel and think about our own relationships. And I certainly was thinking about my own relationship with my dad and all those moments and anyway. It was very, it was deep on every level. I could find an analogy of muscle, but it's taught joy.

Bonnie: And I, I also want the joy to be like, that the, because there's joy in movement and I want us to remember that like that exercise as play or movement is play something that we all need and can have, as we get older still. 

Zibby: Yes. 

Bonnie: Like it's not something that you need to give up. 

Zibby: And yet, ironically, I'm just gonna sit in my chair all day and 

Bonnie: Oh, you're gonna get you on Zoom and you're gonna do some jumping jacks.

Zibby: Oh, yeah. 

Bonnie: You 

know you're gonna do some burpees. 

Zibby: No, no burpees in my future. Literally the last time I did burpees, I like slipped a disc in my back and I was like, I,.. 

Bonnie: Oh my God. 

Zibby: For this. Yeah. 

Bonnie: No burpees. No burpees. Jumping jacks are good. Jumping. 

Zibby: All right thank you. Congratulations, Bonnie. So exciting.

Bonnie: Thank you. 

Zibby: Yay on muscle. 

Bonnie: Great to see you. 

Zibby: Great to see you too. All right. Bye. Enough to see you in store in la. 

Bonnie: Yes. Okay. Bye.