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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We say my body betrayed me without realizing I betrayed my body before. We disrespected it in many ways and now we're here.

• 0:08André Duqum?

  How would you diagnose how most people are relating to their body?

• 0:11Speaker 00

  The body lies a lot less. It's very honest. Just listen to your body. I don't believe them. Listen to it. You're not on the right channel at all. What you hear is a lot of corrupted data. I distrust this. So then I searched for movement teachers. I couldn't find anyone. I met big practitioners, gurus, and realized there is nothing here. I don't have it. I looked for someone who has it, couldn't find. Said, "Okay, I'll become that person." Next realization, I can't do it. And with that, I stayed. Now we can start to look at things. What we don't attend to crumbles, dies.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  Attention gives life. You don't attend to your child, the child will develop problems.

• 0:58André Duqum?

  The attunement?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Yes. Attention replaces detention. If people would place their attention in their shoulder for one minute, undivided attention, they will transform to such a level that...

• 1:19André Duqum?

  Ito Portal, it's such a pleasure to have you here. I have been loving your work for many years, seeing the inspiring stuff you share online through podcasts and also through your movement practices over the years. I think this conversation is going to provide a beautiful... It's just going to be a beautiful addition to a lot of the conversations we have on this show because you really are a pioneer in sharing the body as a vehicle for self-exploration and self-discovery. And we live in such a heady culture. And I'm curious for you, in your words, how would you diagnose the current state

• 2:00André Duqum?

  of how most people in society in modern culture are relating to their body and movement?

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a strong moment for... It's a good time for the body, because it's missing. The heart as well, but those three paths, let's say, they are not balanced and not pursued. And so the current state of affairs with the body

• 2:35Speaker 00

  is approached through very limited models of our physicality, of our being. A lot of it comes from exercise perspective.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Very crude, very disrespectful for the human body, for what it is for ourselves. The self, this self, the head self is, actually, surprisingly,

• 3:09Speaker 00

  a small part of the picture, I believe. But it hijacks a lot of the attention. And of course, all of our culture has been built and developed around it, so it took us away.

• 3:27Speaker 00

  And to go back is not as simple as just,

• 3:31Speaker 00

  you know, the slogans, you know, "Just listen to your body." I don't believe that.

• 3:39Speaker 00

  "Listen to it."

• 3:42Speaker 00

  You're not on the right channel at all. You can listen to your body, but what you hear is a lot of corrupted data.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  So the first thing is to modify the model, our connection to the body.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  It has to be refined and made deeper, in ways more sophisticated, in ways more simpler.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  It's not just about some kind of a car that you drive around and you get to places. It is you. You don't have a body. You are the body.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  The brain is in the body. It's part of the body. And the connection to movement is that it is the vehicle, the thing that really put us here, in this state. Not mathematics, that's a side effect. Not music. In the sense, all those things were involved. Counting, rhythms, music. But the way that it affected us is through movement.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  And those are also movement realms in many ways. So the first step is education. To realize that we don't have a proper connection to the body, which most people unfortunately realize in the point of crisis, when we say, "My body betrayed me", without realizing I betrayed my body before.

• 5:44André Duqum?

  So you feel in many ways we've disrespected the body, not honored it in the way that it wants to be moved and used?

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't beat myself up over it, but I... There is a value in remorse. Because without it, there is no real power to change. The declarations, but they don't last. More words.

• 6:21Speaker 00

  So I'd like to take that responsibility. And you've used the word correctly, "we." We disrespected it in many ways, and now we're here. And we can start to take personal responsibility. But it sounds like this "I" need to take the responsibility. We went wrong, but only I can fix it. And each one of us turning back in and being the change is the way. And it was something instinctual for me. I, I, I just, yesterday I was in an Uber

• 7:04Speaker 00

  and had a conversation with the driver. And he asked, "What do you do?" And I told him, "How do you, how did you get to work with the body?" And I said, "Because I distrust this." And in many ways, it was this instinct that I can't be trusted. And that sensation, that, that internal lie, that deep, deep lie, beyond, underneath all the lies, the lie that we tell ourselves, the words in our head, they're rarely truth. Maybe they can't even be truth, because words cannot be that truth.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  But they're not even simulations of truth. They're, they're simulacrum, that they're removed from what is be... They're not containers. They're maybe pointers that by now are pointing at nothing. The body lies a lot less. It's very honest. When I move, or when I move with someone, I know the truth. Or when we talk, who knows?

• 8:22André Duqum?

  It feels like you have an incredibly holistic understanding of the body, of the body as a doorway to explore trapped emotions, to explore self-expression. And you have explored many different formats and modalities to add something. They all add something. And

• 8:44André Duqum?

  it's much a deeper understanding than the conventional Western understanding of exercise and movement. And the way that we kind of live our life very much so, identified with our thoughts, moving through the world, and view movement as something that we should do for our health, maybe an hour a day. You invite it as a living practice in a much deeper context. So we'll bring this down to the individual and to the practical. But there is this understanding of exercise as a form of movement. And I'm just curious, what is your analysis of that in contrast with the way that you understand movement?

• 9:23Speaker 00

  There are a few things here that are kind of mingling together. Movement and exercise.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  And breaking down exercise.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Part of it is movement, but the other part is practice. And now we can extract these two very powerful words, practice and movement. Now you can get rid of the exercise.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  So I'm really deeply, I'm the practice person.

• 10:05Speaker 00

  Movement serves practice. It is a way. It is the most, one of the most major way. One side of the equation. One side of the spectrum. The other side is stillness. And practice is what we are here to do. Life is not for living. That's the lie. Life is for practicing.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  In the sense that this here is a school. That's why we're here. Or else, there is no meaning to our visiting here. We are here to discover something, to learn something, transform something, transmute something. So that informs everything that I do. Now, movement is very important. Physical movement is and other movements. Movement, emotions are E-motion, right? Like, it's there, it's inside. It's about movement. And also, the abstraction, the conceptual side,

• 11:19Speaker 00

  also is about movement, in many ways. So, what did we do? We do the bare minimum. We're corrupted. For longevity's sake, for feeling better, for looking better. This is our connection to ourselves. We take, we take and we give the bare minimum. How can I get this going in 10 minutes a day? What was it, 4-minute abs? So, of course, we suffer the results. This is the temple. This is the thing. This is who we are.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  This is where we are. This is what we are. Of course, this connection is not working well. And this is a very heavy news. But we can turn it into a proactive thing and into a very beautiful thing. And we can find our way back to ourselves. Without this, the other path is the path of stillness.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  It's also a very powerful path. The path of stillness give rise to movement. The path of movement gives rise to stillness. And eventually, you reach that point.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  The multi-stability.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  You have to be able to see both

• 13:02Speaker 00

  at the same time, like the peripheral vision.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  So the practice itself, now it's in the context. I'm here for myself. I'm here to transform myself.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  I don't like the word "develop", but

• 13:28Speaker 00

  it's not directed, I don't know what I'm supposed to transform into. And I don't even want to dictate it. That would be corrupted already. But I have an idea that I'm here to

• 13:42Speaker 00

  get some work done.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Like an improvisation. Like this conversation. I don't know the next sentence I'm going to say, but I am present to what needs to come out right now.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  That is the practice. And now, the movement side, take it to the physicality. Now I can see all the needs. The needs are not neuromuscular needs. Joints, range of motion, flexibility. It's so much more complex than that. Every day that passes, we discover. One of the jokes is that we tend to break the... We eat a cake and we analyze and we write down a reverse-engineered recipe.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  And it never ends up being the cake when we try to do it. So we work on all these attributes. One plus one plus one equals seventeen. The practice informs you on that. So, yeah, I work on my strength and on my flexibility and on my stamina, endurance, energy system. But I also work on rhythmicality, organizational capacities of the body, breath, interaction with connectivity, internal architecture, organization of the form,

• 15:19Speaker 00

  the use of the eyes, conceptual aspects of movement, pattern recognition, and endless, endless more. And many of them, I don't even have words for them. But they are inside the practice. So this, for me, is a proper practice. It's very rich, maybe overwhelming for people. That's okay. It is what it is. It's just words right now. It can be something that eventually becomes approachable and simple. But like anything, from the outside, it scares us, you know? And...

• 16:00Speaker 00

  But it's extremely, the most powerful vehicle that I know. Or else I would have done something better.

• 16:10Speaker 02

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• 16:41André Duqum?

  Do you think that it's the most powerful that you've experienced? Because in a way, it has been the most direct and immediate access. I think through words, the philosophical, the theoretical, there's something so powerful about the immediacy of the body, and our ability to move it in this moment. You mentioned the balance and the dance between movement and stillness, the complementary forces that exist within all life, the contraction and relaxation and excitation and Shiva, the Shakti. And it sounds like you've applied that understanding through these various different mechanisms.

• 17:23André Duqum?

  So my hope, we'll see where this conversation takes us, but that it can be really enriching for individuals' lives to have more context for the importance of the body, for how movement is an essential component, often underexplored and utilized, and some things they can carry into their next movement practice, whatever form it is, whether it's yoga or weightlifting or something of a combination between everything. How would you, so to speak, reverse engineer the cake, understanding that we're going to fail? But these different elements of movement, how do you sort of cut the cake there?

• 18:07Speaker 00

  It's good. You started with one thing and then you finished with another, which is really the core of it. First, there is what can be done within each scenario. This podcast is such a scenario. We want to get something done, the actionable bits, the pragmatic things. But this is corrupting us again. Because if I must go for the actionable bit...

• 18:45Speaker 00

  I am simplifying the model

• 18:50Speaker 00

  and the approach to the place where it kills it. So it becomes again one more meaningless stuff. This is what we have around.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  This is what we have on the internet, on the tutorials, on the short videos. We know more than ever and we understand less than ever, in this sense. And the real change is not coming, but there is a potency to this situation. I must respect it.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  The potency is:

• 19:24Speaker 00

  Open a door. Enter the room. There is another door in the end. And continue. If there would be a process that unravels from this, it would become extremely powerful. For many people who run into this idea for the first time, it's grabbing a hold of them.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Now we can discuss also pragmatic bits, because they do have their room. They do have their place, now that we've mentioned this.

• 19:56Speaker 00

  This is not some kind of another thing.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Another approach, another podcast episode, another guest, another talk. Not because it's me I'm saying it.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Because if it was, I wouldn't be doing this. In the honesty of being in service,

• 20:29Speaker 00

  what can be done? How do we start?

• 20:35Speaker 00

  What cannot... I ask the question sometimes to people in an education scenario.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  What is impossible for you to get?

• 20:51Speaker 00

  ¿Qué es imposible para ti obtener? obtener, obtener, obtener. ¿Qué es lo más imposible de obtener? Lo que ya posees. Pero ya lo posees. Entonces, vamos a borrar eso.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Lo que crees que ya posees. Ese es el problema.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Este es el comienzo. No lo tengo.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  No tengo conexión con mi cuerpo. No entiendo nada sobre esto. Esto es lo que me di cuenta. Y practicé toda mi vida. En un momento determinado, estaba estudiando otra disciplina: artes marciales, acrobates, deportes, pesadez, yoga.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Y me estaba preguntando: "Bien, bien, pero el movimiento detrás de ello". Entonces, buscaba maestros de movimientos. No podía encontrar a nadie.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Todo era específico. Todo era corrupto. Todo estaba inclinado a un sabor muy específico. Pero realmente no era el

• 22:16Speaker 00

  ser capaz de moverse bien.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Y eso comenzó en el lado físico, pero progresó hacia el ser humano. Conocí a grandes practicantes de tradiciones espirituales y, ya sabes, gurús.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Me di cuenta...

