Cabinet of
Curiosities

I started Pilates because I was tired all the time and my body felt like it didn't belong to me. I thought it would just be exercise. It wasn't.

The first thing I learned was how to breathe. Not the kind you do automatically — the kind where you feel your ribs expand, where exhale becomes a decision. That changed everything.

Then came alignment. Not "stand up straight" alignment — the kind where you realize your body has been compensating for years, holding tension in places you didn't know existed. Pilates taught me to notice.

I got certified because I wanted to teach other people that feeling. The moment your body clicks into place and you think: oh, I've been working so hard to hold myself wrong.

Now it's part of how I think about research. Behavior change isn't about willpower. It's about noticing what's already happening in your body and choosing differently. One breath at a time.

— Zora Neale Hurston

It started because I wanted to read more but never did. So I made it social — Saturday mornings, tea, one book at a time.

We read things about the body, about mindset, about how stress lives in your muscles. Then we talk about it. Sometimes we argue. Mostly we just notice things we missed the first time.

Currently reading:

• Core Awareness by Liz Koch — about the psoas and how your body holds onto things you thought you forgot

Previously:

• Mindset by Carol Dweck
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

— Albert Einstein

I grew up moving between countries. Each place had a different idea of what "taking care of yourself" meant. In Korea it's one thing. Somewhere else, completely different.

That gap is what got me into health communication. When a health message doesn't land, it's usually not because people don't care. It's because the message wasn't made for their world.

• Bilingual — English and Korean
• Certified Pilates instructor
• MA Advertising at UT Austin, headed toward a PhD
• Favorite filmmaker: Park Chan-wook — precision is everything

— Albert Einstein

Spring 2012. Seoul, South Korea.

Before going to the English academy (typical 10 years old Korean after-school activity), I sat on the windowsill with a vocabulary in one hand and a green apple in the other. My mom had bought them — each one wrapped in plastic, stacked inside the refrigerator.

Cold. Crisp. Sour enough to wake my mouth up. A warm breeze came through the window.

She never once told me to eat fruit. She just put them in the fridge. I reached in when I was hungry. That was all.

Ten years later, a professor showed a stat in class. Eighty percent of smokers already know smoking is bad for them. Information was never the problem.

That's when the window came back. The apple. My mom. She never said "Vitamin C is important." She bought the apples, put them where I could reach them, and let me decide. That was the communication.

Green apple logic is one principle: make the healthy choice the easy choice.

Not persuasion — design. Not a campaign — a counter. Not a billboard — a bowl.

My research starts with one question: How do you put a green apple in everyone's refrigerator?

— Linus Pauling