Jahnavi Harrison is a Grammy-nominated artist, musician, and practitioner of Bhakti Yoga who has spent her life exploring sound as a path to the divine. Raised at Bhaktivedanta Manor in England, she grew up inside one of the world's most dedicated devotional communities, and in this conversation we trace how that formation shaped her relationship with voice, identity, approval, and what it means to offer your life as a prayer.

What We Dive Into:

1. Most of us were told at some point to be quiet, to sound better, or to wait until we were good enough. That conditioning runs deep. Reclaiming the voice, whether through kirtan, song, or simply speaking truthfully, is one of the most direct paths back to a self that stopped performing and started expressing.

2. Bhakti is not a feeling you arrive at and maintain. It is a daily offering, something you return to moment by moment, especially when you have drifted. Jahnavi's framing is simple: make space for prayer in whatever form feels alive to you, and that space will become a source of nourishment that compounds over time.

3. The desire to be accepted can masquerade as discernment, as wisdom, even as calling. Jahnavi traces how much of her own journey involved slowly distinguishing the voice of genuine inner knowing from the much louder voice that simply wanted to be liked. That distinction is not resolved once. It is worked on for life.

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.timeline.com/KNOWTHYSELF

Save 20% off your Mitopure® Gummies

https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself

Use code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide

___________

00:00 Intro

01:36 What Devotional Music Actually Is

03:12 Sound as a Direct Path to the Divine

06:42 Sound as the First and Last Sense

09:15 The Sensitivity of Sound and Its Transformative Power

12:28 Why We Lose Our Voices: Fear, Shame, and the Voice Unsung

16:22 Finding Your Voice and Speaking Your Truth

20:17 Discerning Your Own Voice from the Noise of Others

23:46 The Missed Flight: Choosing Calling Over Convention

29:00 Life as an Offering: Dharma and Letting Go of Outcomes

31:54 The Intelligence of the Heart in Bhakti

36:22 Nature, Silence, and the Inner Life

42:39 Prayer vs. Meditation: Are They the Same?

48:32 Prayer as Relationship, Not Request

57:54 Kirtan, Mantra, and the Dissolution of Self

1:03:25 Kirtan at a Funeral: Sound as Communal Holding

1:06:15 Losing and Reclaiming Faith: The Reckoning with Tradition

1:13:33 The Role of Trusted Counsel Through Doubt

1:15:28 The Grammys and the Tension of Devotional Art in Industry

1:21:37 Fame, Ego, and Staying on the Right Track

1:25:40 Expanding Beyond Tradition: The Rise Album with Willow

1:35:36 Art as Revolution and Service

1:38:31 The Coldplay Concert and the Power of Mass Gathering

1:43:17 Current Projects and Dreaming Bigger

1:51:37 Closing Message: Make Space for Prayer Every Day

___________

✨MORE FROM JAHNAVI↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jahnavi_harrison

↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/JahnaviHarrisonMusic

↳https://www.jahnavimusic.com

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

Anil Seth is a professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the University of Sussex and one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness. His central claim is both unsettling and liberating: we do not passively receive reality, we actively generate it. The world that appears when you open your eyes is not a transparent window onto what is actually out there. It is the brain's best guess, a controlled hallucination, built from the inside out.

What We Dive Into:

1. Your brain is not reading out the world like a camera. It is making constant predictions about what is out there and updating them with sensory signals. What you perceive is much more a product of those internal predictions than of the raw sensory data coming in. In that sense, all perception is a form of hallucination, just one that happens to be grounded in reality.

2. Just as the brain generates a model of the external world, it generates a model of the self. The feeling of being a continuous, stable "I" is another best guess, not a fixed essence waiting to be discovered. This is both humbling and freeing, because a constructed self can be examined and updated in ways a fixed one cannot.

3. As AI systems grow more sophisticated, they will increasingly appear to have inner lives. Anil draws a sharp line between intelligence and consciousness, arguing that current AI lacks the biological, embodied, self-regulating properties that we believe underlie genuine experience. Confusing performance for presence is not just a philosophical error. It shapes regulation, design, and how we treat these systems.

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.im8health.com/knowthyself

code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer

https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself

code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewide

___________

00:00 Intro

01:47 We Don't Perceive the World — We Generate It

04:29 The Brain as a Prediction Machine

07:22 Controlled Hallucination: What That Term Really Means

09:37 Reality Is Real, But We Never Perceive It Directly

13:25 Optical Illusions as Windows Into Perception

16:42 Perceptual Humility and Echo Chambers

19:34 The Perception Census: Mapping Our Inner Diversity

25:24 Perception, Priors, and Personal Suffering

29:17 Memory, Identity, and What We Expect to See

33:19 The Minimum of Consciousness: Bare Awareness

38:15 Pure Consciousness and the Feeling of Being Alive

41:51 Can the Contents of Experience Tell Us About Consciousness?

