This novel is a product of a sketchy draft (in Chinese) by Carmelita H. Chao (1962-2019), narrated over several years (in Chinese) to Dr. Hwa A. Lim, who struggles with reading in Chinese, and who (though ethnically Chinese), embarrassingly, lacks mastery of the language. She hardly conversed in English, and never wrote in English.
Dr. Lim then elaborated based on his experience traveling to those places described in the novel. It is the expansive space beyond the language barriers that allows Dr. Lim’s imagination to roam unrestrained. This makes the final product so much more distinctively creative—a combination of the little ‘understanding’ and mostly ‘misunderstanding’ of the draft and the verbal narration. This is probably a rare instance in which a lack of mastery of languages works to an advantage.
The very first “translation” into English was keyed into a Word document on March 15, 2006 at Beverly Heritage Hotel, Milpitas, California. During this marathon translation, Carmelita has passed on, and Dr. Lim decided it is a good time to bring her wish to fruition. Let the ‘understandings’ and ‘misunderstandings’ be told, in Dr. Lim’s unique, albeit characterful, way.

Introduction To “Yours” Series
The “Yours” series of books is a culmination of more than three-decades worth of Q&A, starting from the waning year of the 1980s when Dr. Lim was on a lecture circuit at different institutes of the USSR Academy of Sciences in different republics of the former Soviet Union (USSR), and subsequent years in different parts of the world.
Well sought-after Dr. Lim took notes of the questions and discussion topics, drafted on his flights home, converted the answers and knowledge exchanged into this series of books. Each of the books is thus titled “X Yours” as in correspondences, just as if Dr. Lim is responding to questions raised.
It started during the pre-Internet era, through tele-text to now 5G, going into 6G. In the intervening years, publishing has metamorphosized from print to digital, to now AI can write books as well. Knowledge and information have also exploded, but with inconvenient consequences, such as misinformation and disinformation.
This series of Yours books are written by intelligent humans for intelligent humans, but inescapably, for intelligent machines as well.
As Dr. Lim loves to joke, “I write many books, I do not write the same book many times.” This would partially explain the diverse topics touched upon,
Each “Yours” book is written, pari passu, with the other Yours series of books, including:
8 Genetically Yours: Bioinforming, biopharming, and biofarming (2002),
8 Multiplicity Yours: Cloning, stem cell research, and regenerative medicine (2006),
8 Healthfully Yours: Aging, fountain of youth, and longevity (2023),
8 Healthily Yours: Diets, diseases, and well-being (2023),
8 Lithesomely Yours: The brain on dance, music on the brain (2023),
8 Epidemiologically Yours: Plagues, infectious diseases, and diseases of the affluence,
8 Pandemically Yours: Zoonotics, Coronaviruses and Covid-19,
8 Hippocratically Yours: Diseases, wellness, and safety,
8 Cranially Yours: The brain, intelligence and disorders,
8 Eco-friendlily Yours: Biofuels, energy, green and clean technologies,
8 …
To write on all these topics will take a lot of different perspectives. My bailiwick is biotech and healthcare, and so this is how I will approach these topics: from the perspective of biotech and health.

Written by intelligent humans for intelligent humans, but inescapably, for intelligent machines as well.

