Bonnie Tsui, ON MUSCLE: The Stuff That Moves Us and Why It Matters
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[0:44]Bonnie Sweet is the author of On Muscle, the stuff that moves us and why it matters.
[0:49]Bonnie is a long-time contributor to The New York Times, and the best-selling author of
[0:53]Why We Swim, A New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice, and A Time Magazine
[0:58]and NPR Best Book of the Year.
[1:00]It's currently being translated into 10 languages.
[1:03]Bonnie is also the author of American Chinatown, which won the Asian Pacific American Award
[1:08]for Literature.
[1:09]And Sarah and the big wave, a children's book about the first woman to surf Mavericks,
[1:14]and a junior library guild-gold standard selection.
[1:17]She was, by the way, on this podcast before.
[1:20]Her work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National Press Foundation,
[1:24]the Mesa Refuge, and the Best American Essays series.
[1:28]She lives, swims, and surfs in the Bay Area.
[1:31]Welcome, Bonnie!
[1:32]Yeah, On Muscle!
[1:33]So exciting!
[1:34]The stuff that moves us and why it matters.
[1:36]Congratulations!
[1:37]Thank you!
[1:38]It's great to be talking with you again about bodies in the world.
[1:42]Yes.
[1:43]Exactly.
[1:44]After Why We Swim, and you were a contributor to the anthology and all of the good
[1:47]stuff.
[1:48]And your children's book.
[1:50]Anyway, you've been just all over the place.
[1:52]Okay, I have to say, as I was reading the book, there was a part where you talk about
[1:57]the test, like the mortality test, if you can stand on one leg for 10 seconds.
[2:01]Yes!
[2:02]I was reading on the bed with my son while he was reading, and I was like, holding the
[2:07]book, got up and started balancing on one leg, and then balancing on the leg, and he's like,
[2:12]what are you doing?
[2:13]So the two of us were balancing on one leg.
[2:16]You're like, we're going to live forever.
[2:17]It's amazing.
[2:18]Yeah.
[2:19]And I balance her 10 seconds.
[2:20]I don't know.
[2:21]Yeah, and then I end up doing these yoga poses, and he's like, what are you doing now?
[2:27]Oh, my gosh, I love that.
[2:30]Your book made me move.
[2:33]Like, I could not physically sit still while reading this book about movement and muscle
[2:37]and all of that.
[2:38]Well, Mission Accomplice, John.
[2:40]Okay, great.
[2:41]Love it.
[2:42]My work here is done.
[2:43]No, that was, I'm so, it makes me so happy to hear that because I really wanted this
[2:48]book.
[2:49]And it's funny, right?
[2:50]Because we often think about our brain and body as being kind of divorced from one another,
[2:54]or at least like not as unified.
[2:56]And I love hearing that when you were reading the book, you did want to move and engage
[3:01]bodily with it because that's how I felt when I was writing it.
[3:04]Like I wanted to transmit that sensory experience of what I was learning and feeling in
[3:09]myself, in onto the pages.
[3:13]And so that's just so heartening here that you felt that we're reading.
[3:18]Well, you turn your journalistic brain onto muscle in all of its different parts, even
[3:24]after the body has died or after, you know, like all of the full range.
[3:31]And that was very interesting.
[3:33]But the overlay of the whole book was really like it could have been called like on my
[3:38]dad because it was so much about your relationship with him, which was so incredibly poignant.
[3:46]And the book felt to me like, like the olive branch to like really connect with him
[3:53]in a deeper way.
[3:54]So talk about your inspiration for the bug, how your dad plays into everything.
[3:59]And well, for obviously for so many of us are our family, right, is in our parents specifically
[4:06]have, they reach into our lives in ways that sometimes we don't even understand until
[4:11]later life.
[4:12]So I think I always felt when I was a child, I felt really close to my dad and you gathered
[4:18]that from the pages of the book.
