Have you ever wondered why events from years ago suddenly come back, and we may feel like we’re experiencing it again?

Somehow, I feel amazed by how we can remember it. It felt like we experience it again and again, like a video recorder. I assume there is a mechanism in my body that acts like a video recorder. If the memory is a good one, we may smile and laugh by itself when remembering it, then we may cry if we remember the traumatic and sad memories.

When I learned about Inner smile meditation, which I learned how to smile to my five principle organs, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, they call it zang-organ. The description is simple: zang-organ is organs of our body that transform things, therefore it is not hollow. The pair of this organ is fu-organ, which is organs in our body that are hollow, mainly working as transportation. Therefore there is a word to describe these pair organs: zang-fu organs. As you can see, Chinese always see things in pairs—yin-yang, day and night. Therefore, when we talk about zang organs, we need also to talk about their pairs which is fu-organs.

I have heard and learned that our emotions and feelings are actually chemicals in the form of hormones produced by glands in our body. However, I never knew that our organs do secrete chemicals like hormones, before I learned Inner smile meditation.

I smiled to my physical heart. I felt a bit stupid trying to smile to my body, at the first time. But the sensation I felt a few minutes after I put my attention toward my heart and curled my lips to smile at it was real. It almost felt like my heart smiled back to me. What is this?

Do my organs have separate consciousness? I always thought that my body, my mind, and my soul are an integral part of myself. If I pay attention to myself, either indulge myself in happiness, I do favors to all elements in my body, because we are inseparable. However, this sensation was too real to be unnoticed. I wonder if even my millions of cells in my body were actually conscious. I tried a simple test. I paid attention and smiled to other organs as well, even to my hairs, nose, skin, anything that I could think of about my body elements. The result was… overwhelming. I felt joy, content, and happiness in which I never felt before.

That moment raised an existential question in my mind: does my sense of self come from my soul created by God, or actually the result of millions of cell consciousness merging into a single self, like millions of people band together in a single nation led by a single king or president? Anyway, it’s a story and reflection for another time.

With the dawn of AI, I have the privilege to use AI for research, and for my curiosity, I asked Gemini about biochemicals secreted by the heart, and here is the result:

“The Heart: Secretes atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) when you are relaxed, which naturally dilates blood vessels and lowers blood pressure.”

I also cross-checked Gemini’s answer with several medical websites, and it seems to be true—our organs do respond to our attention and smile.

It’s not just the heart. All our zang-fu organs actually produce biochemical substances. It’s a bit technical, I promise you to discuss it in a later post. For now, I begun to understand more about how my body works.

Our body seems like a production plant of biochemicals. Our brain and nervous system may store the details of a past event, then somehow in a split second, telling our organs to produce chemical reactions so we can re-experience the feeling of a past event.

Then, I conclude, that if I have a heavy trauma, there is a chance my body will always produce the biochemicals for that memory to be re-experienced. If the memories were good memories, I might heal myself with good biochemicals. What about bad memories? I believe in the long term they may cause health problems, as those chemicals are probably too many for my body to expel from my system.

I guess, from now on, I need to live with happy memories as much as possible, and deal with negative traumas when they are still in the bud.