LIVED EXPERIENCE
Why launch this Substack?
Why do we care so much about the science of energy, the experience of energy, and the bridge between them, that we are committing to writing weekly about these topics?
The answer is pretty simple. We are moved to help discover new ways of fulfilling our collective potential, and we believe that a path towards this goal is to bridge science and the human experience.
Reflecting on Our Human Potential
Every child has a unique set of interests, aptitudes, and gifts. These are the foundation for their individual potential and the broader human potential within each of us.
Our human potential is at the very core of who we are. And it’s amazing.
It’s a curious flame of life that has burned within us for tens of thousands of generations. Human potential has warmed our hearts, not only to embrace each other, but also the many discoveries and advances that have led us to where we are now. In our current world, we not only have our families, friends, communities, and collectives that give meaning to our lives, but we have clothes, homes, and electricity too.
We have technologies that heighten and extend our senses. We have vehicles that bring us farther than our ancestors from even just a few generations ago could have ever imagined. And we have comfort-providing appliances and devices that let us focus our energy not on survival, but on fulfilling that everburning desire to grow, discover, innovate, and understand the world around us—to achieve our full potential as human beings.
We can think of no more valuable thing to devote our lives to than helping ourselves and fellow human beings fulfill their potential.
We dream of a future where every individual born on this Earth can reach their full potential. When people achieve their potential, they live happier, richer, and more fulfilling lives, and, importantly, they enrich the lives of others around them. It raises the spirits and fulfillment of their families, friends, and of the world.
Discovering and expressing our full potential is, we have come to believe, what life is all about.
If all living beings imbued with a human mind could reach their full potential—whatever that is for each person—what a world this would be! And how beautiful humanity would be.
Health Lays the Foundation for Fulfilling Our Potential
The question then becomes: How the hell do we go about helping ourselves and others fulfill our potential?
Well, that is the question, isn’t it?
Universal basic income can fight poverty. Access to clean water, food, education, and opportunities can enhance equity. Sane policies can support progress and peace. All of these matter a great deal.
But nothing matters if we don’t have one thing: Health.
Every step along a person’s path towards discovering and expressing their potential, living a full life and benefitting the world starts with health. You, me, and everyone else cannot be their best self and get the most enjoyment out of life without health.
Think of the last time you were really sick. Maybe you were down with a serious case of the flu, or perhaps you live with a chronic illness that prevents you from doing the things you care about or enjoy the most. When we’re in pain, debilitated, or injured, we simply cannot be at our best.
The same goes for the mind. We need a healthy body to sustain a healthy mind. And we need a healthy mind to fulfill our potential. Creativity and the movement of the mind is stifled when we don’t have health.
Think of children—your children, if you have any. What do you wish for them? What would bring them the highest likelihood of growing up into capable, well-adjusted contributors to your family and society?
Without health, their resilience and ability to fight off infections would fade. Their bodies wouldn’t develop strength and stamina to move about without suffering. And without mental health, they may end up feeling like their existence is just too much for them—unbearable, pointless, not worth living for. The lack of mental health takes many lives every year.
To survive a challenging life and achieve our full human potential, we need health.
That’s why we care so much about health.
And it’s why we think that caring about health—rather than focusing solely on diseases, like biomedical research has done for decades—is the way of the future. As simple as this sounds, promoting health will allow us to improve human well-being and reduce suffering.
Health is the basis of a fulfilled human life.
The Role of Science in Health
How do we create and maintain health?
To understand what health is and how to enhance it, we can use the tools of science.
Let’s use first principles thinking here. Let go of the preconceived ideas that you may have about what “health” is or how to enhance it. Think about the most essential, fundamental feature of a healthy, living body.
What is the main difference between a cadaver and a thinking, feeling, conscious organism? It’s not the genes—they remain unchanged as you die. It’s not how many cells the body has—that also doesn’t differ between living and dead things. It’s not how many synapses the brain contains. Nor is it anything else structural that can be observed under a microscope.
The key difference is energy.