PREFACE
This is a book about the brain and body, written by two individuals of very distinct backgrounds—one a scientist, another a novelist, each a best-selling author—on dance, something that they do together as partners. To be able to do so, it takes a lot of dancing around, literally.
Not only one of them works primarily from his left hemisphere of the brain, and the other works mainly from her right hemisphere, i.e., a pragmatic “he” and an idealist “she.” Science deals with universal principles whereas art is the ultimate celebration of human individuality and originality; the latter is an ultimate antidote to the homogenizing effects of the former.
The daily habits are also very dissimilar. His day and night are closer to the natural rhythm; she is crepuscular. It is not uncommon that he would receive from her emails / texts / messages during the twilight hours of 4, 5, or 6 am, when melatonin is surging in his system during REM sleep.
Ginger Rogers (1911-1995), U.S. actress, singer and dancer, was right when she said, “Women have to do everything a man does, but backwards and in high heels.” Not always that way, but that statement rings some truth in many instances during the course of this collaborative work.
If this were all that there is, this book would never have seen its daylight.
During dancing together the two find a common language, the music. Dancing and writing a book are two very different endeavors, of course. So to write and complete this book, the two would have to find a different common “language.” This they would find: in social settings when they are out together, when they discuss things drinking McCafé at MacDonald’s, or when they are stuck in traffic jams up and down the Silicon Valley. The world congresses they attended together and side sightseeing trips, the once-in-a-life-time opportunity when they led a group of outstanding dancers to the U.S. largest sports event, the SuperBowl (in the SuperBowl 50 Halftime Show), in which they got to be alongside Beyoncé, Bruno Mars and Chris Martin. They have also competed together—on good days they won most; on not such good days, they lost some.
These experiences of thrills, excitements, and the countless discussions wend their ways into this book.
In fact, writing this book started more than twenty years ago when I began taking dancing seriously, though I did not realize it at the time. In hindsight, I can see shadowy precursors to the themes and discussions in this book in a handful of my earlier articles, and I am deeply grateful to the many people who helped refine my thinking, or offered other forms of support over the years.
For a start, it is meant to be readable. With a book that is an important issue: I have to prescind any technical discussions. It would be interesting to discover just how many people (let alone serious dancers) have actually read books on all the complexities of the human body, the brain and the musculoskeletal system. In these days of ubiquitous social media, the number is even fewer. I suspect, very few folks have read and absorbed the deep thoughts, let alone understood the subtleties and nuances contained therein.
For hot new facts, or otherwise called news, news media, and now the immediacy of social media reportage do the rolling 24/7 news agenda far better than anyone can. Most of us have watched videos on digital devices or read press accounts and books about events—especially those in spotlight—that unfold on these pages (or digital screens). But very few of us have seen the events from the inside. The inside implies knowledge, and knowledge is power.
By inside, I do not mean the views of professional dancers or the other self-satisfied classes like trainers or gurus, or even those very grand journalists. The real insiders’ knowledge is always the information that is available at the time. It is that secret information that helps winners in a vantage position. This book tries to lift the veil on the current knowledge of our brains and our body movements that have shaped our lives. It tries to show how some people are more successful armed with the knowledge of how our brains work and/or an understanding of body dynamics. Perhaps more importantly, how healthy habits do not have to hurt or to be injurious.
It is said that the best place to study injuries is in the military. Much to our chagrin, we have found that dancers get injured quite a lot, not by bullets or shrapnel, but by improper techniques or body movements, among them shoulder rotator cuff injury, cervical injury, spinal injury, knee injury and plantar faciitis.
This book tends to highlight misunderstandings and misconceptions for the simple reason that they are more interesting than the far more numerous facts, which are easily searchable (and researchable) from reliable sources on the Internet. In so doing, turning over stones invariably lets a harsh light onto some creatures of the shadows. There are many opportunists, event organizers, and instructors who prefer otherwise, and thrive on misconceptions in order to protect their careers and ways of life. It guarantees their income, their status and their pensions; and of course, their popularity (or narcissism), or inflated amour-propre.
The various case studies in this book are intended to provide an accessible and readable narrative of the incidents they describe, accompanied by some professional insights into how these incidents came about. They tread a delicate path between the laboriously footnoted and exhaustive detail of the academic doctoral tome, and the trivial, flippant (and often inaccurate) popular account of cheap journalism, or blogging. Where possible, quotations are clearly indicated. Science is, after all, a never-ending endeavor.

CARnHAL
Winter of a year when they danced less to complete this book
Hwa A. Lim & Carmelita H. Chao
Silicon Valley, California, USA
www.ahsaworld.org