When the Body Forgets the Song

Cancer, Disconnection, and the Healing Inner Smile.

I recently read an article by Dr. Jason Yuan on bioelectricity and the hidden cause of cancer, and it expanded my perception of how modern medicine and ancient energy medicine might not be at odds—but speaking to different layers of the same truth.

Most of us learned that cancer begins in the genes.A random mutation. A rogue cell. A breakdown in DNA.

This isn’t wrong—but it may be incomplete.

Dr. Yuan was reflecting on the work of biologist Michael Levin, whose research suggests that cancer might not originate from damaged DNA alone, but from a deeper issue: a breakdown in cellular communication. Levin’s studies of bioelectricity reveal that cells rely on electrical signaling—not just genetic coding—to know where they are, what they’re part of, and how to behave. When these subtle signals are interrupted, cells become confused, disoriented, and isolated. Some begin to grow out of control and this is what creates cancer.

More on this study with Dr. Jason Yuan:

They stop being part of the organism—and begin to act like they exist alone.

This is the energy of cancer: not evil, not rebellious—disconnected. Cancer is a part of the body that has forgotten that it belongs to the whole.

In Chinese cosmology, there is an archetype for this kind of imbalance: the hungry ghost. A being so cut off from its essence, so severed from its source, that it becomes insatiable. It can never be full. It devours everything in its path—food, energy, attention—but nothing can satisfy it. It does not remember who it is.

This is not just a metaphor. It’s an energy pattern. It lives in our culture. It lives in our illnesses.

In Zhineng Qigong, we understand that health is coherence. Every cell, organ, and thought is in dialogue with the field of hun yuan qi—the universal, intelligent life energy that connects all things. When that connection is strong, the body functions in harmony. When something becomes cut off, it begins to decay, distort, or spin into chaos. The “hungry ghost” of the body emerges—not as a punishment, but as a symptom of lost connection.

Healing, then, is not a war—it’s a reunion.

One of the most powerful ways to initiate this reunion is through the Inner Smile. In this ancient practice, we smile gently into our body—into the liver, the heart, the brain, the kidneys. Into our blood. Into our bones. We imagine our cells smiling back. We imagine every cell of our body with a smile on its face. We imagine our body into physical wholeness, connection, and health.

Practice the Inner Smile Meditation:

Each smile is like a thread, reweaving the body’s internal web, reconnecting the part that forgot.

There are stories of people who have used this Inner Smile practice with great devotion in the face of illnesses like cancer. They didn’t visualize eradication or attack. They simply and patiently sent a smile to every cell of their body. Over time, something shifted, the body stopped consuming itself, and the disease dissapeared. The body remembered how to be healthy again.

There’s a mirror of this truth in fiction—in A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L’Engle’s sequel to A Wrinkle in Time. In it, the protagonist travels into her brother’s body, where a tiny being—deep within his cellular structure—has separated from the great cosmic dance. It believes that by disconnecting, it can assert its individuality. That disconnection, however, is what’s making the system sick. The heroine cannot force it to return. She can only offer presence, compassion, and faith that it will choose to come back into right relationship.

That story has always felt intuitively true to me.

Here’s the paradox: We think freedom comes from separation. But the deepest sovereignty—the truest agency—arises when we are in relationship with the whole; with each other, with nature, with the Dao, with the original intelligence of life.

Michael Levin’s work points toward a future where healing is not just mechanical or chemical—it’s relational. Where the body is seen not as a battlefield, but as a community. Practices like the Inner Smile are not sentimental—they are technologies of reconnection.

They help the “hungry ghost” remember its true nature.

They help the body remember its wholeness.

And when it does—when the cells smile back—the need to endlessly consume and grow bigger disappears.

What was once fragmented becomes whole again...

and the song continues.

References:

Endogenous Bioelectrical Networks: An interface to somatic intelligence by Michael Levin

Bioelectricity Publications