[4:20]And you know, he was the he was the artist and the and the martial artist and the person
[4:25]who trained my brother and myself up in his studio to be like these, you know, these
[4:31]people who these tiny humans who understood the power of physicality, but also the aesthetic
[4:37]appreciation of the body, right, and art.
[4:40]And I myself because of that, right?
[4:43]And so, you know, after my parents split up and he moved back from New York where we lived
[4:50]and I was born to Hong Kong and then on to mainland China where he lives now.
[4:55]You know, it's it's hard.
[4:56]I mean, it's like it's also hard when you parent when your parents divorce when or separate
[5:00]when you're in your formative years, like as a teenager, like a young teenager and then
[5:04]through those that time and to young adulthood and you kind of are navigating that what
[5:08]the world is anyway for yourself.
[5:11]And I was navigating myself, right?
[5:14]Who who was I without this very signal person in my life?
[5:17]And I think I've sort of spent it's not an exaggeration to say that I've spent the last
[5:23]many decades kind of still trying to figure that out.
[5:26]And and also like appreciate his influence on my life, like even if he's not geographically
[5:32]near me or we aren't as as close contact as we were when I was a kid.
[5:38]But those feelings are powerful and they last a long time.
[5:42]You know, I, you know, I have children of my own and I, and I look at them and I think
[5:47]about what what my influence on them will be.
[5:50]And so it's a very point, you know, it's like it's all full circle and all, I think
[5:54]for all of us to to come together in various points of the book and to be able to like
[5:57]because I started writing this book during COVID and so I could not see him.
[6:02]And it really wasn't until the very, very, and almost when it was almost like missing
[6:06]the deadline to that's the finish of the manuscript.
[6:09]Like I wasn't sure if I could see him in person because, you know, China was the first
[6:13]place to shut down and then the last place to open up to the world, the rest of the world
[6:17]again.
[6:18]And so that there was this funny irony of like trying to figure out how to physically
[6:21]be in the same place as this person who the book as you so rightly point out is really about
[6:27]that relationship foundationally.
[6:29]Wow.
[6:30]Well, your dad was, you know, very accomplished as a martial artist as you said and I think
[6:37]Brown Bell to what, you know, Brown Bell, all the belts, all the belts, all the belts he
[6:41]was, you know, and he, you have this through line of the book, you know, making a muscle,
[6:46]you know, how it starts there and sort of it ends all the way.
[6:50]It was just like this perfect ending, the way you wrap everything up.
[6:54]And you talk about how his appreciation for the physical ran through everything, right?
[7:01]And when he did eventually see you and said, oh, you look strong.
[7:05]That was the highest praise ever and that you were measuring your shoulders against each
[7:10]other to see the way you know how strong this is what I grew up with, you know, and it
[7:14]is funny.
[7:15]I mean, it is, I look at the world differently now after like examining muscle in this like
[7:23]360 degree way, right?
[7:25]Like I wanted to, I wanted to be as curious about it as he seemed to have been for me,
[7:33]like when I was watching him, you know, throughout my childhood.
[7:36]And so even now, yeah, like when we met up again at the end of the book, like I to understand
[7:42]that this is still something that the preoccupies them, you know, he's like almost 80.
[7:46]And it still lives this way.
[7:48]It's fascinating.
[7:49]You point out too, like he was so far away and yet all of the modern conveniences like
[7:56]didn't deepen your relationship, like you're like, he's not into face time or email
[8:01]or whatever.
[8:02]He's not good on the phone, like he's like, when you're with him, he focuses on you and
[8:07]you feel like, but like that's so hard to feel that there's that something is out there,
[8:12]but out of your grasp.
[8:13]Yeah.
[8:14]I think all of us really had that presented in stark relief during COVID, right?
[8:20]Like that, that we did not appreciate and understand what it is to be in someone's presence
[8:26]and to feel physically connected with them.
[8:29]Even if you're not touching, like tangibly touching someone in the room, you know, if I
[8:33]was in that room with you, we would be reading each other's body language or posture,
[8:37]making eye contact, maybe we know like a shoulder squeeze or something.