• 22:36Speaker 00

  En una situación mala, no hay nada aquí. El tipo cerrando los ojos, manteniendo un cierto aspecto

• 22:47Speaker 00

  o un carisma.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  En un escenario mejor, había una habilidad que era súper específica. Que cuando movía un pulgada a la derecha, la habilidad se derrumbaba.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  Como Michael Jordan tratando de jugar béisbol.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  El mejor de todos los tiempos.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  It didn't work.

• 23:20Speaker 00

  But there were other things. There was a Bo Jackson. Not comparing different times, different things, but still.

• 23:30Speaker 00

  Maybe it's not even important if it's possible or not to do this. The important thing is you go to play baseball. You decide to go to do it. And then there is a gap between what you thought you were about to do and what actually gets done. So for me, that was a moment of realization.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  I don't have it.

• 23:54Speaker 00

  And so I looked for someone who has it, couldn't find. Said, "Okay, I'll become that person." Next realization. I can't do it. And with that, I stayed.

• 24:08Speaker 00

  So now, it's a life contract.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  I can't do it, but it's a good place to be.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Trying to do it.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Very good goal. This is the beginning of the process in many ways. Now we can start to look at things. Now we can start to look at feeling the body, for example.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  Many years, I practiced many things. I didn't even feel my body while doing those things. World champions I worked with, nobody's home.

• 24:50Speaker 00

  World championships, you know? Like standing on the stage, I'm behind, thinking to myself,

• 24:57Speaker 00

  "There's a robot doing this."

• 25:02Speaker 00

  So one of the first things is to go back into sensing things. And people can apply. It's painful.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Painful. For example, you practice with music always? Remove.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  You will experience pain, discomfort, if you always practiced with music. If you listen to podcasts while you're practicing? Remove. Now, listen to the podcast separately. Separate all these activities. Then you will discover

• 25:42Speaker 00

  what is there, actually.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  No bells and whistles, no phone filming me. I took away from myself, for example, the exposure of my body.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  I said, "What is this beautiful body for?" "For them?" "If it's for you, don't show it to anyone." Next thing, I stopped moving beautifully.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  "What is this for?" "For me?" "If it's for me, I do it, and I don't show anyone."

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Then you can find your way back to expose your practice, but not to practice for exposure.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  It's very different when the situation is designed from this place or from the other. It looks the same on the screen, but it's very different. There are podcasts, and they're podcasts. You know it? There is a certain intention. There is a certain mode of being. Do you even have the capacity to be here for your podcast? Many people don't.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  They don't have a practice, and they don't have the capacity. So what is going to come out? What we don't attend to crumbles, dies. Attention gives life. You look at a flower, the flower grows. You stop looking at it, it dies. Try it with a child, you will see.

• 27:20Speaker 00

  You don't attend to your child, the child will develop problems, disorders, entropy, going in, chaos, and breaking first the psychological layer, and eventually all the way up to the physical layer, where nowadays...

• 27:37Speaker 00

  In hospitals and special facilities where children are abandoned and are raised by the staff, they must be held, the babies, for a certain amount of time because we know that they develop all kinds of syndromes and issues if they're not attended to. It's not just the touch, it's not enough. Take a robot, have him rock the baby, you will see the syndromes are still there. It's the attention. It's not enough even that the nurse does this. You look at your phone while doing it, not the same.

• 28:16André Duqum?

  The attunement.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Yes. And we have to bring this into our physical practice. So we don't need to change much, that's the good news. Here is the first piece of advice. Try to find a way to improve a little thing, not a lot, not everything. Don't remove the music and this and that, take away everything from yourself. It will become so painful that you won't engage with the activity. Lower the bar. Do something small. If you practice for one hour and you always do it with music, try the last 10 minutes, remove the music. Work your way up. Be attentive to what you're doing. You will start to transform the practice and transform yourself.

• 29:03Speaker 00

  You can apply it also in the unofficial practice, not only on the official practice, while cooking your eggs in the morning or while being in a conversation like this. I am just doing this thing. I'm not doing any other thing. I'm not traveling anywhere, I'm not in the past, I'm not in the future. This is the only thing that is running here. I practiced for it and I practice every day for it. So I'm capable of doing it, but everybody is. The other side, also a pragmatic piece of advice. If you find difficulties in doing what I suggested, and even if not, and you wish to progress more, start to look for leakages.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  What are the things that you're doing which make this problematic? Because you might not be able to be applying action towards it. It might be totally blocked, which is what happens these days. You need to start to remove stuff first. Stuff with the phone, stuff with multitasking. We're almost training ourselves into this bad state. It's almost, if you look at our lives, the way that people are living, it's almost a training program for a destruction

• 30:35Speaker 00

  of everything beautiful that... And when you stop, you stop leaking, you start to accumulate. Energy starts to build up. And this will allow the presence and the service to go towards the action, towards the practice. So I don't start, usually when I need to talk to people through a podcast, I don't start with, you know, I can give some physical advice. And I have in the past, you know, practice this, practice that. And people can watch online, can go on YouTube and look at my old blog. It's there, but this is more important.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  And then we can progress like this, each step.

• 31:23André Duqum?

  What have you found most people come to you and have come to you for, for guidance?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Everything and anything. I work with Alzheimer patients in their 80s, prodigy musicians, government bodies. I work in cinema, designing movement for movies, military organizations, special units, athletes from all kinds of sports, and with physicists and mathematicians. Everything and anything. Once a person realizes what I'm actually offering and what I'm actually doing and facilitating and guiding, it's so diverse.

• 32:15André Duqum?

  What is the fundamental thing you are facilitating? That can be applied to so many different fields?

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Practice. Practice of oneself. Because what is performing whatever that person is performing? The person. And what is the limiting factor? Often the person. Not some kind of a technical layer. Some kind of a robot suit that we put on. Our technical suit. This is also has limitations, problems, but usually it's distorted because it sits on a distorted self. So it takes the shape of that. So even when there are technical errors, many times you can locate them in the lower stratas. It is a practice of oneself.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  And in that sense, we are never a finished product. There is no stability. My teacher says there are no parking spot here in this reality. Here. The parking spot is the eye of the storm. The storm will be running. That's the stillness. That is the real stillness. It is in the presence of the storm. Trying to look for other stillness takes you to a very bad place.

• 33:47André Duqum?

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• 35:08André Duqum?

  So what would a sports player come to you? They've obviously had decades trying to become the best in their craft and learning the technique of whatever it is pitching, swinging a bat, kicking a ball, shooting a ball. And there is something because of the multidisciplinary approach that you bring to movement and understanding practice that adds something that their traditional approach to technique doesn't provide. And that's why it can be applied to so many different areas and fields. So if we were to take, how would you work with somebody in sports case

• 35:50André Duqum?

  versus an Alzheimer's case and what you provide there?

• 35:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a, it's a process. It's a, it's a diagnostic process that is getting to see and to like, for example, tomorrow I start to work with a fighter for a few, for a week. I just finished a day before yesterday, working with a baseball player. And after that, I work with an NFL player. And in between I have an Alzheimer's patient. And, and every time it's this, we play. This is what I do. My diagnostics is all kinds of games.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  These kind of games, they are a little trick to see who's there on the other side of the line.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  You get to see emotionally, you get to see the emotional stability, the emotional management. You get to see the sharpness. You get to see the clarity or the fog and the specific flavor of it. It goes into higher resolutions. You get to see how the body is organized. We use words like posture. It's dead. Posture is not a position. Posture is an organizational capacity, dynamic, alive, like a flame. This is one of the very important and problematic things.

• 37:30Speaker 00

  How do you organize yourself? Here I do this, here I do that. Here I drop a ball. Here I give you a stick and I ask you to do certain things. These things, looking from outside, are not really understood for what they are. And I like it. It's not for everyone. Why? Everybody got equal opportunity, but it is for those who understand. At the year 530, more or less, we closed down the last real schools, the schools of antiquity,

• 38:14Speaker 00

  the philosophical schools. And that's kind of, it's not a point. It's not really a point in time. It was a process. Those schools, when we use the word philosophy, those philosophical, you know, aristos, Pythagoras, the legendary Pythagorean schools, and from older, more ancient, you know, cultures, predating that, which we don't know a lot, but the Dravidians, endless. Those were not philosophy words. Those are, that's a total misunderstanding of what was there. It's closer to what I do

• 38:58Speaker 00

  than to the philosopher in the university.

• 39:03Speaker 00

  When you dig deep, you hear it, you see it, you read it. This is what I'm offering. And since we closed down schools, people are the result of the schooling that they received, industrial era schooling, making productive workers for the factories. Even the better schooling systems, they are better. They all have advantages and disadvantages. And the more you go, the more you see movement and practice in all kinds of ways.

• 39:48Speaker 00

  Like you go to Anthroposophy, you look at Waldorf schools, the kids learn the language, the alphabet, they dance it. They don't write it first. There's a reason why. And in kindergarten, they don't promote them reading, and they don't read to them in many places. This is the time of the body. Don't take this time away. Why? There is a multi-stage missile. Each stage, if it's not completed, the next stage.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Steiner gave this example of, imagine you would go into this, the abdomen cavity of a pregnant woman, and the embryo is inside with the eyes closed. And you take a flashlight and you light in front of their eyes, and their eyes open. And he mentions, for the rest of their lives, they will have weak eyes. In this sense, if the physicality is not properly developed, the person is not properly developed.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Don't get confused by an Albert Einstein. That's why many of our geniuses took their life away.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  I have respect for suicide. I don't put it in a pedestal, in a place where it's a cop-out. I think that we should have a lot of respect towards it. But still, it's important to understand, it's not done from a place of sepuku. That's not that type of suicide. I mean a suicide of jumping out of the window, you know, in a moment. Gilles Deleuze style, one of my favorite authors and one of the most powerful thinkers in the 20th century. But still, moment of pain.

• 42:19Speaker 00

  So, I think this is...

• 42:24Speaker 00

  The offering is, let's go back into this schooling.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  I don't mean we go back to crawling. I'm not in that natural perspective. Sometimes people assume I do, like, "I'm gonna make you crawl. Now it's gonna solve all your developmental pieces." It's not as simple as that, unfortunately. But definitely, a musician or a mathematician can gain a lot by working on certain physical skills and also emotional skills. And when the things become a lot more holistic in your words, or even a better word, harmonious, the whole thing will grow. Without it, it's not a growth, it's a distortion.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  It's an inflammatory growth, even the intellect, that those high IQ individuals...

• 43:25Speaker 00

  Okay, high IQ. High IQ

• 43:30Speaker 00

  is, can be potent, but it can be a hundred times, a thousand times more potent when it's accompanied by a balance system. If you're emotionally, the emotional schema is out of control, many people with the highest, some of the highest IQ people, they didn't end up contributing something like the theory of relativity. It didn't end up doing nothing. They're working the gas station in the end. And it's, it's this, it represents this distortion.

