PodcastsEducationKnow Thyself

Know Thyself

André Duqum
Know Thyself
Latest episode

203 episodes

  • Know Thyself

    E201 - Dandapani: A Monk's Warning "Distraction Is Costing You Your Life"

    30/06/2026 | 2h 23 mins.
    Dandapani is a Hindu priest who spent over ten years as a celibate monk before devoting his life to teaching the world how to master focus. His central claim is simple but unsettling: most of us are not distracted by accident, we have spent years actively practicing distraction, often more hours a day than most people practice anything else they care about. In this conversation, we unpack what it actually costs to live a physically present, mentally absent life, and why that cost compounds with every passing year.

    What We Dive Into:
    1. Whatever you do for hours a day, every day, you get good at. Most people have unintentionally practiced distraction more than they have practiced anything else, which is why concentration feels so foreign and difficult by comparison.
    2. You cannot practice being present directly. Presence is simply the outcome of keeping your awareness fixed on one thing without it wandering. Trying to "be present" without training focus is chasing an effect while ignoring its cause.
    3. When your attention bounces between unfinished tasks, each unresolved jump adds a small charge of anxiety that accumulates over the day. Learning to hold awareness in one place, even briefly, interrupts that buildup before it becomes stress.

    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.
    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com

    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
    https://oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF
    Code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off

    ___________
    00:00 Intro
    01:29 What Distraction Costs Us
    07:29 The Law of Practice
    13:19 Life Is Finite, Not Short
    24:08 Money, Purpose, and the Path of the Householder
    28:08 Tasting the Super Conscious
    32:21 Awareness, Anxiety, and the Roots of Stress
    39:42 How to Train Focus: The Ball of Light
    50:11 Eliminating Fear by Controlling Awareness
    55:43 The Greatest Gift: Undivided Attention
    1:01:36 Becoming a Monk: The Search for a Real Teacher
    1:11:20 Choosing a Philosophy Before the Practice
    1:23:26 Signs of a Maturing Soul
    1:30:21 A Day in the Monastery: Practicing All Day Long
    1:36:38 Intuition, Psychic Sensitivity, and Its Dangers
    1:43:28 Going Narrow and Deep on One Path
    1:50:14 Filtering the Mind Like a Kitchen Strainer
    1:58:44 Building Willpower: Finish What You Begin
    2:03:04 Reincarnation, Compassion, and Unresolved Baggage
    2:13:29 How to Spot a Fake Guru
    2:17:42 Ambition, Peace, and the Final Message
    ___________

    ✨MORE FROM DANDAPANI
    ↳https://dandapani.org/know-thyself-podcast
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dandapanillc
    ↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dandapanillc

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    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/
    ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/
    ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/

    👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast
    ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list
  • Know Thyself

    E200 - Ido Portal: The Body Knows What the Mind Can't

    23/06/2026 | 3h 5 mins.
    Ido Portal is one of the most original movement thinkers alive. He has spent decades studying the body across martial arts, acrobatics, yoga, dance, and ancient movement traditions, not to master any one of them, but to ask a deeper question: what does it actually mean to move well, and what does the body reveal when you finally start listening to it? In this conversation, we go long, covering ground that most movement conversations never reach.

    What We Dive Into:
    1.Most of us treat the body like a car to maintain, something we service occasionally for performance or appearance. Ido's entire framework starts from the opposite premise: the body is not a tool you use, it is what you are. That shift alone changes what practice means.
    2.What we attend to grows. What we neglect crumbles. Ido applies this principle everywhere, from babies in hospitals to athletes on the field. Bringing undivided attention to even one part of your body for one minute, with no music, no phone, no audience, begins a transformation most people have never experienced.
    3.The most important moment in Ido's own journey was admitting he didn't have what he was looking for. Not as defeat, but as a beginning. The person who thinks they already have a connection to their body is the one most closed off to finding it. Not knowing, and staying there, is the actual practice.

    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.
    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com

    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
    https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself
    Try LMNT & get a free sample pack