45:46 Out of Body Experiences and the First-Person Perspective

50:31 Psychedelics, Reality, and the Sense of Realness

57:12 Anil's LSD Experience and Mary's Room

1:03:47 Defining Consciousness: Nagel's "What Is It Like"

1:07:25 The Distribution of Consciousness: Animals, Trees, and AI

1:17:27 Steel-Manning Panpsychism

1:21:09 Pragmatic Materialism

1:34:23 Intelligence vs. Consciousness: Why AI Is Different

1:38:17 Why Current AI Is Probably Not Conscious

1:43:53 The Danger of Believing AI Is Conscious

1:49:24 What Happens When We Take the Self Too Seriously

1:52:01 Reflections on Death and What Dies

1:57:34 The Self as Process, Not Essence

2:02:00 Free Will as a Useful Perception

2:05:43 Closing Message: Celebrate the Everyday Miracle of Consciousness

___________

✨MORE FROM ANIL SETH

↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profanilseth/

↳Books: https://www.anilseth.com/read/books/

↳https://www.anilseth.com

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

Dr. William Li is a Harvard-trained physician, co-founder of the Angiogenesis Foundation, and New York Times bestselling author whose work centers on one quietly radical premise: the power to stay healthy lives inside you. In this conversation, we explore the five hardwired defense systems the body runs continuously, angiogenesis, stem cells, the gut microbiome, immunity, and DNA protection, and what it looks like to actually support them through food, sleep, and daily choices.

What We Dive Into:

1. You are not just one organism. You carry 39 trillion bacteria inside you, many of which send signals up through the vagus nerve directly to the brain, shaping mood, social behavior, and stress levels.

2. Your body was born with 70 million extra stem cells stored in bone marrow, ready to mobilize and repair damage whenever called. Sleep, food, and metabolic health directly influence how effectively they do their job.

3. The environment is full of things we cannot fully control, microplastics, toxins, pollution. What we can control is whether our internal defense systems are strong enough to handle the load. Chronic stress degrades those systems faster than most environmental exposures.

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://oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF

Code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off

___________

00:00 Intro

01:42 Health Is Not the Absence of Disease

05:24 The Five Health Defense Systems

07:14 Defense 1: Angiogenesis and Blood Vessel Health

09:07 Defense 2: Stem Cells and the Body's Repair System

14:01 Defense 3: The Gut Microbiome and the Holobiont

21:38 Defense 4: The Immune System as Inner Army

31:44 Defense 5: DNA Repair and the Iron Dome Within

36:48 Cancer Is Growing in All of Us Right Now

43:07 The Rising Cancer Rates and Why They're Skewing Younger

47:40 Microplastics: Where They Come From and Why They Matter

55:37 The Case for Keeping Your Shields Up

59:15 Practical Steps: Air, Water, and Food Quality

1:07:46 Sleep, Movement, and Stress as Health Defenses

1:11:04 The Danger of Chronic Overeating

1:19:09 The History of Abundance and the Clean Plate Myth

1:23:43 Bruce Lee and the Philosophy of Personalized Health

1:29:00 What Modern Medicine Got Right and What It Lost

1:32:42 The Interstitium, Acupuncture, and Converging Worlds

1:35:34 The Future of Cancer Treatment and Health Span

1:44:42 Dr. Li's Favorite Foods and Why He Loves Them

1:55:53 The Science of Dark Chocolate

1:59:00 Closing Message: Optimize Your Gut

___________

✨MORE FROM DR. WILLIAM LI

↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drwilliamli/

↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drwilliamli/

↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DrWilliamLi

↳Eat to Beat Your Diet Book: https://drwilliamli.com/etb-diet-book/

↳Eat to Beat Disease Book: https://drwilliamli.com/book-li/

↳https://drwilliamli.com

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

Dr. Justin Sledge is a scholar of philosophy and Western esotericism, and the voice behind the YouTube channel Esoterica, which has grown to over a million subscribers. He has spent his career studying the traditions that history tried to erase: Gnosticism, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, witchcraft, and alchemy.

What We Dive Into:

1. Classical skepticism is not about debunking or disbelief. It is about bracketing your personal investment long enough to let the material speak for itself.

2. Newton wrote more on alchemy and the occult than on calculus. Descartes arrived at his famous method through a mystical dream. Stripping these facts from the story of modernity has cost us access to some of the most important spiritual technologies ever developed.