• 44:10André Duqum?

  I think one concept that's interesting, I want to get your perspective on is tensegrity. This idea of how everything is interconnected through the muscular, fascial nervous system. And because again, we do have a Cartesian way of understanding and splitting the body into parts, why is it important that we understand everything in the body is connected? And when one thing has changed, the other is altered?

• 44:40Speaker 00

  It's important because we are simulation machines. We are modeling machines. We don't interact with reality in the direct way that we believe we interact with. When I see you, I don't see you.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  I see the simulation I constructed. I don't have a direct contact with reality. So the same way I don't have a direct contact with my body. So what do I interact with? A model of my body. And if the model

• 45:17Speaker 00

  is not sophisticated, if the model it's like

• 45:25Speaker 00

  seeing you in 360, you know, pixels per

• 45:31Speaker 00

  that the resolution is crude. That's what we did with these neuromuscular models. Balls and levers. The old Da Vinci drawings.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Beautiful, but they've moved us into a place. Words, like the spinal column, destroyed more spines. The words damaged spines because it's not a column. And treating it like a column destroys it. It seeps in, it goes into everything that you do. How I feel it. You see this fold in my clothes? That's not my hip joint. The hip joint is not here. The hip joint is far away from this point. And by me thinking, feeling, without even words, I'm just like, that's my hip joint. I damaged my hips.

• 46:28Speaker 00

  Hip replacement because of this. That's why it's important to work with more and more and more refined models, which is the correct model. Tell me.

• 46:44André Duqum?

  There is no correct model.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Correct. All models are wrong, but some are useful. That's a very powerful from George Box, I believe it is. It means, I don't have a saying in it. I have to work with models and they will be wrong. The models I'm working with are wrong, but they're useful. If I look back, everything that I did with people was wrong. And it worked. I look at the way, I look at the tools. They were all wrong. Nowadays, I realize it. It worked.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  It fixed the shoulders. Some of it didn't work, I improved, I tried to improve. And the models I have right now that I'm presenting to you are wrong. This is not how things are. But it's useful and it will take us to the next moment. That's why, for example, the word fascia and the interaction with connective tissue.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  With pressure, pressure distribution in the body is a very positive step, I think. It's a good thing to work with for a while. There are more, there is more deeper things and more sophisticated things. Don't stop there. Some people devote their life to it. That's the answer. That's the thing, you know. And I don't belong to that camp. I think it's worthwhile to work with it for a while. And then you will find your way to more things. And so I designed the way that I'm working with myself, with my models, with people in a way that it is open enough to receive the next one tomorrow.

• 48:41André Duqum?

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• 49:24André Duqum?

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• 50:01André Duqum?

  You mentioned sort of the first step being like meeting your body where it's at, feel your body. I've heard you speak to this a lot before, just around proprioceptive and kinesthetic awareness and gaining our ability to become aware of what's happening internally.

• 50:21André Duqum?

  It feels like, I know for certain, most of my life, just like completely oblivious and unaware of how my body, where it is in time and space, what things are happening, the sensations within my body, my organs and my limbs. And is it just a practice of bringing awareness into it? Or how can, how can people increase that awareness, their interoceptive, kinesthetic?

• 50:44Speaker 00

  It's by, our most potent currency is our attention. It's by placing the attention. And again, I'm giving you these answers and I feel the disappointment, the pain, the, not from you, from, from people listening to it.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  This is the responsibility and it's so simple. I can take you through now 20 minutes or 200 minutes or 2,000 minutes of a practice,

• 51:18Speaker 00

  just paying attention, drawing your attention, moving your attention, and you'll be shocked, absolutely shocked. All the psychedelic people, bring them on, what it will do to you, just paying attention for 2,000 minutes. Of course, the first challenge is to be able to do it. You have to build up, you have to work with it. That's why body scans are one of the methods, one of the most primary methods in many spiritual traditions.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  But I, I think it became dogmatic as well and limited as well.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  To be embodied in that way is one of the biggest gifts that a person can receive and give themselves, and it can improve every day. And it's like... It's like a piggy bank. You put your coins slowly, slowly, slowly, and it turns out into a beautiful thing. People have a sense, I believe, I feel these days, I don't have time for this. So what do you do with your time? That's the question. What do you do with your time? I don't believe them. I think it's an internal lie. While I'm coming here in the Uber, that's what I did, that's what I do.

• 52:47Speaker 00

  I just place my attention there. I'm just embodied in this thing, and I keep coming back to it. And then comes a thought. So I look at it. Do I need to address anything? No, all good. And comes something else, comes a certain sensation. This is the default mode. That's where we have to come back to. It's not like you don't have time for this. The rest, you might not have time to. If you don't have time for this, this is the default. This is the thing you have to revert back to. This is how I fall asleep. This is how I practice.

• 53:30Speaker 00

  This is how, when I'm talking to you, there is part of my attention, some kind of a background layer, just like I still see the room, even though I'm looking at you directly. This comes back. And when this comes back, it's very pleasant, it's very powerful. For us, it's very healing. The body can heal itself. Things work business-wise, process-wise, relationship-wise. Because all of a sudden, you realize that all this discourse, these things that are happening,

• 54:14Speaker 00

  are happening on top of something. In this sense, Coolridge wrote, "I don't feel horror because I dreamed I'm haunted by a sphinx."

• 54:29Speaker 00

  I dream as things because I feel horror.

• 54:33Speaker 00

  You see the real

• 54:37Speaker 00

  state of affairs.

• 54:40Speaker 00

  The body informs something. You have like some type of a stomach irritation or ache.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  And from here, you break up with your partner.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  It was just a moment. They left the dishes and the sink. You had the stomach ache.

• 55:02Speaker 00

  It starts a fight. You don't respect me, you left the di...

• 55:08Speaker 00

  So to be embodied, it nullifies all of this, it takes it away. You start to see it, "Ah, there is a stomach thing here." It starts way earlier. Like watching your thoughts, you see them born in the distances the more you practice. So it's that, and it clarifies so much, it arranges so much. "Hey, people, you don't have time. Your life depends on it. This is our lives. To be here, embodied, this is the form. Here, no one breaks this rule. You must be embodied."

• 55:48Speaker 00

  This is also the place where certain traditions that have, you know, worked as if around the body.

• 55:59Speaker 00

  Oftentimes, they miss the point, they become distorted.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  If it's something like, something to get rid of. Certain meditators, you see that their body, how it looks. Soul neglected and broken and

• 56:15Speaker 00

  like the mind or consciousness. It's like, why consciousness came into this body? It's a disrespectful thing, and I believe it is not the real deal. Of course, I don't want to get caught into the identification with the body. That's the other.

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• 57:04Speaker 00

  Side.

• 57:05André Duqum?

  I also, like, body scans in the form of the Vipassana tradition have been a big practice of mine in bringing awareness to increasingly subtle, more and more subtle levels of dimensions of the body and the mind. And I think upon the examination, and just even breathing and sitting with and scanning for as little as five to 10 minutes, you start to become aware of the different places your body is holding tension that you previously weren't aware of consciously. So for everybody who's listening, who is experiencing some form of chronic tension, they have some sort of physical thing that is bothering them that is, of course, tied to a mental component.

• 57:47André Duqum?

  How do you address and how do you begin to start to work with and explore the tension that the body is holding that wants to be released?

• 57:55Speaker 00

  You actually already solved the answer yourself,

• 58:01Speaker 00

  and it's something important for us to connect in people's heads.

• 58:06Speaker 00

  Sensing is already getting rid of tension. And tension and sensing cannot coexist.

• 58:17Speaker 00

  Of course, it's a scale. It's a theater theater. But there are two faces.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  Of the same thing, release and sensing.

• 58:33Speaker 00

  You wanna release tension? Great.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Sense. Place your attention there.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  It already releases. I find the instruction, relax or release, to be useless.

• 58:50Speaker 00

  Oh, thank you. Like, you know, in boxing, sometimes you hear, it's like, "Okay, relax, keep relaxing." Oh, yeah, thanks. It's like I forgot to react. There is no tool. The tool is, hey, pay attention here. What will happen when you pay attention? You will decrease tension. Attention replaces the tension.

• 59:16Speaker 00

  But you will not feel it, because the decrease would be very, very small. What happens next? Tell me. I go to get rid of my tension. I am instructed to pay attention. It doesn't work. What happens next?

• 59:34André Duqum?

  Give up?

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Yes. I abandon this. This is the problem. If people would place their attention in their shoulder for one minute, undivided attention, they will transform to such a level that I laugh, because if people would know, if I would have received the impression of what happens these days when I'm working, I would be, 10 years ago, I would be, I wouldn't believe it.

• 1:00:14Speaker 00

  So what we do is often, we think about it. We don't actually, we replace the body scans that people are often doing. There's thinking of these words, these body parts, this shoulder.

• 1:00:28André Duqum?

  All the low back pain.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  The lower back. And that's why, or headache. Yesterday, I had a headache on a beach jet leg that came from far away. And I'm, after six and a half hours of talking in another podcast. I'm driving back, I have a headache, I'm a bit dehydrated and jet lagged and talking for so many hours. I just closed my eyes, I just did a little sensing of my eyeballs. Within, I kid you not, a minute, dissolved. And I made it another mental point for myself.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  It's wow, remember how amazing it is, because after many years of doing it, it's like you also, this is the shocking thing for people to maybe hear, you know how bliss feels? Boring. Would you believe it? After you get into these states, and you stabilize them for a while, you strengthen, you know how it feels? Boring, it can become boring even. So going back to samsara can be a pleasure as well, in some ways. This is the same, so I have to actually make a mental note for myself.

• 1:01:50Speaker 00

  This is amazing, because I can also say, there is a headache, and it's great as well. So this is the path to get rid, not to try to stretch it, if you're just fighting it, not to try to, you take a pill, you take a cap, maybe you need on the short term, maybe you even need help to start the process, like a hot bath, or a sauna, or taking a painkiller to bring yourself to lower the bar, so you can sense that. But the very potent thing that I teach my students and practice a lot, is to sense

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  various places, deep in the anatomy, or shallow, in various layers, the skeleton, and the soft tissues, the kind of liquidity of the body, and then other more subtle things as well. Certain points that are maybe not anatomical anymore, maybe it's, I don't, maybe an esoteric, more esoteric layer.

• 1:03:08André Duqum?

  What about on the flip side? Where do you see most people lack tension? Because would you say that's not also another important component? Also the cause of tension in other areas? There's a lack of proper tension or organization?

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Usually it's a lack of connection, more than lack of tension.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  And we see the result in some kind of a local laxity or weakness. So we blame it on tension and we try to tense it back up.

• 1:03:42Speaker 00

  And this is a big problem also in our approach to injuries, etc. That's why a power lifter who can deadlift a house bends down to take their babies from the backseat, hurt their back with 10 pounds. But nobody's calling it "The King is Naked."

• 1:04:06Speaker 00

  Is it strength that is correlated to this? Or another one is the importance of muscle mass for longevity. Right? Mentioned these days by all kinds of buffed up people and you know. And then they love to mention the blue zones. "Where's the muscle mass there? They look like these buffed up guys from California here." Nah, "King is Naked." Yeah, there is a truth to the importance of muscle mass, but it's nothing connected to this TRT, this, this... Nah, it's not it.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  You need some basic muscle. This is already costing you in health, in longevity and in movement. When you look at a bodybuilder...