    https://www.functionhealth.com/KNOWTHYSELF
    Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for $25 off membership
    ___________
    00:00 Intro
    01:44 How Most People Relate to Their Body
    09:22 Movement vs. Practice vs. Exercise
    10:27 Life Is for Practicing, Not Just Living
    20:13 Attention as the Primary Tool
    23:49 Stop Practicing for Exposure
    28:12 How to Begin: Removing Leakage
    35:22 Diagnostic Play and the Art of Seeing
    37:30 The Ancient Schools of Practice
    43:33 Tensegrity and the Body's Inner Models
    49:28 Proprioception, Sensing, and the Pain of Feeling
    1:02:05 Tension, Connection, and What the Body Actually Needs
    1:08:00 Ido's Journey: Searching for a Real Teacher
    1:13:15 Why Real Teachers Refuse to Give Clean Answers
    1:23:49 What Am I Before Who Am I
    1:29:23 The Chariot Analogy: Body, Emotion, and Intellect
    1:36:42 Feeding the Emotional Body
    1:40:14 The Weber-Fechner Law and Reducing Inner Noise
    1:52:29 How the Body Reveals What We Hide
    2:02:15 Pursuing Weakness Over Strength
    2:05:46 Discipline, Motivation, and Real Will
    2:16:02 The Practice of Sitting and Choiceless Awareness
    2:37:22 What Inner Work Without the Body Misses
    2:41:31 The Heart as the Missing Path
    2:45:55 Community Questions: Practical Tools for the Body
    2:57:18 On Animals, Archetypes, and the Spirit of Movement
    3:03:02 Closing Message: Become a Practice
    ___________

    ✨MORE FROM IDO
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/portal.ido/↳https://www.idoportal.com

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    ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/
    ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/

    👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast
    ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list/book-list
  • Know Thyself

    E199 - Dr. Caroline Leaf: How to Stop Your Brain From Holding You Back

    16/06/2026 | 1h 30 mins.
    Dr. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist and bestselling author who has spent over 40 years studying the relationship between the mind and the brain. At a time when neuroplasticity was still emerging as a field, she was already building clinical tools to help patients recover from brain injuries, trauma, and conditions that conventional medicine had written off as permanent. In this conversation, we go deep into a distinction that changes everything: the mind is not the brain, and once you understand that, you stop being a victim of your own biology.

    What We Dive Into:
    1. The brain does not generate thoughts. It responds to the mind. Everything you think, feel, and choose originates in the mind and then gets coded into the brain and body.
    2. Depression, anxiety, and other mental health labels are not diseases you have. They are signals pointing to an underlying thought that needs to be found and restructured.
    3. You cannot change what happened, but you can change the impact it has on your present and future. Through a process of deconstructing and reconstructing toxic thought networks, the grip of the past loosens.

    Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.
    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com

    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
    https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself
    Use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% at checkout

    ___________
    00:00 Intro
    03:11 The Difference Between Mind and Brain
    07:17 Why the Brain-Is-Boss Model Gets It Wrong
    12:25 Consciousness Beyond the Physical Body
    14:25 Quantum Physics, Microtubules, and the Mind
    21:24 Science and Spirituality Converging
    23:41 Early Research: Neuroplasticity and Traumatic Brain Injury
    28:50 Mind-Driven Change: Telomeres and Cellular Health
    31:56 Working in South Africa: Healing Through Mental Frameworks
    34:31 The Origin of the Neurocycle
    40:13 The Non-Conscious, Subconscious, and Conscious Mind
    49:35 How Thoughts and Memories Build Into the Brain and Body
    51:59 The Five Steps of the Neurocycle
    57:01 Step One: Gather Awareness
    01:00:24 Step Two: Reflect
    01:02:10 Steps Three to Five: Mindstorm, Recheck, Active Reach
    01:09:28 Community Questions: Fear of Losing Your Identity
    01:14:32 Working Through Shame, Grief, and Emotional Signals
    01:15:46 Retroactive Causation: Changing the Past Through the Present
    01:19:28 Intelligent Design, Choice, and the Source Behind Life
    01:22:45 Mindsets, Patterns, and Teaching Children
    01:25:58 Stress as Intelligence: The New Book
    ___________

    ✨MORE FROM DR. LEAF
    ↳Website (for books, courses, 1:1 coaching): https://drleaf.com/
    ↳Neurocycle app: https://drleaf.com/neurocycle-app
    ↳Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-dr-leaf-show/id1334767397
    ↳Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DrCarolineLeaf
    ↳Neurocycle Certification: https://drleaf.com/certified-strategist

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    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/
    ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/
    ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/

    👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast
    ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list
  • Know Thyself

    E198 - Dr. Todd Rose: Why Your Desires Aren't Actually Yours (Here's Who Planted Them)

    09/06/2026 | 1h 56 mins.
    Join our online community ↓
    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com

    Todd Rose is a Harvard-trained social scientist, former high school dropout with a 0.9 GPA, and co-founder of the think tank Populace. His research centers on the gap between what people privately believe and what they publicly say, and the profound consequences of that gap for individuals and for society. This is one of those conversations that reframes something you thought you understood and doesn't let you go back.

    What We Dive Into:
    1. Your brain estimates group consensus using a simple shortcut: the loudest voices repeated most often. On social media, that is 10% of users creating 80% of content.
    2. Belonging means being accepted for who you actually are. Fitting in means changing who you are to be accepted.
    3. Authenticity is not about being perfectly accurate about who you are. It is about making choices you genuinely believe align with who you are right now.

    ✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
    https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself
    Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide

    https://drinkLMNT.com/KnowThyself
    Try LMNT & get a free sample pack

    ___________
    00:00 Intro
    01:27 What Are Collective Illusions?
    02:05 The Cost of Self-Silencing
    05:06 How We're Hardwired to Conform
    07:40 Why the Brain Is Easily Fooled About Group Consensus
    09:13 Social Media and the Amplification of Fringe Views
    13:20 What Americans Actually Want in Private
    21:01 Who Profits from Keeping Us Divided
    23:52 Foreign Manipulation and AI Bot Farms
    29:37 The Most Consequential Collective Illusions
    36:38 What Authenticity Actually Means
    41:15 The Coming Age of Courage
    42:14 Belonging vs. Fitting In
    49:44 René Girard and Mimetic Desire
    59:43 How Collective Illusions Can Shatter Overnight
    1:05:58 The Velvet Revolution and the Power of Authenticity
    1:12:09 How to Build the Muscle of Living in Truth
    1:20:25 Todd's Personal Collective Illusion: Faith and Identity
    1:24:34 Spiritual Exploration and Holding Beliefs Lightly
    1:32:23 Certainty and Knowledge Are Inversely Correlated
    1:41:42 Fulfillment Over Achievement
    1:50:31 Small Actions That Raise Collective Consciousness
    ___________

    ✨MORE FROM TODD
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ltoddrose/
    ↳Populace: https://populace.org
    ↳https://www.toddrose.com/

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    ↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/
    ↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/

    👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ
    ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum
    ↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast
    ↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list
  • Know Thyself

    E197 - 9 Great Thinkers on the Inner Work That Frees You

    02/06/2026 | 1h 22 mins.
    Join our online community ↓
    https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com

    This is a compilation episode, and it draws from some of the most honest and clarifying moments across recent conversations on the show. Nine different voices, each approaching the same territory from a different angle: what it means to stop being ruled by the outside world, to understand the patterns we inherited, and to come back to something more real inside ourselves.

    What We Dive Into:
    ​ Thoughts arise whether you choose them or not. The shift is learning to observe them rather than be pulled by them.
    ​ The nervous system learns what safety feels like early, and it keeps returning to that baseline even when it no longer serves.
    ​ Your body, your beliefs, your identity, all of it was accumulated over time. Setting it aside, even briefly, creates the space to touch something underneath that is more stable.

    THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:
    https://www.bioptimizers.com/knowthyself
    Use code KNOWTHYSELF to save 15% at checkout

    https://www.basedbodyworks.com
    Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for 20% off + free toiletry bag!

    ___________
    00:00 Intro
    02:12 Shi Heng Yi: Master Yourself, Not the World
    11:10 Dr. Sue Morter: The Hidden Truth Behind Your Triggers
    19:04 Emily McDonald: Living from Feeling States, Not Outcomes
    24:58 Joe Hudson: This is Your Sign To Be More Vulnerable
    31:53 Sadhguru: How To Make True Impact
    48:20 Henry Shukman: Tasting Awakening for Yourself
    1:00:29 Nicole LePera: Your Childhood Beliefs Might Be Holding You Back
    1:13:19 Lucy Hale: Remember To Accept Your Own Timeline
    1:17:23 Wim Hof: It's Time for Love
    ___________

    MORE FROM OUR SPEAKERS
    ✨Shi Heng Yi: https://youtu.be/Yg_vu7MelmU
    ✨Dr. Sue Morter: https://youtu.be/NAdU39m1Oxo
    ✨Emily McDonald: https://youtu.be/BS80CB3fgS8
    ✨Joe Hudson: https://youtu.be/vF4R9uDje0E
    ✨Sadhguru: https://youtu.be/FMoXXb-wKE8
    ✨Henry Shukman: https://youtu.be/ZMk3ztb66mc
    ✨Nicole LePera: https://youtu.be/BlpyzG5vV_o
    ✨Lucy Hale: https://youtu.be/MkNjs5vbG9M
    ✨Wim Hof: https://youtu.be/yjKoAXOFNqw

    MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF
    ✨https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com
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    🎬TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum
    👥Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/
    🌐https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/

    MORE FROM ANDRÉ
    ✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum
    💼Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast
    📚Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list
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About Know Thyself
Know Thyself is a community supporting you to KNOW the true nature of yourself and the world around you, THRIVE in your health, wealth, and relationships – ultimately empowering you to CREATE and share your true self with the world. Each week André Duqum interviews experts in their field; ranging from spiritual educators to cutting edge scientists, heart-led creatives & more on topics such as the true nature of ‘Self’, “what is reality?,” and exploring the fundamental pillars we all need to unlock our fullest potential. Contributing to birthing a more beautiful world, one episode at a time.
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