[8:41]And it's just there's, you know, I kind of get, I gave myself like chills up my spine
[8:45]just saying that because I do feel that that connection is so imperative to us as human
[8:52]beings.
[8:53]And so when we miss it and we don't get to have it and then we do get to have it, it's
[8:57]just there's no substitute for it and that and I think like examining muscle and what
[9:04]muscle enables us to do, to physically move and to be closer and further away and from
[9:12]each other as individuals and then in community and moving together is so powerful.
[9:17]I think that just made me, I wanted to communicate that through the book and how precious
[9:23]that is.
[9:24]Well, one part was particularly, just particularly poignant to me.
[9:29]It ends with you sitting with your father-in-law who has ALS and I'm so sorry as you
[9:35]detail that diagnosis and you have this really memorable scene with your father-in-law
[9:40]and his wheelchair.
[9:43]After getting all this knowledge about the body and movement from, I think his name is Matt,
[9:47]who is, Matt Stanford, who is a quadriplegic, who, or perplegic, yeah, carefully
[9:54]jig.
[9:55]I was a parablee, whatever, anyway, relied on his...
[10:00]on yoga training to really make more connections
[10:02]throughout his body and to feel some of these shivers
[10:06]up and down his body.
[10:08]And that sometimes there are ways to use yoga
[10:11]and the body to do things that maybe science hasn't
[10:15]exactly brought to the forefront
[10:17]or said it was impossible or whatever.
[10:18]And you have this scene with your father-in-law
[10:21]where your hands are on his knees.
[10:23]And you're like, we're going to go for a walk.
[10:26]And he's in the wheelchair, but you just push down
[10:28]in his knees to make him feel like he goes on a walk
[10:31]in his whole face like lights up.
[10:33]And then you're like, well, we'll go on a walk another day.
[10:36]Oh my gosh, Bonnie, I was like crying.
[10:38]It was so beautiful.
[10:40]It was, you know, and it's hard to,
[10:43]I think sometimes it's hard to know what to do to help someone.
[10:47]And ALS is a big thing, right?
[10:49]It's a big, big thing.
[10:51]And I think you also have to understand,
[10:54]you have to hold at the same time,
[10:57]the reality that you can't do anything to change the reality.
[11:02]And yet there is something that you can do in the moment
[11:06]physically to touch and to bring relief in some way.
[11:12]And that's what Matt Sanford taught me.
[11:14]Like I was really, I won't ever forget
[11:19]like the time we spent together because he taught me
[11:23]not only the thinking behind adaptive yoga
[11:26]but also how we can better connect to each other
[11:31]even through discomfort,
[11:33]even through not knowing the right thing to do
[11:36]to kind of keep trying to reach out to try.
[11:40]And I think that's, that really was a huge lesson to me.
[11:44]You know, because we all exist on this continuum of like
[11:47]illness and health and ability to disability and life to death.
[11:52]And so like to situate yourself on that continuum,
[11:55]like and you're constantly moving along it as you move through life.
[11:58]Like that was, you know,
[12:00]that helped me understand so much about just who we are.
[12:04]Like, and also like what we're capable of physically,
[12:08]you know, over our lifespan.
[12:09]And also that, you know, muscle is one of those muscle
[12:12]is so amazing because it is like probably one of the most
[12:15]adaptable tissues in the body is always changing.
[12:17]And so that like that philosophically teaches us
[12:21]that we can also keep changing and improving and doing better.
[12:25]Yes.
[12:26]Well, the story of Matt Stanford maybe talk a little more about it.
[12:28]He was in a car accident.
[12:30]His father and sister were killed.
[12:32]Yes.
[12:32]And he lost function of his body and then now he is a guru.
[12:37]So to just tell us more because I saw it.
[12:40]So this is in the, the flexibility section of the book.
[12:44]And so Matt Sanford is this like pretty renowned yogi, I guess.
[12:49]And he, and he's a yoga teacher who really specialized
[12:52]and pioneered adaptive yoga.