• 1:05:02Speaker 00

  When they're young and then after, what did they train themselves into immobility?

• 1:05:09Speaker 00

  Don't you see it? Isn't this clear? But it's often mentioned as a movement practice. And even some bodybuilders maintain their flexibility. Right? They could do the splits. So what? You can do the splits. Splits are useless in movement most of the time. You just need a little rotation somewhere that is missing. So people lack more the connection side. And it also is informed by paying attention. Great, we have a meta-tool. By paying attention, now you can apply it in your strength training. Pay attention. That's the mind-muscle connection. And they're right. They experientially discovered

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  that they're right, that it works, that it's important. And also pay attention in your yogic practice or in your stretching practice or in your somatic practice to get rid of it. It's a meta-tool. And now you can pay attention there and increase the tension and organize and connect.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  Or you can pay attention with the inclination towards release.

• 1:06:28André Duqum?

  I would imagine through all the different practices over the years, you've gained different flavors into understanding the body. Just as a quick overview, was it capoeira you started with?

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  No, even before. The Chinese and Japanese martial arts.

• 1:06:46André Duqum?

  So the martial arts, capoeira. What else? What were the other modalities?

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  Whatnot.

• 1:06:51André Duqum?

  Yeah, whatnot.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Whatnot. Yeah, a lot of different disciplines. And I worked as an acrobat onstage and dance and improvisation and somatics and gymnastics and physical theater. And on and on and on.

• 1:07:08André Duqum?

  Who have you found is the most connected to their body of all of them?

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  In terms of disciplines? I found more individuals than disciplines.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  This individual here, this individual there, there is some kind of a connection. But oftentimes, still very specific flavors that you see it just in the field. But I learned that when you move a person to the side, they crumble. And people are surprised, like even with myself. People would give me this credit. He's a great mover. And this, what do you know about me? You know, you have no idea. People present me, you know, the world's biggest expert on movement. And if I am, what do you know about it? You need to be an expert to know I'm an expert.

• 1:08:01Speaker 00

  So you don't know an expert from a charlatan. And maybe I am that charlatan. So I think this is what happens with the specific disciplines. We see an amazing practitioner, and we don't know where it's coming from. Is it really the person underneath, the mover? Or is it technical layer? And we have world champions and best of all times in history from both. I don't want to present the picture as if this is superior. Because when tested in soccer, in this and that,

• 1:08:42Speaker 00

  you can get results from a robot. And you see the differences as well. You have a Ronaldo and you have a Messi. Both great, but very, very different. And it comes from different places.

• 1:09:03André Duqum?

  One thing that I'm curious actually about is, has there been a progression from you maybe identifying with the performance and aesthetic of how something looks to more of the connection and how something feels from your younger years to now? Certainly feels like there's been a big softening in the way that you communicate and in your presence that I'm picking up. What, does anything come up there?

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  Soft, not soft.

• 1:09:45Speaker 00

  You're right, from the outside, this is the thing, but I'm still very connected also to other things as well.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  The quality of why and how it comes about, whether it's softness or not, is more important than the thing itself.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  Is there a reason to put a fire on?

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  If there is, I want to be able to connect to it, in this way, in that way. And if not, I want to not. And that's what I learned more with myself and through the practice: to be of service.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  If I was

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  a bit cheesier, I would say to be of service of my divine self.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  I devote myself to you. I speak to you. I want to give service to that. And so there is this lower strata that are here, and they're always here. You don't dissolve this. It's a lie.

• 1:11:03Speaker 00

  You swallow them.

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  It's not the solution.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Means you're gone, you're not here. It's possible.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  You know? But it's going away. This has to be coagulated into this shape, form. To be here, you have to be... So the ego doesn't dissolve.

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  Not fully. It's just digested, realized for what it is, etc. Become part of something bigger. So you're becoming in that service. And in that way, softness or not softness, it is there.

• 1:11:50Speaker 00

  I don't put on... I try not to put on some kind of an act, but to be connected to the service of what is needed and the situation, from service to myself, to service to the situation, to service to another person. To service to the community. The path is short. The path is one of egoism for altruism. Direct altruism is a lie. Because there is no potency to do anything anyways. It can be appreciated and it teaches you a lot.

• 1:12:35Speaker 00

  You know, if you're depressed, that's a good, that's a good advice, piece of advice. Just do charity. It's a very potent medicine. Do for others, but again, you go back to the egoistic. So this is also that service works through this thing. It has to work from the inside to the outside. And that was, that's the journey. It's not was, it is the journey and to be more accurate towards it, towards what's needed, what you need, what you require with your curiosity, your question.

• 1:13:15Speaker 00

  And maybe there is a place where there is no requirement also to realize, okay, that's it. Because this is where, you know, or someone else, or the audience, or, you know, where people are standing. I want to help. I want to be of service, but I don't want to mislead people. I don't want to give them some kind of a... Whether it's a positive thing or a hopeful thing, or I want to give them that, when it's going to work out well, you know? I don't want to, I don't want to give some kind of a pragmatic tool that is just corrupting the person another moment. So in this sense...

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  I used to be pushing very hard

• 1:14:05Speaker 00

  to fit the shape in.

• 1:14:10Speaker 00

  And that was not off service. So I got a head to go.

• 1:14:18André Duqum?

  I can sense your, and I'm curious your thoughts on it, but the way that you approach answering questions, I can feel sometimes a resistance to giving a cleanly knit fit answer to the thing. And I've noticed a lot of teachers who are really good at what they do avoid providing cleanly knit, like neat conclusions for people because it almost is a death to the curiosity and exploration for somebody externally. And...

• 1:14:50Speaker 00

  It's not the motivation.

• 1:14:51André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  It's not the motivation behind it, but it is simply because it's a lie. It's, that's the only thing, it's, it's a lie. That conclusive thing, it's dead. It's, it's stopped.

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  The thought.

• 1:15:12Speaker 00

  It's a living thing. It's a, it's paradoxical as well. I contradicted myself a few times already. Like, for example, I told you that sensing something is getting rid of tension. It's the same thing. And then we used it for tension. That's something for people to resolve. How does that fit?

• 1:15:38Speaker 00

  And it's there, there is more. Part of the method of the teacher, the real teacher, it's not all maybe often mentioned, lies,

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  ambiguity, incompleteness, riddles, parables.

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  The real teacher, that's how they work because they want to help, because they want to deliver, because there is no other way to give certain things.

• 1:16:07Speaker 00

  The conclusive, the tic-tac-tac, is the charlatan.

• 1:16:14Speaker 00

  Sometimes the charlatan is such that they charlatan themselves first. And that's the more common thing. It's like, not people don't have like, they don't try to manipulate, they are already manipulated.

• 1:16:25André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  So they answer in this clean way. And you know the Dunning-Kruger curve, right? The expert, which is not the top of the mountain, for sure, there is no top of the mountain, but it's not even nothing. The expert knows it's complex. He refuses to give you the conclusion. You speak to Huberman about neurology.

• 1:16:49André Duqum?

  Like you did yesterday?

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so it's, he's not gonna give you conclusions. He's gonna describe a pretty complex reality. And then from that, he still makes it a point to give a protocol. And we can do that. And I've done this, and we can do this, and it's important to do and good. But it also have to, we have to realize, it also corrupts. Because, okay, I got it. I got it. Look, I can play this game. Can give a few protocols for people. It's like, that's what you're gonna, you're gonna do this for 10 minutes. You're gonna, you know, wake up, you with a morning routine. It's like, if I can work through the nausea, I can do that.

• 1:17:33Speaker 00

  But I make a joke. But it's not, it's not the point. They can find this already in many ways. It's not being of service of the situation. The situation is, stop.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Stop reading, stop buying more books, putting them on your bookshelf. You never read the books that are already there. Stop. You don't need another workshop. You don't need another thing, you don't need another. Stop for a moment. You can continue after, but stop for a moment. Take a moment. Reflect. Maybe you hear those words. You finished a recording. Ponder. An activity that we remove from our lives. Go on a walk, think about it.

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  Maybe it will change the rest of your life. That's powerful. And the protocol doesn't allow me that. It sends me somewhere else. I got it. Good. Thank you. You pay, keep going.

• 1:18:45André Duqum?

  I think our ability to discern

• 1:18:50André Duqum?

  what's authentic and true for us in any given moment and the place things are coming from, right? Because you could come on this podcast and answer my questions, for example, from many different places internally, trying to prove something, wanting to sound a certain way, or what's spontaneously coming up for you with no agenda of how it's perceived. And I think that level of sensitivity and attunement certainly gets supported by a practice where you have increased your connection and awareness within your body, the sensations that are arising within your body. Does that resonate?

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  The body, the emotional faculty, and the intellect as well. And it's a result of practice, for sure. Authenticity is the path. But I believe the word is used in a corrupted way. Authenticity and originality are not almost the same thing. They're opposites. Their originality is what you don't want to pursue. And authenticity is the thing. I'm original. Who cares?

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  There is a beautiful, short story by the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges called Pierre Menard, the author of Don Quijote.

• 1:20:27Speaker 00

  But Don Quijote was written by Cervantes. So who's Pierre Menard? The story is about this dude, Pierre Menard, whose dream was to write Don Quijote.

• 1:20:47Speaker 00

  But it's already written.

• 1:20:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, but he wanted to write it himself.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  In his way?

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  Exactly the same Don Quixote, word per word.

• 1:21:09Speaker 00

  But without copying.

• 1:21:16Speaker 00

  So first he contemplated to become Cervantes, so he would be capable of writing Don Quixote. But then he said, "No, no, it's too easy. If the task is impossible, let us choose the most impossible of ways, without becoming Cervantes,

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  to remain Pierre Menard and still to be capable of writing exactly word per word without copying.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  This is authenticity. Do you see how it's exactly the opposite of originality? "I'm gonna do something different than to the rest." This is the wrong motive.

• 1:21:58Speaker 00

  This is corrupted. This is... When you see it, you realize this is evil, hiding inside.

• 1:22:09Speaker 00

  "I'm gonna do my podcast and it's gonna be different than the rest." That's the wrong motive. And like you've pointed out, very, very with sensitivity, you can answer this question from a variety of places. And it's important to mention, it's not mentioned often.

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  You're here to prove a point? Are you here to get people's attention? Do you here to manipulate into some financial gain? Do you here to... Do you here to give a quick hope or a positive vibe? So people like you? Or do you here to get a real transformation? Or a true change? Or etc. And more and more and more. So authenticity is the deep, deep, deep dive. And one of the most important and core side effects of a real practice, a real human practice. Practice is not something that I control.

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  Ido Portal, of course not. I don't have a method. People like to call it a method. I've created certain methods, but people confuse that. Also, I didn't create a system. I just, my name is Ido Portal. That's my given name. So I used my name, but people made it into a brand. The author is dead, like the book The Death of the Author. Only brands exist now. This is confused with a system, with a...