3. Every other starting point, certainty, comfort, doctrine, conclusions, has a gutter waiting at the end of it. Awe keeps the garden of curiosity alive.

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.im8health.com/knowthyself

code KNOWTHYSELF for an exclusive offer

https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyself

code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off

___________

00:00 Intro

01:57 What Skepticism Actually Means

06:21 How to Enter Mystical Inquiry Without Collapsing Into Belief

08:03 Religion, Mysticism, and the Margins

11:24 Gnosticism: The World as Prison, Christ as Liberator

14:21 The Nag Hammadi Discovery and the Many Christianities

17:00 William James and the Four Qualities of Mystical Experience

21:50 Perennial Wisdom vs. High-Resolution Differences

26:44 The Limits of Propositional Truth

31:32 Irrational vs. Non-Rational: Why the Distinction Matters

37:10 The Danger of Universalizing Mystical Experience

44:34 The World Is Stranger Than We Assume

51:01 How the Myth of Rational Modernity Was Curated

59:35 Recovering the Suppressed Voices of Western History

1:00:45 Mary Magdalene: Not a Prostitute

1:14:22 The Suppression of the Feminine and the Road to the Witch Trials

1:18:55 The Malleus Maleficarum and the Anatomy of a Moral Panic

1:24:01 Poverty, Not Practice: Who Was Actually Accused

1:26:27 The Books Justin Brought: Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy

1:32:08 Agrippa and the Possibility of Induced Illumination

1:41:32 The Kabbalah and the Sefer Yetzirah

1:46:04 The Hermetic Tradition and Hermes Trismegistus

1:54:22 What Studying These Texts Has Done to Justin

1:59:51 Agrippa's Trilemma and the Limits of Reason

2:04:22 Hermeticism vs. Gnosticism: The World as Divine, Not Prison

2:13:11 Making the Best Case for the Transcendent Realm

2:19:54 Whatever Matter Is, It's Indistinguishable from Spirit

2:26:34 Justin's Personal Satanic Panic: The School Shooting

2:38:03 Generational Trauma and the Suppression of the Feminine

2:44:57 Truth as a Verb: Dialogue Across Difference

2:47:14 Are We on the Threshold of a New Renaissance?

2:58:39 Community Questions: The Most Meaningful Experience of Magic

2:59:15 When Justin Realized the Books Were Real

3:03:51 Finding the Clerical Necromantic Underground

3:04:26 Recreating Alchemy in the Modern Lab

3:07:11 Why We Want Magic: The Very Human Desire for Hidden Power

3:13:00 Modern Mythology and the Meaning Famine

3:20:10 Closing Message: Flourishing Begins in Awe

___________

✨MORE FROM DR. JUSTIN SLEDGE

↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/esotericachannel

↳Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/esotericachannel

↳https://www.justinsledge.com

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

Donald Robertson is a cognitive behavioral psychotherapist, author of over nine books, and one of the founding voices in the modern Stoicism movement. He has spent over 30 years studying how ancient Greek and Roman philosophy intersects with contemporary psychology, and in this conversation we start where it all begins: the maxim carved into the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Know thyself. We explore what it actually meant, who said it, and why it still matters more than most self-help advice written in the last century.

What We Dive Into:

1. The Stoics drew a sharp line between what actually happens and the value judgments we add on top of it. To say something "is awful" treats our emotional reaction as a fact about the world.

2. Of all the emotions that derail a life, anger gets the least attention in therapy, self-help, and honest self-reflection.

3. In the ancient world, wisdom was not something you consumed or memorized. It was something you practiced daily. Collecting insights without changing your behavior is closer to what the Sophists sold than to what Socrates taught.