[12:54]And so when he was 13, he was in a car accident
[12:57]with his family as you, as you recalled.
[13:00]And, and his father and sister were killed.
[13:03]And he lost the, he became paralyzed from the chest down.
[13:06]And he, you know, he was an athlete.
[13:08]He played basketball as a kid.
[13:10]He was just like very embodied.
[13:11]And I think like one of the things that he talked about
[13:14]when he was telling me about how he came to the practice of yoga
[13:19]and how to be doing what he's doing now is that he remembered
[13:23]very vividly being told, you know, now you have to focus on
[13:29]making your upper body strong, right?
[13:31]So like, and you would see, and he's like sort of, and it was
[13:34]almost like a doctors would tell him like, you know, if you
[13:37]feel phantom sensations, like down your spine and your legs,
[13:40]that's, that's not real, right?
[13:42]Like that's in a nutshell.
[13:43]But like, and so he was always, he felt very shattered, right?
[13:47]Because he's like, but that is, I do feel something.
[13:50]I feel something that's like a buzz or like a vibration
[13:53]or like some energy electricity.
[13:55]And so he, for a long time, he felt very divorced.
[13:58]Like he felt like he was like a knot.
[14:01]He wanted to be integrated.
[14:02]And so I think like this, and we all want to be a whole
[14:04]being's, but you can't kind of ignore your not,
[14:07]your paralyzed body in favor of your, if you're not paralyzed
[14:11]body. And so that's like a very, I think he was talking
[14:13]about how like that was the, maybe that's able
[14:16]as thinking, but that, that, that does, it's not true to his
[14:19]experience. And so it's so, it's so interesting
[14:22]because he talked about how he would have these sensations.
[14:25]And it wasn't exactly, it's not like he's, you know,
[14:28]we're not talking about like a spontaneous regeneration of nerves
[14:30]that have been severed, you know, it's not that, but that we
[14:33]have knowledge in our bodies and information, you know,
[14:37]not just proprioception, like these kind of receptors all over,
[14:40]a lot, like generally speaking, like an externally, but also
[14:43]like inside an interoception, which are other receptors, but
[14:46]that we're talking about how things that we're feeling, we
[14:49]feel hunger, we feel tired, we have, you know,
[14:51]muscle spindles are like, you know, sensory, we get
[14:55]information receptors about like, you know, when you
[14:58]feeling like you're stretching beyond what your
[15:01]muscles can handle, that's interoception. So that's like
[15:04]information that we're getting from inside our body that
[15:07]we're not necessarily conscious of. And what he was
[15:11]feeling, again, like the science is like catching up. I love
[15:14]like when the science catches up to intuition that people have
[15:18]talked about for a long time. But it's about, it's all
[15:20]about like, even when you move your body passively, if I move,
[15:23]you know, and Matthew was explaining to me, like, if I move my
[15:26]legs with my hands, my body is getting information about my
[15:29]body in space, even if my legs are paralyzed. And so it's
[15:32]like interoceptive information. And again, we get into the
[15:37]reason this in the book, but it's so, it just made me think
[15:39]about understanding the health of the body and mind. Like,
[15:43]it is important to move, even if you can't voluntarily move
[15:47]those parts of your body anymore. Because that is about
[15:50]integrating your, your, your, all of the parts of yourself so
[15:53]that you feel whole, you feel balanced, you feel the energy
[15:56]flowing, because the body still needs to move, even if
[16:00]like certain muscles are not under your voluntary purview anymore.
[16:04]And I know it was really profound and amazing to learn.
[16:07]I found that's so interesting and just so encouraging to
[16:10]for many people who might feel just so stuck. And yet there's this
[16:15]other way, which maybe they already knew it. Also, I've spent a
[16:19]lot of time, and it's going to be embarrassing. Googling
[16:22]proprioception before the book, because I don't think I
[16:27]have proprioception. Like, oh, no, yeah, I can't tell when
[16:32]someone's close to me at all. So I'm constantly being
[16:35]surprised. I'm constantly jumping at being like, ah,
[16:37]because yeah, you can come right next to me and I won't feel it.