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  When I talk about practice, I talk about your practice. Your practice. My practice. I can't give you my practice. It's my practice. It's only working for me. But I can facilitate finding that practice. And authenticity, of course, now you understand, it's part of, a major part of that. Because we have to find what is your practice and what is your authentic practice almost before we find ourselves. It's practically the same, but it is a better way to interact.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  I tell people, the question, who I am? It's not this question. No. The first question is what I am? This?

• 1:24:57Speaker 00

  He's misunderstood many times, our people. "Who am I?", I'm asking. "I just get corrupted data. I just get distorted things." First, look at the machinery. Start to work from simple models into more and more sophisticated models. If I want to understand how the iPhone works, you bring me an electronic mastermind. They cannot make sense of the current blueprint of the iPhone. No one head can make sense of it.

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  So we don't learn how the iPhone works in this way. We start with extremely simple models. Input-output processing. "Did you get it?", "Okay." "Now you go to the next model." The same way. Know thyself, that's how it works. From crude to more and more and more sophistication to places which cannot be communicated anymore. They're so subtle. Like, for example, the emotional layer. We have those words for the emotion, anger. This is almost disrespectful for what is really going on.

• 1:26:21Speaker 00

  There are thousands of emotions happening in a fraction of a second. When you go down that rabbit hole and you start to really, for years and years and hours a day, pay attention to it, you see a richness. When the body movement, when you look at it in detail, it's overwhelming. And in that sense, we have to start in the current...

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  Level in which we can digest things. We have to be respectful, the stomach that I currently have and work with that. Even this podcast, this conversation is problematic in that sense. It cannot serve everyone. It serves a very specific cut of the spectrum. Nothing else can happen. Now I can move this, but I cannot open to this. I cannot make it wider. Yeah. I just move it. I simplify more. Okay, I hit this audience. Take it here, this audience. And we together play this game and it comes about. It's not under my control, but it comes about in the way both of us affecting it.

• 1:27:39Speaker 00

  Your questions, the depth of them, the honesty and my answers in this case.

• 1:27:45Speaker 02

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• 1:28:15André Duqum?

  Yeah, it does seem like there's some sort of relationship to how universally palatable something is and devoid of substance it is. You know, the most popular things often are things that resonate with a certain level of consciousness or understanding. Nuance and complexity isn't appreciated at less mature levels, you know?

• 1:28:40Speaker 00

  Yesterday, I lamented it in a private conversation with Andrew Huberman. And he gave me a positive spin.

• 1:28:56Speaker 00

  Which I really appreciated and I thanked him for it. It's true, I feel you, I see the same. But also, you got to understand, real curiosity and appreciation will never be buried. So the pendulum swings. Right now, we're in a very shallow scenario. And it's already changing in some ways, even because of AI. So, for example, imperfections

• 1:29:28Speaker 00

  become pleasurable. It's like, did you see that glitch?

• 1:29:34Speaker 00

  Our coughing or mistakes in words that we've made or... It becomes a breath of fresh air, the opposite of what it used to be. So in the same way, this subtlety

• 1:29:53Speaker 00

  is already making a comeback.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  There are corruptive forces, there are disorders, there is shallowness, great shallowness to our society, to our humanity. And there will always be this whisper that will bring back something. Maybe it will not be the millions of views,

• 1:30:20Speaker 00

  but it's okay.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  It is what it is.

• 1:30:26André Duqum?

  As you've explored through your practice, the relationship between body or soma and emotions,

• 1:30:36André Duqum?

  what have you learned about how interconnected they fundamentally are? And how

• 1:30:44André Duqum?

  tied someone's physiological state, the posture they hold, the tension they hold is directly connected to the emotions they visit most consistently in that form of their personality? What's the link there?

• 1:30:57Speaker 00

  You're familiar with the rasa calpana?

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  In the Upanishad, there is an ancient analogy, but it's not only there. It's mentioned by Plato in some ways and by others. It's all, it's like the flood. Everybody got a flood.

• 1:31:16André Duqum?

  Yeah, and a resurrection.

• 1:31:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes. So, there is power to that. There is a reason for that. The rasa calpana, the chariot analogy. It represents some kind of an observation made by some practitioner, guaranteed.

• 1:31:44Speaker 00

  And it shows you this chariot and horses and a driver. And there are more sophisticated ones and there are less sophisticated ones and there are many, many different versions of it. Plato has a different version and the Upanishad have a different version. There are other versions. And in this model, the chariot itself represents the physical body. We simplify it. I give you my version or the simple version. The horses are the emotional faculty and the driver is the intellect in this sense.

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  This is the connection. The driver cannot move the chariot. Unlike what people think, yet if they reflect upon experience, they would realize that's the reason why we fail to move ourselves. The horses are the ones who are actually responsible to move the chariot.

• 1:32:59Speaker 00

  The driver cannot use human language to direct the horses. So you can talk and talk and talk inside, up there.

• 1:33:12Speaker 00

  But the prover will prove what the thinker thinks, as Robert Anton mentions. The sphinx is dreamed because you feel horror, not horror is felt because you dreamed the sphinx. It's useless for me to chronicle my dreams, to report them to you. Those details are dead, it doesn't contain the real essence, which is what constructed the dream.

• 1:33:40Speaker 00

  Now, you see a huge lie inside of ourselves. And we tell ourselves, "This is what happened, that's what happens." No, you're constructing it.

• 1:33:53Speaker 00

  From certain sensations. And an entity which we call emotions, which we know very little about. The world's biggest experts on emotions will admit. We don't understand it, we don't know what it is.

• 1:34:10Speaker 00

  But without knowing what it is, by the practice itself, you can gain some insight on it. And you realize...

• 1:34:19Speaker 00

  Bruce Lee said, "Give me some emotional content." Don't just hit, give me some emotional content. Movement without this is not movement.

• 1:34:31Speaker 00

  Thought without this is also limited.

• 1:34:38Speaker 00

  This is where the magic happens. When the whole thing, the chariot, the horses, the driver, operate together. Now you go. Without it, you're not going.

• 1:34:54Speaker 00

  "What is the state of affairs?" That's a big question to ask. And I often work on it with students.

• 1:35:03Speaker 00

  "Where is your driver?"

• 1:35:06Speaker 00

  "He's not on the chariot even. He's somewhere else, drunk, in a bar.

• 1:35:13Speaker 00

  And he doesn't know how to drive.

• 1:35:17Speaker 00

  What's the state of your horses?

• 1:35:21Speaker 00

  Some of them are famished.

• 1:35:25Speaker 00

  They're crippled.

• 1:35:28Speaker 00

  Emotionally, we are poor, sick.

• 1:35:33Speaker 00

  We narrow down.

• 1:35:37Speaker 00

  There are conditions like inability to describe our emotions.

• 1:35:46Speaker 00

  There are all kinds of emotionally deranged horses, wild horses, that are not going forward, kicking to the side, or breaking the chariot. There are all kinds of psychosis, all kinds of things like that. So this is a very good and powerful tool by some teacher that directs us to start to work and to understand. And this is not the important thing, is to hear this and say, "Oh, cool, cool analogy. Now, start a practice. This is how I work." I take this, but now for years, I'm working with this by observing, by placing you under certain demands, putting you in a scenario, in a task.

• 1:36:31Speaker 00

  Like, for example, I'll put you in front of a partner, and you'll put boxing gloves on. And then I ask the partner to touch you first in certain places, or to come close to you, and then later hit you. And I ask you to observe and to report what you're feeling. And you can be fully, you know, in control, but the moment that it starts to build up and build up, you'll feel that. Or I can place you on the edge of a building, in the height. And these are types of practices, examples of how we're actually working with emotional modulation.

• 1:37:10Speaker 00

  In order to truly develop emotionally, you have to feed nutrients, emotional nutrients. It's a stomach as well. It's not just a modeling thing, this schema, this emotional schema, but you have to feed it. And what do we feed it? Britney Spears? Hollywood movies? Try to watch Tarkovsky. That's a different thing. Try, go to watch Contemporary Dance. It's painful in the beginning. Well, we tried to make sense of it. I didn't get it. That's the point. I didn't get it. That's the point. Stay there.

• 1:37:54Speaker 00

  Many times I tell people, it's like, I couldn't make sense of it. I stayed there. That was the calling. A teacher says something, I don't understand that person. I go there. That's my instinct. That's my thing. And this gave me so much, this approach. Tom Waits. You know, I mention sometimes, I love Tom Waits. And when I first heard Tom Waits, it was painful. I was like, I need to listen. I need to, I need to be here. I need to be in that space. It's not always,

• 1:38:38Speaker 00

  the entry point is not about what I like and what I did, and also not what I dislike. It's not about that. It's about, I don't understand. Sometimes it's about you dislike what you don't understand. Sometimes you more like it. It depends on certain inclinations. Also with partners. Oh, I really, we really got along. I have no interest then. Or I do this really well. I don't have interest in doing what I do well.

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  Okay, I can do handstands, well. So I stopped doing that, I'm not interested. There is nothing to be gained there for me more. I can squeeze out of the orange very little.

• 1:39:26Speaker 00

  This is a proper approach to practice that is not cultivated when we are children. And if it's cultivated, it becomes second nature. For me, I was asked a lot of questions, my mom. Not given answers. It was all questions. This is part of our culture as well.

• 1:39:50Speaker 00

  A culture of, you have to ask the questions. You're required not to provide the answers. What is the right question? So much more promising. So another way to look at the practice, to be in the question. This is the name of the area of practice. Answers, don't provide a lot, back to your conclusions. Questions are powerful. They're movement, they're sending us. And the right questions, it's not about answering them. It's about asking them.

• 1:40:34Speaker 00

  Bringing them into the world and creating huge, powerful... I need to bring air in, I open the window and the air comes in. I don't pump it with machine. This is answering. So our education that got around... Good, 10 correct answers for 10 questions? You got a mark. No, that's not in the real traditions that are really cultivated, some of the greatest thinkers. You see just questions. Indian tradition, Jewish traditions, the Muslim tradition for a long while. All of them contain this quality.

• 1:41:19André Duqum?

  I agree that questions in many ways is the genesis of focus. They become the impetus to move our attention into different areas. And I think worthwhile questions can spontaneously arise in a system that doesn't have as much noise as preoccupied with. What is your conception and understanding of the noise that's in the system internally? I've heard you mention the Weber-Fecter law. What is that for people that don't understand?

• 1:41:49Speaker 00

  Weber-Fecter is about...

• 1:41:56Speaker 00

  The Weber-Fecter physiological law is not just physiology. I allow myself the leap of faith. It is a law that crosses all stratas. And it connects back to that, what we talked about, tension and sensation, the relationship there. Weber-Fecter says that the more noise in the system, the more data in the system,

• 1:42:29Speaker 00

  the less data of a specific type, disorganized, chaotic, of course, more, the less the ability to sense differences, changes. Like, for example, this movement.

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

  There was a movement there, repetitive, back and forth, back and forth. In order for me to sense this,

• 1:43:04Speaker 00

  I need to have a certain...