Energy flow in your mitochondria is the primary distinguishing characteristic between life and death. Energy is the basis of all that we are. And of how we become what we are.
We won’t go into the scientific details surrounding why energy is the basis of your life now. That’s the topic of future posts on this Substack and of the upcoming ENERGY book. But the point is that our existence and our health—and so many diseases—are tightly linked to our mitochondria’s ability to move and transform energy.
Science has begun to reveal the immense beauty of the molecular, cellular, and other levels at which biology operates to optimize energy flow. Understanding the biology and the physics of energy—as it applies to life—is essential to develop an accurate model of what health is and what we can do to support it. That’s why many posts on this Substack, including two of our first four posts, are about mitochondria (see our first Energy Science and Behind the Paper posts).
Mitochondria are the small micro-organisms, living by the hundreds to thousands in our cells, that transform energy and process signals. They sustain the social cellular collective that is your body.
But is science enough to bring to light the full depth of human health?
We think not.
Science—at least the reductionist way we’ve done it for a couple hundred years in the Western world—is concerned with increasingly small bits of stuff. It works by analysis.
The word “analysis” originates from Ancient Greek ἀνάλυσις (análusis), meaning “a breaking up” or “untying.” Scientific analysis reflects the idea of “unraveling” something complex to examine it.
But there are things you can’t break apart. There are wholes that you can’t adequately understand by only analyzing their parts: in nature, for example.
Life and Life Experiences are More Than the Sum of Their Parts
Nature is a complex, dynamic, and often cyclical network of interrelated and interacting components and processes. The natural world doesn’t exist as individual parts to be distilled and dissected.
A forest, for example, is more than just a lot of trees living close together, though that is a defining feature. Within a forest, plants and trees capture and transform light energy into biomass and oxygen, and animals breathe and eat what plants produce. Eventually, animals and plants die, fall to the ground, and decompose with the help of the soil, its microbes, and its mycelium network. The living soil then allows their dying atomic and molecular structures to dissolve and re-assemble—to quite literally transform—into other life forms. And so the cycle continues.
We are a part of that cycle. And our bodies themselves are similarly complex, dynamic, and bound by various cycles of transformation. Energy transformation.
We know from firsthand experience that our lives are moved by subjective experiences. When we wake up in the morning and regain consciousness from the temporary unconscious spell of sleep, our experiences range widely.
At one extreme, the human experience can feel like being energized to do great things, inspired, and enthusiastic—empowered, perhaps, to change the world around you. You may feel like you are your best self, with the capacity to be kind, generous, and able to feel love.
At the other extreme, you can wake up and feel fucking terrible. Everything may feel difficult. Perhaps you feel hopeless, not good or deserving enough, and like a burden on others—like you’d rather die than face the day. A lot of people have been there. And some live there chronically—a tough place to be.
That’s the real deal. The full, wondrous, and unreducible spectrum of the human experience.
Alas, contrary to the molecular psychiatry theory of mental illness/health, and the cellular basis of the mind that neuroscience has been seeking for a few decades now, those experiences are not fundamentally chemical or cellular. Or at least science has failed to show how that would be possible. Those human experiences emerge in ways that have, so far, eluded the best scientific minds on this planet.
But we’ve all experienced the amazing joy and sorrow of what it feels like to be human. It is a broad spectrum for which science has no explanation—and likely never will.
Energy—Basis of the Human Experience and Who We Are
So, why does this Substack mean so much to us?
It’s because bridging the science and experience of the most fundamental element of our lives—energy—holds the key to helping all of us fulfill our collective potential.
Science’s value lies in structuring the systematic inquiry into our lives. The human experience is what moves each one of our behaviors: what we do, what we don’t do, and our ability to be.
That’s the genesis for The Science and Experience of Energy.
Like everything we create, this Substack is a new life born out of a movement. This movement, we feel, is both social/cultural and scientific. And it is born out of people—the subtle embrace and transformation that happens when human minds come together to address inspiring problems.
The inspiring problem in our case is how health enables human potential, and the role of energy in all of this.