[16:41]That's hilarious. I don't know what's wrong with me. And maybe
[16:44]I'm losing my hearing too. And so people are just constantly
[16:46]surprised me that I'm like, what is wrong with me? Something
[16:48]about running into things, because I always run into things.
[16:51]And that is like, yeah, like feeling your body in space is like
[16:54]the general explanation of like, yeah, what proprioception is.
[16:58]But I constantly run, like I know that the counter is there, but I
[17:01]constantly run into it with my hip. You know what I mean?
[17:03]I have a bruise on my hip right now from like walking in,
[17:06]yeah, right. But I'm like, what where do I end in the world
[17:09]begin? It's basically, hey, we can still, we we're doing great.
[17:13]You know, if you're running into things, yeah, you're still
[17:16]like, it reminds you of your body in the world.
[17:20]But you, I mean, but I am not surfing, like you have another
[17:24]piece of the bug. And this is, I guess, back to the combination of muscle
[17:27]and your dad and everything. But yeah, you've used your muscle to literally
[17:30]walk on water, right? You talk about surfing and
[17:34]what it feels like and how you've like mastered that.
[17:36]And then you have this connective moment again with your dad where he's talking
[17:40]about how before anyone's awake where he lives, he goes on these dark
[17:43]morning runs. And you like to be out on the water and you both are
[17:47]finding quiet in the world through movement. And that was just so
[17:51]beautiful. Thank you. And you know, and it was funny to
[17:55]be talking to him about that because in the beginning of the book, I
[17:58]talked about how when we were kids, after dinner at like 10
[18:01]o'clock at night, he would take us in the dark to run
[18:06]like a mile to like our pediatricians office to the parking lot
[18:09]because there was a parking lot where he could run around and do his
[18:11]exercises and then my brother and I could play.
[18:14]But we would do that. And it was funny because when
[18:18]when I was talking about this with him, like the surfing part and when he
[18:22]would get up in the pre-dawn night, like I would
[18:26]to exercise now, it totally, I realized as we were talking about this
[18:32]later on that I thought, oh, this is what we used to do.
[18:35]What we used to do. And so it kind of felt connective in a way that,
[18:40]you know, maybe we didn't realize consciously in the moment, but it
[18:44]was, it did feel right and it did feel, you know, again, over
[18:49]this gulf between, you know, of distance geographic distance,
[18:54]I live in California, I live in China, that we can still,
[18:58]there's a echo, there's like a echo of these movements past. And I
[19:02]think that's helpful to me. I don't know.
[19:05]Yeah. It's beautiful. And inspiring. And you talk about like all
[19:09]the feats that the body can actually accomplish, none of which I have
[19:12]accomplished either by the way. So just like, yeah, people can push
[19:16]themselves and develop their muscles and just do all these. I mean, it's
[19:20]amazing what people can, what the body can do. I mean, it
[19:23]sounds so obvious, but you really feel it out for us.
[19:27]Oh, I think that I wanted to include those stories
[19:32]of these great, you know, stories of people who both ordinary and
[19:37]extraordinary, who could do incredible things, who accomplished
[19:40]incredible things, but those stories tell you how much power and
[19:47]possibility you hold in your own body. And I think that's what I
[19:50]want, would want people to take away from, from the book, right? That,
[19:53]that they are inspired by not just learning about
[20:00]and what how important muscles are in their own lives,
[20:03]your own lives, our own lives.
[20:04]But that to know, to learn what someone else went through
[20:09]could be galvanizing, to try something new,
[20:13]or get up and take a walk, or just to keep trying.
[20:18]And I think that's to keep pushing against all the forces
[20:22]that would push you down, I guess, is the thing.
[20:25]And that's what we're resisting.
[20:28]It's resistance against all the things that would
[20:31]be difficult.
[20:32]And even though you feel like you're getting pushed back down,
[20:35]that you keep rising, I love that.