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  A certain open slate, open state of lack of tension. If I hold my arm very tight, I decrease my capacity to sense with my arm. The analogy is holding an iron bar and being blindfolded and a fly sits on it. You won't be able to detect it. But if you hold a feather, you will. Because the feather has less this rigidity and it will transmit this vibration, even of a fly. But we are the iron bar or the feather. We have this modulation that we can play with

• 1:43:53Speaker 00

  and it's very powerful. Now, we get to the flip side of your prior question. Before, it was about removing tension. So I offered sensation. Now, I offer sensation. Sorry, before it was sensation for removal of tension. Now, I offer removal of tension for sensation. You want to know? You want to know reality? Remove tension. Deeply relax. That's all you need to do. You will, all the treasures will come to you.

• 1:44:36Speaker 00

  The knowledge, the... Knowledge is not in the books. Knowledge is not in the teachers. Knowledge is by... This. When I do this, when I pay attention, I decrease tension in my system.

• 1:45:01Speaker 00

  If somebody whispers, you immediately decrease tension in the system to tune in. It's a trick that many charlatans use. Not only charlatans, also good charlatans, bad charlatans. So, this is very nice. We built something very nice here, from all the different sides. We have a really strong case to modulating tension and sensing. We need to devote a lot of resources to it. We need to be respectful of it, we mentioned it, and we need to apply tools for it, every day. It's not just going to the gym. It's not just about, you know, doing your yoga routine or whatever.

• 1:45:45Speaker 00

  We need to pay attention to this, because paying attention is developing. Certain things are worth devoting our lives to, and this means are worth our attention. This is one of them. It will heal you. Don't wait that you get sick, so sick that you have to do it. It might be too late. Tension and the relationship to sensation, this whole understanding can save your life.

• 1:46:21Speaker 00

  You know those scenarios? Drowning or freezing to death, being stuck somewhere in the wilderness, and then there is all these crazy stories. It just happened now. They found this Sherpa in the Everest, did you see this? This man, one of the Sherpas that were taking... Separated from the guy, he just sat down. They were coming down, the conditions didn't allow the climb up, and the guy he was helping, the mountaineer, you know, they don't carry anything. The Sherpas are taking a fridge on their back. And he just sat down to smoke. They smoke, it's crazy, like these people are Superman. And he told them, "Keep going, keep going down."

• 1:47:06Speaker 00

  They were already coming down. It was kind of bad conditions and blizzard. "I'll catch up with it." And he's very experienced, old guy. He came down, and he never came, the Sherpa.

• 1:47:22Speaker 00

  Started searches for him.

• 1:47:25Speaker 00

  Everest, snow.

• 1:47:29Speaker 00

  One day, two days, three days, four days, five days.

• 1:47:36Speaker 00

  Just a body, we're gonna find just a body. Found him, he came down.

• 1:47:43Speaker 00

  How?

• 1:47:45Speaker 00

  What is that? What is it like? What is it genetic?

• 1:47:51Speaker 00

  Or this girl in Siberia once that drowned was stuck under the ice, under the ice, for forty minutes. And somebody drowns in their bathtub. What is that?

• 1:48:08Speaker 00

  My partner, Odilia, she went through a car accident. She broke her back, she lost the kidney. When her dad saw the car in the junkyard, he cried. Because there was nothing left besides the compartment around the front seat. And Odilia, she's amazing mover. People don't believe that she broke, you know, the back, that she had this severe concussion. How? What is it? What kind of a softness is that? Not rigidity. Nothing can help you when your car is flipped and you're shaken inside this compartment.

• 1:48:53Speaker 00

  It's like, you know, so I think, and what happens one day when you get a phone call? A broken heart can end your life. Relaxation, release, deep release, and sensation can save your life and can give you your life. It's something that we need to cultivate in the, from children all the way to, even if you're eight years old. Good start. It will give you benefits. Reconnect to it. Find a way. There are many ways. And people can find a way into practices of releasing tension, letting go of tension, from somatics to guided meditations,

• 1:49:38Speaker 00

  to apps these days, to all kinds of things. And... If you genuinely pursue it well, it will give you a lot, whatever you do.

• 1:49:50André Duqum?

  I feel like we generally value and prioritize strengthening one vertical, whether it be strength, mobility, flexibility. It sounds like you're inviting the more important thing is the adaptability, the ability to change, to evolve, to be with the circumstance and the stress response. Is that how you think and you approach?

• 1:50:14André Duqum?

  And of course, the concepts and the words, the models are always going to fail us. But it sounds like you're to improve an athlete or to work with an Alzheimer's patient or a musician or a physicist, you're bringing to them something that is making the system stronger as a whole, which is where they're weakest, right?

• 1:50:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can also isolate something. We never isolate. It's impossible. It's always affecting the whole system. But you can try to target it more here and there, and that's okay. But the most important thing is driving the car. We became the movement people, and not only the movement, the psychologists, everyone, car mechanics, car mechanics. You're not driving even the car.

• 1:51:04Speaker 00

  This is not the game. You're just fixing these pieces. You work on the engine, but you never, you don't know how to drive. This is something else. So that's why the hybrid, the task, the complex scenario is the most important. Now, the car mechanic has its place. People who call themselves movement people, people who pursue, people who were inspired also by me and by others. And oftentimes, I see it as this has nothing to do with movement. They don't even move. And here's another shocker I saw in myself. I said before, I didn't, I don't even feel movement. That was my realization with myself. Here's another shocker.

• 1:51:49Speaker 00

  I don't like movement. That's what I saw in myself. I don't even like movement.

• 1:52:00Speaker 00

  Or if you don't feel it. If you need to play some clips, you're putting some camera on, then you're capturing something for Instagram. And you're doing your movements, or you do your yoga routine, or you do this, and you're in some class, and you're following. And you don't, you're not really paying attention. You need all that scenario. Turn off the music. Turn off everything. And now you can't do it. You don't, you're not interested.

• 1:52:27André Duqum?

  Yeah. Who are you? Who are you when no one's looking?

• 1:52:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52:30André Duqum?

  Pay attention.

• 1:52:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And now, what's the next thing? You don't even know that you don't like it because you never felt it. What you felt, you called that movement. It's something else. It's a distraction. It's a mix, dirty mix. And again, it's heavy. I apologize. But there is a place. I also carry the heaviness, and I wish to offer people the positivity behind it. We can gain a lot by interacting with this thought and with this way. Yeah.

• 1:53:14André Duqum?

  You mentioned in regards to the more silence or the lessening of noise increases your perceptive capacity, right? You become more keenly aware of noticing the subtle movements within self, within other. And we mentioned a bit earlier about the posturing, right? The emotional ties with the physiological state that somebody who walks around needing to dominate and assert themselves is a signal into the insecurity they feel, right? And the many different ways that balance can be revealed. As you've increased the sensitivity within your own system, have you been able to keenly kind of pick up where those holding patterns are in somebody,

• 1:54:00André Duqum?

  the relationship they carry within themselves because of how they're holding tension in their body?

• 1:54:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, of course. And it's not just the tension in the body or the movement capacity, but like you said, We build these engines and these postures and these ways as a representation of certain things that we feel. Needs, likes, dislikes, fears. One person goes to the gym and builds this huge body because they're insecure. Another person doesn't build this body, goes to martial arts. It's the same. So you build the skill set to kill someone because you're insecure.

• 1:54:49Speaker 00

  My dad never went to martial arts, unlike me, because he was powerful. I never felt the need. I saw it in myself. I need the martial arts. I found my way in there. The real powerful ones, they're not in the martial arts, in this sense. In the martial arts, you find many bullies and many people like me. Cowards, insecure. So end up needing to construct something else. I also built my body.

• 1:55:28André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:28Speaker 00

  I needed everything.

• 1:55:29André Duqum?

  Yeah. What about, do you feel like, even though it might be a more rare case, the individuals that are genuinely pulled for some sort of mastery in a form of movement for the love of it and not through the fear of inadequacy?

• 1:55:47Speaker 00

  What is the love of it? That's the thing. The fisherman question. Fisherman likes fish, and why does he kill it? What is the love of it? Is it possible? Yeah, it's possible to love it, but we're not capable of it in most cases. It's not what we think it is. Your partner, your romantic partner, you love them?

• 1:56:25Speaker 00

  Love is sometimes to say you should go somewhere else.

• 1:56:30Speaker 00

  We're not in that place. Most, most people, those who haven't practiced. It's possible to get there, it's possible to love, to move. But it's not this initial inclination.

• 1:56:47Speaker 00

  I, you know, I love you and now we're speaking through lawyers because, you know, you said something, you know, "I have my coffee, I like you. I don't have my coffee, I don't like you." This is love.

• 1:57:00Speaker 00

  We like to speak big words. The practice notifies you of what you really have. At least it was for me. And I didn't have much. A lot of stories, a lot of lies to myself, a lot of ideas. You know what I discovered? My strength is my weakness, and my weakness is my strength.

• 1:57:25André Duqum?

  There's a lot of humility in that as well, huh?

• 1:57:28Speaker 00

  Maybe...

• 1:57:32Speaker 00

  Maybe...

• 1:57:35Speaker 00

  Humility in the sense of, "This is, it is what it is. This is what it is." And we have our style of humility. There are many styles, and one of the styles is "da boca pra fora", as they say in Portuguese. From the mouth out, humility from here out. I say it, but inside, I think something else. But humility for me is to know your limits. When I say, "I'm a coward", I'm not beating myself, "Oh, I'm a coward, oh, I'm a coward", there I was, I do, I did that in the past as well. This is the truth. This is what I've glimpsed. I'm not saying it to sound humble, but it is just watching my limits, my possibilities,

• 1:58:21Speaker 00

  and also putting it into the perspective of comparison. Of course, I have to, so I communicate something. But more important is to make the point for the benefit of others and for the benefit of myself.

• 1:58:36Speaker 00

  One time, I was in a way with a fighter. In one of the first fights.

• 1:58:47André Duqum?

  McGregor?

• 1:58:48Speaker 00

  No, no, no. One of the first fights they had.

• 1:58:52André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:54Speaker 00

  And he was standing there and was trembling. And they stand in front of each other and his fist is trembling. And the other guy goes, "Look, look, look, he's trembling. He's afraid."

• 1:59:08Speaker 00

  And he told him, "I am afraid and tomorrow I'm gonna end you."

• 1:59:13Speaker 00

  And he did.

• 1:59:18Speaker 00

  That was power. So in that sense, he was like, everybody saw it. I'm trembling.

• 1:59:26Speaker 00

  I am afraid. That is important because it gives us strength. It gives us hope. It gives us clarity and real, something real.

• 1:59:38Speaker 00

  I'm not gonna patch up my wrinkles. I'm not gonna paint my, you know. My shirt is a bit wrinkled, you know. Like sometimes in this podcast, they do this ironing thing and I refuse, you know. I'm not, and the reason, I'm not neglecting myself. It's not the point. You told me one of my hairs is sticking.

• 2:00:01André Duqum?

  I offered, yeah, like there's a colleague, like, "Do you want me to fix it?" You're like, "No, I'm good."

• 2:00:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, there is a colleague and it is there. I can, I can fix it. There was a colleague, I could also equally arrange it.

• 2:00:16Speaker 00

  And I'm not, I'm not showing something superior.

• 2:00:20André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:20Speaker 00

  I'm just saying, in that moment, was important also for me to stay with it.