Who are we?
We are Nirosha and Martin. Both native Canadians, whose work, writing, and lives have converged in New York City through a shared inquiry into energy and health.
Nirosha is a biophysicist trained in neuroscience, tissue biophysics, and quantum biology. She is a mother, entrepreneur, and academic researcher. Her lab studies how different forms of energy, including light and magnetic fields, are used by cells, bodies, and brains to communicate to shape life, and how disruptions in these signals can shift living systems away from optimal states of health.
Martin is a mitochondrial psychobiologist trained in cell biology, physiology, systems biology, psychosocial oncology, and holistic medicine. He is a father, academic researcher, and writer. His lab studies mitochondrial morphology, signaling, and diversity; the energetic cost of stress; the energetics of aging; brain energetics; and body-mind processes. He is passionate about developing new ways of measuring health and healing.
Most of the posts on this Substack, at least initially, will be from Martin’s keyboard. But some of the Lived Experience pieces—relating the real experiences that move us as individuals and scientists—will be from both of us, and from others.
Some Lived Experience posts will actually be our shared experiences. Stories going from the most wonderful and enlivening, to the most heartbreaking and painful experiences. Both sides of the spectrum have shaped and given meaning to our lives, for suffering is the greatest teacher.
Our hope is that sharing the cutting-edge Energy Science posts, together with the Behind the Paper posts, will provide opportunities for you to learn and appreciate how much science has to offer—from fundamental physics to the ways energy shapes mind–body interactions.
And we hope that the Lived Experience posts will help remind you of how we are all ultimately moved by our own, unique experiences—highlighting the humanity behind the science.
Our deeper hope is that bridging the science and experience of energy together with you and the growing community is a journey that will help us discover who we are, and how we can achieve and sustain optimal health, so we can fulfill our collective potential.
A Symbol of Energy and Purpose
The image we selected as the logo for this Substack also means a lot to us. It was painted by Martin’s hands while on a trip to Germany in December 2025.
Yes, it is a quirky nod to Pink Floyd’s 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.
It shows light coming in from the left. Immaterial, raw energy beaming through space at lightspeed. Upon contacting the edge of a semi-filamentous mitochondrion, the light diffracts and is separated into its different constituent colors/wavelengths on the right. The light’s manifested colors then go on, beaming radiantly to illuminate the world.
The painting integrates Nirosha’s love of light and Martin’s love of mitochondria.
It reflects the transformative essence of mitochondria.
It’s also a metaphor for our lives. Day in and day out, energy flows through us—as food, light, and other forms of energy. We transform that energy into the heat that warms our bodies and hearts, into cellular functions and movements, and into thoughts, emotions, and dreams.
From the moment you were born, with every breath you’ve ever taken, you have unfolded as a transforming, energetic process.
Energy transformation is what we are.
We hope that learning about the science of energy, tuning into the lived experience of energy, and integrating new insights and knowledge into your own life will help you feel and express who you truly are, energetically.
With gratitude,
Nirosha and Martin
Subscribe to join us on this journey, where we’ll share scientific advances and personally meaningful stories, with more information about how bridging the science and experience of energy may help create a healthier, more compassionate, sustainable world.
I truly admire this initiative! It is so refreshing to see the bridge between rigorous science and the lived human experience being built so thoughtfully.
I’m particularly eager to learn more about the mechanics of our 'vital energy' transformation. It’s fascinating (and often a bit mysterious) why some people seem so tuned into their own energy—able to consciously direct it to their heart and brain—while others feel chronically blocked or stagnant.
The idea that our mitochondria are actively listening to our thoughts, emotions, and even our dreams is groundbreaking. I’m personally looking forward to diving deeper into how we can move from biological 'stagnation' to a more conscious flow of energy. All my gratitude to you both, real creators!! 🤍🤍🤍
Is it weird to find a science substack thrilling and heartwarming? Thank you for this post and for all of your work. Very excited to follow along, and relieved for humanity that you two are helping in a very big way to move us forward.