[20:37]I know, every chapter is like a metaphor for life.
[20:40]Yeah, it's great.
[20:41]It's all, it was, that was so fun to get to do, by the way.
[20:45]Like to, to, like, understand how our language betrays our thoughts,
[20:49]like I would talk about the body and me, like,
[20:52]you know, grid through it, like, muscle through it.
[20:53]And I were like, no, relax.
[20:54]Like all that, all of those words
[20:56]are up, like bodily states of muscle.
[20:58]Like it's, isn't that interesting?
[21:00]Yes.
[21:00]Crazy.
[21:01]I know.
[21:02]Basically we have no original thoughts.
[21:04]We have to just, our bodies talking about it.
[21:06]Yeah, our body.
[21:08]OK, so what, what else are you working on?
[21:11]Not that you need to be working on anything else,
[21:13]but what's coming next for you and all of that?
[21:16]I, you know, this, this book has been a really heavy lift.
[21:21]I keep thinking that is just like such a good metaphor
[21:25]that I'm just, like, you know, you and I are talking.
[21:28]And it's like a little over a month out from publication.
[21:30]And I'm trying to tamp down anxiety by, like, going for swims
[21:35]and serves and, like, lifting weights.
[21:37]And I'm just hoping to enjoy the ride, like, when it comes
[21:40]because it's, you know, books take so long.
[21:44]And you put so much of your heart into it.
[21:46]And, and then when you put them out in the world,
[21:49]you don't have control over that baby anymore.
[21:52]And the uncertainty around it's safe passage into the world.
[21:56]So I just, I'm very appreciative of, of you for, you know,
[22:01]being part of that journey of safe passage into the world.
[22:04]And I just hope that people read and enjoy the book.
[22:08]Yeah.
[22:09]Well, they will all be jumping in, which also have a whole chapter
[22:13]on jumping.
[22:14]And this one man who, like, jumps into the water every single day
[22:16]and the power of jumping.
[22:17]So we will be jumping into your book.
[22:19]And thank you so much for talking about it with me.
[22:23]And, you know, it was just so, yes, I learned,
[22:27]but I'm telling you these moments, these poignant moments
[22:31]in the book were unexpected.
[22:33]And I mean, not totally unexpected
[22:35]because you're a beautiful writer and I knew that,
[22:37]but that you leave them in so well and make us really feel
[22:41]and, like, think about our own relationships.
[22:42]And I certainly was thinking about my own relationship
[22:44]with my dad and all those moments.
[22:46]And anyway, it was very, it was deep on every level.
[22:51]I could find an analogy of muscle, but it's talk.
[22:54]And I don't think you want the joy to be like, you know,
[22:58]because there's joy and movement.
[22:59]And I want, I want us to remember that, like,
[23:02]that exercise as play or movement as plays.
[23:05]And we all need and can have, like, as we get older.
[23:10]So it's not something that you need to give up.
[23:13]And yet, ironically, I'm just gonna sit in my chair all day.
[23:16]Oh, you're gonna do some jumping jacks.
[23:21]Oh, yeah, you're gonna do some burpees.
[23:24]No burpees in my future.
[23:26]Literally the last time I did burpees,
[23:27]I, like, slipped to just get my back.
[23:29]And I was like, I'm like, oh, for this.
[23:30]Yeah.
[23:31]No burpees, no burpees.
[23:32]Domingues are good.
[23:33]Domingues are good.
[23:36]All right, well, thank you.
[23:37]Congratulations, Bonnie.
[23:38]So exciting.
[23:39]Thank you.
[23:39]Thank you.
[23:40]Great to see you, too.
[23:42]All right, fine.
[23:42]I have to see you in the store in LA.
[23:44]Yes.
[23:45]Bye.
[23:46]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi,
[23:49]formerly mom's don't have time to read books.
[23:52]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[23:55]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[23:57]and spread the word.
[23:59]Thanks so much.
[24:00]Oh, and bye the books.