• 2:00:28Speaker 00

  Maybe I look a bit funny, maybe something, you know, is not, maybe I have a booger bit sticking out or something, you know. There is, there is beauty in the imperfection and there is importance in it and we have to feed it back into our lives. And like I said, the nice thing, yesterday from Huberman, that the pendulum swings back. Because of this too perfected thing, yeah, there is a comedian, he said something about all these treatments that women are doing these days, and he said, "You can look old or weird." You have two choices. So it's like, and you know what?

• 2:01:12Speaker 00

  Both are equal. Okay, you do take care of your wrinkles? It's not superior, but it's, it's the same in the end, but it's more about the observation. And then I can ask myself, "You have children? Yes, no? Doesn't matter." You don't need to, to make children now, to be okay, to be whole, or, and you don't need to remove them, to start to practice, to be, or something. But the realization of it, the deep questions, get you to ask yourself, "Do I want to have children in a much more deeper way? In a much more honest way? Or do I want to fix my, my hair?

• 2:01:55Speaker 00

  Or do I want to engage with this or with that?" By the way, it's related also to my cowardice, but also to my intelligence. In the sense that I know that fixing my wrinkles is dangerous. I am smart enough to realize it. From here to there, I wake up 20 years forward, I'm in a totally different place by trying to hunt down these things, or longevity, to pursue longevity. I'm not the longevity guy. I'm a bit nauseated by to, to be...

• 2:02:38Speaker 00

  Or I once said in a lecture, "Bringing your children into this world is probably the most selfish thing a person can do."

• 2:02:49Speaker 00

  My mother attended that lecture. She smiled. In the end of the lecture, she came to me. She said, "You're right, but raising them is the least."

• 2:02:59Speaker 00

  I say, "Perfect, perfect, correct."

• 2:03:03Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 2:03:37André Duqum?

  I love what you mentioned earlier about seeking out the things you feel weak in. I resonate a lot with that because piano is one example of something where I'm just continually at the bottom of the mountain of there's always something new. Once I feel like I have a level of understanding or mastery of one thing, there's immediately 10 other things that it will bring me to my frontier of, you know, of capability. And any other words you have there on like that relationship between strength and weakness? And to seek out that which actually makes us stronger by finding what makes us weaker?

• 2:04:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, just have a contemplation. I offer for you, for people watching this, listening to this.

• 2:04:31Speaker 00

  Let's say you pursue your strength. Where will you end up?

• 2:04:37Speaker 00

  Just find what you're good at and do that. That piece of advice. Now contemplate a reality in which you pursue what you're not good at.

• 2:04:50Speaker 00

  Isn't this clear?

• 2:04:54Speaker 00

  ¿Hay una posibilidad de que perseguir sus fuerzas terminará bien? Sí, porque encontrarás debilidades en eso también. Son capas, pero has fracasado en alinearse con el enfoque a través de todas las estratas. Así que hay más para nosotros en la debilidad, pero no debería convertirse en algo sado-mazookístico, porque eso también es mecánico y automático y le extrae toda la belleza. Así que interactúas con algunas cosas en las que eres fuerte y otras que eres débil, y se trata de lograr un cierto equilibrio de estas cosas que terminan siendo funcionales sin colapsar. Esa es la otra cosa.

• 2:05:40Speaker 00

  Algunas personas perseguen sus fuerzas o perseguen la debilidad, en un ejemplo más crítico, pero colapsan. Continúan perseguir la debilidad, pero la forma en que lo hacen es realmente muerta, y no entienden esto.

• 2:06:00Speaker 00

  No tenemos la fuerza que pensamos que tenemos. Lo detenemos. No tenemos la voluntad que creemos que tenemos. Lo que estamos usando, esta fuerza de voluntad, no es voluntad. Es sólo disciplina. No es nada.

• 2:06:22Speaker 00

  Sí, hemos construido, ya sabes, países con eso, pero es un gasto de mosquitos

• 2:06:31Speaker 00

  en comparación con un tormento que es la voluntad. Y la voluntad, la verdadera voluntad, funciona a través de un gasto de mosquitos. Eso es lo opuesto. Lo que creemos que es fuerte es realmente débil, y lo que parece débil, tan débil que ni siquiera reconocemos que está allí cuando la voluntad viene a visitarnos. No es lo que sentimos. Lo que sentimos es motivación. Lo que sentimos es disciplina.

• 2:07:02Speaker 00

  Así que, o simplemente me forzó a hacer lo que no quiero hacer, o me hace que me guste hacerlo con motivación. Ambos no son voluntad. La voluntad está allí cuando se queda así que no quieres hacerlo.

• 2:07:21Speaker 00

  We didn't even hear about this. It's not even... The words, you have to change. This is the sphere of the practitioner, only.

• 2:07:37Speaker 00

  There is no one else who can touch this. A person of practice will find will, will find themselves, will find authenticity. Different ways to look at it, but it's the same. Will is sequentiality. The ability to do what you want to do, even when you don't want to do it. Not by making yourself want to do it. Yeah. Be careful, you take it away from yourself. Every time you've changed to this. So, people use me as motivation. Sometimes, you know, they tell me, "You've motivated me." It goes in one ear, it comes out on the other.

• 2:08:22Speaker 00

  I don't feel nothing towards it. The reason is, I know it's temporary, it's weak. It lifts and it crashes. And the more lift you get, the more you will crash also in relation to this. And anyways, it works for a corrupted agency. So, but this, this message is what will make you able to

• 2:08:50Speaker 00

  face impossible things, like to be on that mountain or to have a situation from life. You brought a child to this world, you look at the baby, and you feel nothing towards your child.

• 2:09:07Speaker 00

  Happens. What do you do now?

• 2:09:12Speaker 00

  You use discipline? You raise a child out of that. Many of us grew up like that. Our parents didn't love us, but they didn't abandon us.

• 2:09:29Speaker 00

  They did it with the wrong hands. And these are the hands that we were raised with. And we carry these scars, we carry this problem. So if I am not a practitioner, I should be careful. Because these situations can arise. I need to practice. It tells me I need to practice. I want to be able to connect to something else. I want to be able to find love through will, real will, softness and real love, without motivating myself towards it or without, you know... And this is just one example. Again, like it can be a physical thing, it can be something else.

• 2:10:12Speaker 00

  That person survived up there not because of rigidity. It's not the Goggins effect. That's not it.

• 2:10:23Speaker 00

  And one moment is enough to break you. You can be a lifetime of discipline. It take it from a person of hyper-discipline.

• 2:10:32Speaker 00

  My favorite day, we used to be Friday nights to practice. Because I knew nobody's practicing now. Everybody goes to parties, everybody goes.

• 2:10:44Speaker 00

  I practiced since I was maybe 13, 14, 15, 8 hours a day. Even in school, not to talk about other scenarios. Until today, I'm still practicing officially. I'm talking about official practice. 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, sometimes more. So I discovered, none of it matters if I just do it from that tool. I developed something, but it's not what I thought I had. And every time, I ran into the difficulty again. When I didn't want to do it, I had to pull that tool.

• 2:11:29Speaker 00

  And it didn't work.

• 2:11:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I told yesterday in the Huberman podcast

• 2:11:40Speaker 00

  also a story about this for my life. And there are many examples where I went back to do something again because I didn't do it correctly. I forced myself into doing it and it was worthless. So I had to go back and soften myself into doing it. Not use motivation, not put some, you know, music on and just, I just do it. Until today, in simple scenarios, like I need to take the garbage down. I don't want to do it, I'm tired or something. I remember, oh, here is a practice. Here is a little opportunity.

• 2:12:23Speaker 00

  And in that moment, I'm very careful. First rule, no drama is allowed.

• 2:12:31Speaker 00

  Not on the inside, definitely not on the outside. Because the moment I'm like, let me, let me practice. There is also a drama. There is also a tap on the back that I give myself. I did it. And will again goes away from me. Will cannot be developed. Can only be revealed. What you develop is just discipline. That's the willpower. That's rigid. It's, people win world championships, people, you know, fight wars with that. But there is a quality of a different strata. Different height.

• 2:13:14André Duqum?

  What does your practice look like now? As it's evolved, you said sometimes 10, 15, 16 hours a day. Eight to 10 hours a day. What, what formal practice? I mean, if you're spending three, four hours with me here today, that doesn't leave you, that's like every other waking hour practicing in some way. Uh, what does that look like?

• 2:13:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, when in days like this, I have to use the informal side. But I woke up this day, today, in 4:30 in the morning. Also for the formal side.

• 2:13:48Speaker 00

  Not always do I. These days, it's also very important for me not to worry about it when I can't. And just to immediately practice in the way that I can, like even right now. Even in this scenario. It's more about presence, responsibility, etc. And the formal side, if you see it, you wouldn't understand it.

• 2:14:15Speaker 00

  Some things you will recognize, like I spent usually many hours a day still sitting

• 2:14:25Speaker 00

  in a seated practice. Um, various postural practices, open form practice, which means improvisational. Problem solving, still engage with that.

• 2:14:42Speaker 00

  I still work with the physicality to keep the body of service to the practice as well, so there are elements of that.

• 2:14:55Speaker 00

  And more and more and more. A lot of it from the outside cannot, not a lot can be glimpsed. It's very either tiny or very static. Sometimes it's moving, but without much technical beauty that can be perceived from the outside. I've, I've worked my way through this. Yeah, it's a... And some of it is very beautiful and approachable and can be glimpsed. But, but also not so important what it looks. It's, it's more important to understand from the inside. Once the understanding on the inside, it, it becomes interesting, it becomes... Then there are questions, etc. I, I work with students.

• 2:15:40Speaker 00

  I'm very proud to have students of, many students over a decade, fifteen years. Our community, the, the real inner core is many, many years. And people are aging, like me, together with me, building families, etc. And this evolution of the practice, people can come from the very basic things with basic...

• 2:16:06Speaker 00

  Corrupted motives. They wanna learn how to do a handstand. Good, come for us. We will help you in a very, very powerful way to get what you want to get. But slowly, at the same time, by doing this, you start to be pulled into deeper things. You wanna do strength training. Great, you wanna work on injuries. We provide these services online, in events. But then slowly, slowly, slowly, the same has happened to me. You start to get, to go deeper into the real essence. I don't care about your handstands. I don't care about your muscles. I care about you. And it starts to become so much more about us. Once we realize it,

• 2:16:50Speaker 00

  this can also be serviced from the outside, facilitated.

• 2:16:58André Duqum?

  Spending so many hours in a seated practice and practicing in those, in those different forms, is there a predominant question you're sitting with that is directing your life right now? Is there a question you're exploring personally the most?

• 2:17:16Speaker 00

  The questions, they are mutating themselves into something else or else they're not really of service. The questions can be a good beginning, unraveling of something. Like the old Rajneesh practice, you know, also Ramana, who am I? Or who's in, right? A question is, can be very powerful. But by the time you've asked it a million times, you realize it's not what it was, right? So I'm not necessarily, you know, currently like working with such a thing,

• 2:18:00Speaker 00

  but I have in the past. There is the practice of just sitting.

• 2:18:08Speaker 00

  It's advanced.

• 2:18:11Speaker 00

  I believe. Some people are offering it very early, like in Zen circles. You know, they sometimes it's the primary to. I believe it's nowadays less and less

• 2:18:26Speaker 00

  good starting point. Anything can be a starting point in a way.