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.timeline.com/KNOWTHYSELF

Save 20% off your Mitopure® Gummies

___________

00:00 Intro

01:53 Know Thyself: The Three Sayings at Delphi

07:44 What Philosophy Actually Means

11:17 Socrates vs. the Sophists: Wisdom vs. Appearance

18:05 The Stoic U-Turn: Reorienting What We Value

23:59 Self-Knowledge as a Mirror for the Soul

26:59 Values Clarification and the Eulogy Exercise

35:02 Ad: LMNT

36:03 Eudaimonia: Flourishing, Not Just Happiness

39:40 Hardship as Opportunity for Character

45:31 A Brief History of Stoicism

53:22 Ad: Timeline Mitopure

54:33 The Stoics Were Way Ahead of Their Time

59:30 Stoicism, India, and Alexander the Great

1:06:31 Early Christianity and Greek Philosophy

1:14:03 Marcus Aurelius: The Man Behind the Meditations

1:19:17 Philosophy Born from Injury: Marcus and Donald

1:32:52 Uppercase vs. Lowercase Stoicism

1:38:28 The Two Phases of Emotion

1:45:47 Prosoché: The Practice of Paying Attention

1:50:40 Appearance vs. Reality: The Stoic Core

1:56:34 Turning the Chinese Proverb into a Practice

2:02:44 The View from Above and the Acropolis

2:11:28 Premeditatio Malorum: Rehearsing Adversity

2:17:27 Anger as Temporary Madness

2:23:26 De-Romanticizing Desire

2:36:58 Sophists, Rhetoric, and Modern Influencers

2:44:47 Why Self-Help Isn't More Helpful

2:56:17 The Socratic Method as Cure for Conceit

3:13:19 The King Who Rules Himself

3:17:50 The Oracle of Delphi and Socrates' Mission

3:33:44 Injustice Harms the Perpetrator More

3:36:51 Donald's Own Life: Philosophy as a Path

3:38:46 The Eleusinian Mysteries and Marcus's Initiation

3:48:21 Learning to Die as Liberation

3:55:29 Marcus's Naked Soul: Transparency as Practice

3:58:07 What the Stoics Taught About Love

4:02:05 Rapid Fire: The Great Philosophers

4:16:00 Closing Message: You Underestimate Your Resilience

___________

✨MORE FROM DONALD ROBERTSON↳Substack: https://donaldrobertson.substack.com/↳Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1732050.Donald_J_Robertson

↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/donaldjrobertson/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DonaldJRobertsonAuthor/featured↳https://donaldrobertson.name

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

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

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

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

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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/book-list

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

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

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/

📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

↳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

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:

1. ​ Thoughts arise whether you choose them or not. The shift is learning to observe them rather than be pulled by them.
2. ​ The nervous system learns what safety feels like early, and it keeps returning to that baseline even when it no longer serves.
3. ​ 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

🎙️Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

🎧Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

✨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

Dr. Vasant Lad is the founder of the Ayurvedic Institute and the man most responsible for bringing Ayurveda to the West. He has spent over 40 years teaching this 5,000-year-old science of life to practitioners across the world, and in this conversation, we sat down together at SoHum Mountain Healing Center in Asheville, North Carolina, where I had just completed a week-long Panchakarma. What unfolded was one of the most quietly profound conversations I have had on this show.

What We Dive Into:

1. ​ Why unprocessed emotions don’t simply pass — and how grief settles in the heart, anger in the liver, and fear in the kidneys until they’re physically released.
2. ​ How your tongue, pulse, and face reveal what’s happening inside your body, often before any symptom appears.
3. ​ Why your original constitution (prakruti) shapes everything from your digestion to your temperament — and how modern life pulls you away from it.
4. ​ The gap between two breaths, and why Dr. Lad calls it an ocean of awareness available to anyone willing to sit in it.

THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:

https://sohumhealing.com/panchakarma-retreat/

Code AndrePK2026 for $500 off your Panchakarma

https://www.functionhealth.com/KNOWTHYSELF

Code KNOWTHYSELF25 for $25 off membership

___________

00:00 Intro

01:58 What Ayurveda Actually Means

02:40 The Five Elements, Three Doshas, and the Body

06:18 Prakruti, Vikruti, and the Root of Disease

08:00 The Sankhya Philosophy Behind Ayurveda

13:33 The Goal of Ayurveda

15:26 Dr. Lad's Path: Guru, Calling, and Coming West

18:06 Where Western Medicine Falls Short

22:05 Ama, Agni, and the Ayurvedic View of Disease

25:56 Pulse, Tongue, and Face: The Art of Diagnosis

34:29 Reading Psychological Nature Through the Pulse

39:00 The Gap Between Breaths: Awareness and Mysticism

44:37 How Repressed Emotions Crystallize in the Body

47:39 Panchakarma: Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Cleansing

51:52 Ojas, Tejas, and Prana: The Vital Essences

56:18 Sexual Energy, Celibacy, and the Cultivation of Ojas

1:00:07 Life as Meditation: The Unified Field

1:06:00 The Ayurvedic View of Death and Dying

1:14:56 Dinacharya: The Daily Routine as Spiritual Practice

1:18:48 The Doshic Clock and the Yugas

1:25:22 Relationship, Self-Knowledge, and the Closing Message

___________

MORE FROM DR. VASANT

✨Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drvasantlad

🌐https://ayurveda.com/about-vasant-lad/

MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF

🎙️Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l

🎧Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX

✨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