• 2:18:31Speaker 00

  But I do

• 2:18:35Speaker 00

  did build up myself to that place. And that at times, I sometimes I need some other things. I need certain tools. It's always a drawing, a painting. It's always something like every day is a piece of art. We are all artists and our lives is our art. As Steiner said, in this sense, we have to design the practice in this way. Every seat is not just, I'm here. Is that here I am? Boom, here's the pillow. Boom, I sit. But there is an opening. There is a warm up. I have a friend, Martin Kilmwade, a good friend. He's a dancer and he once told me something that immediately resonated with me.

• 2:19:19Speaker 00

  He said, I just love the warm up

• 2:19:23Speaker 00

  and the warm down a lot more than the thing itself. And it's so resonated with me.

• 2:19:32Speaker 00

  Why? Why is that so, so much often present? Because the warm, warm up, warm up, it has a process to it. It's not about the up or the down. It can also be the down. But

• 2:19:51Speaker 00

  the thing itself sometimes lacks the process. But if we take this quality, so I believe the seat, sometimes people, I sit every morning at 5:00 a.m. For 20 years, I didn't miss a day. Sounds like you don't have nothing.

• 2:20:09Speaker 00

  It's not the high practitioners. It is a step along the way. It's important to, I failed to mention it. Discipline is super important.

• 2:20:22Speaker 00

  Motivation is a good tool, but there's scaffolding. You build it in order to build the real building, and you've got to get rid of it. But if you don't have discipline, if you didn't cultivate discipline, forget about it. My path is the path of ultimate effort. There are many paths. My path is so much effort that you're not even allowed to make an effort. So it's the ultimate effort. You can look at it this way, or the other way to look at it is it's not the path of effort. But I prefer to look at it this way because it is more wink, winking at us. It is more...

• 2:21:05André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:06Speaker 00

  The hard thing to do is to make incredible efforts without even being able to contract against it. You have to do it. You have to go to the dentist, and you say, "No anesthesia." And you soften, and you say, "Ah," as it's reeling in. This is why it's so much of the effort in many ways, but you don't experience the pain in the same way that we think we do. We are so afraid to release ourselves in the moment that the suffering comes that this is actually more painful than the pain itself. Sam Harry says, "I can't bear it."

• 2:21:49Speaker 00

  You're already bearing it. "I can't bear it." You know, this thought, the fear of fear is much worse than the fear itself. Just the fear itself is not that bad.

• 2:22:01André Duqum?

  Yeah. It's a really important perspective. I know at different points in my life, my practice, which was very disciplined and almost militant, can quickly become this thing that you feel like you should be doing, and it sucks the spontaneity, aliveness, improvisation, and the real presence from the practice. You know, it becomes dead in a sense. It's so mechanical. And I appreciate it that you said it is an important part of the path. And then eventually, like, the level of mastery, which I don't necessarily love that word, but the Taoists have a saying, a maxim, that the master does nothing, yet leaves nothing undone.

• 2:22:47André Duqum?

  And to me, it's really resonant of that place of

• 2:22:53André Duqum?

  doing without personal, this identity of personal doership, doing without the identity of being the doer.

• 2:22:59Speaker 00

  Choiceless awareness. It's a very good combination of words.

• 2:23:07Speaker 00

  It's a very important flavor to connect to, even if it's weird. It's like, maybe it's a dish right now, what you said and what we came to here. You, you, you really made it a point from the moment I stepped in and to align with what will happen. Let's see where this conversation will take us. I appreciate it.

• 2:23:34Speaker 00

  Or taking pauses to ask a question, to contemplate, or to look at notes, or I appreciate it. There is an honesty, there is no, no need to play any games, and you placed yourself in this way. So maybe we got now to a point where the flavor is a bit weird. It's, um, it's like some weird dish, right? That you're in some country, it's like, like, you know, and once I was in the Philippines and they have this thing, balut. It's this egg, normal egg, but inside of it, there is the chicken already.

• 2:24:18Speaker 00

  So you open it, you eat it, you're crunching through bones, the beak, feather, you know, like feathers sometimes. And so then, like, you know, like, oh, you know, this, but then you actually do it.

• 2:24:35Speaker 00

  Try to sense, what is this?

• 2:24:40Speaker 00

  Or even the concept of, that's evil, that, you know, like, even that, it's placed tricks with us. It's the narrative that we put on it. Wait, sense the taste of this weird place we got to. Choiceless awareness doesn't mean.

• 2:25:00Speaker 00

  That you are removed from the equation. The opposite is it's hard to get this. The fake, the personality, what we cultivated, what we stole from the world, we copied, is not really ours. That's what got to go.

• 2:25:26Speaker 00

  To a certain extent, controlled, placed correctly, but the deep essence, the purity, comes out. That's why it's choiceless because you, that fake you, in that sense, don't get to choose. But the deep you is now engaged.

• 2:25:46André Duqum?

  This deep you that you're engaging, like, not who am I, but what am I? I feel like when you go on that journey of exploring and inquiring experientially, you first realize all these things that you are not. You know, I'm not this, I'm not that. And I'm curious, how do you answer the question, what am I? When you've explored that experientially, what have you found for you and your fundamental essence in nature?

• 2:26:12Speaker 00

  Hey, it's not a communicative thing, right? I can say some words about it. I can extrapolate something from it. I'm very careful with this because I'm already doing more than I should in most cases. That's what I feel in the end. Because leaving these undone pieces will get people more, will get more going. The questions, not the answers. If I leave something undone...

• 2:26:52Speaker 00

  Like the old trick, the old hermetic trick. You only count to nine, never count to ten.

• 2:27:00Speaker 00

  What's the trick about it?

• 2:27:04Speaker 00

  You do reps, let's say you do push-ups. You only count to nine. Why?

• 2:27:13Speaker 00

  Because people got accustomed to count to ten. So what will happen when you leave it at nine? The count continues, and that's what you want. The pondering continues. It's undone, it's not perfect. So in this sense, I...

• 2:27:29Speaker 00

  Maybe it's... the mystery is important.

• 2:27:36Speaker 00

  It is important. Mystery, the sense of mystery, the aesthetic intensity that we call mystique, mystery, awe, is something missing in most of our lives.

• 2:27:51Speaker 00

  I'm in awe of this thing and with myself, and I don't necessarily have these answers.

• 2:28:01Speaker 00

  And even the answers that I do have sounds like "Mwah, yeah." I can't bring them about into some kind of a thing. But like you said, there is a lot of discoveries through the path of negation, what I'm not. Because I cannot know what I am, but I can know what I'm not.

• 2:28:27Speaker 00

  People should reflect on that. The learning through negation is a very important tool. For example, when I work with people with boxing, for example, I don't teach them boxing. I teach them what I view, what it's not. And it's more powerful than teaching. I don't teach any techniques of boxing. I'm not a boxing teacher, but I like to work with this quality, like other things. So it's a very powerful way to realize, to inquire,

• 2:29:05Speaker 00

  and the only answer that comes is no. Never yes.

• 2:29:11Speaker 00

  Is this it? No. Is this it? No. Is this it? But,

• 2:29:19Speaker 00

  as it's mentioned

• 2:29:23Speaker 00

  in the old scriptures, it's not it, and it's not not it.

• 2:29:32Speaker 00

  That's the other side. Not confused the fact that it's not, that the answer is not, and now you think you've got something.

• 2:29:39André Duqum?

  Uh huh.

• 2:29:40Speaker 00

  It's not that as well. So it's the ultimate negating thing, because it negates something fake, something incorrect.

• 2:29:52André Duqum?

  Negate the negation as well.

• 2:29:54Speaker 00

  Yes. What is negating in this way? Like our morality, where we ended up, it doesn't work. Our democracy, that's it, it's at the end of it. It doesn't work. It had good intentions, but it was already distorted to begin with. It's already containing. We don't need morality, we need we need conscience.

• 2:30:19Speaker 00

  Now we have morality, okay, you know, don't do this, don't do that. You don't kill me, because you will go to prison. We don't want that. We want a society of individuals who don't kill or kill as well.

• 2:30:40Speaker 00

  Through the openness of the question, every time. No marriage certificates, holding us together that if we want to separate, we need to go through a process with lawyers that will take years. Every day, turn your head in bed in the morning to the other side. Choose again. I stay. Have a backpack ready. Have your suitcase ready. Can go any moment. Have it ready in the room. Have your stuff. That's the place you want to be. That's the partnership you want to have. I don't own you. You don't owe me anything. And the same thing I cultivate towards the practice.

• 2:31:25Speaker 00

  I practice many hours in this and that, and any moment it can go. And it's okay. I wake up and I

• 2:31:34Speaker 00

  sometimes I don't want to practice and I don't practice. I've learned to appreciate that

• 2:31:41Speaker 00

  just to end up realizing I'm practicing even more. So, great. The paradox is often present when good things are the real good things, truth. Truth is the paradox, the paradoxical. If it's not coming in this flavor, it's probably not. That's why the conclusions, the answers, they're not.

• 2:32:03Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, thehousewithjordypac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 2:32:34André Duqum?

  Yeah, it's part of the conundrum with, you know, doing this podcast, having so many conversations, speaking about something which in essence is ineffable.

• 2:32:45Speaker 00

  And we should continue to do that and to be of service. And it's also like taking the car apart, making models.

• 2:32:57Speaker 00

  People, people ask me, shall I write notes? Yes. I like it. No, it's also okay. But you don't have to read them even again.

• 2:33:11Speaker 00

  Make models, crumble them, put in the garbage, make more models the next day. It's okay. Part of the practicum. Have conversations, have different ways, outlooks, perspectives. But also never think you grab the hold of something. If I come from a place that shines out, something like, I know,

• 2:33:33Speaker 00

  here is this again, I don't. This is the place I stand at. And I cherish it. I, I, I, I want to keep it this way.

• 2:33:46André Duqum?

  You seem like you've read and studied many different individuals in different fields. The folks that you've quoted in this conversation. Has that just been a natural proclivity for your, like, understanding? Have you just been, have you read a lot? Where have you studied all these folks from?

• 2:34:06Speaker 00

  I've read a little bit.

• 2:34:08André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:10Speaker 00

  I, it has been good verification to read. Never a good manual. But it is an important thing and a verification. And I, I am a reader in that sense. It was something that was present in my culture, in my family. And I could play that game quite easily. And I, so I've gained a certain capacity with it. And I spent many years reading in a variety of fields. And in my house, there was a cultivated curiosity a lot.

• 2:34:53Speaker 00

  And like I said, and this is the most important thing. You don't need to teach children anything besides curiosity. Once curiosity is there, you could teach them the rest. There is a beautiful saying. I hope I don't butcher it in a too, too bad of a way. But, you know, if you worry.

• 2:35:21Speaker 00

  There, well, there are a few sayings, actually. There are two that comes to mind. But one of them is. A bad teacher teaches what they don't know. What they don't understand. They aim to teach it. What they don't understand is more correct. Maybe they know it, but they don't understand it. A better teacher teaches what they understand. An even better teacher teaches what they can do. And the best teaches what is unknown yet.

• 2:36:03Speaker 00

  And in that cultivation, you cultivate, you find curiosity, you find playfulness. Those are major, major, major tools that we have to really cultivate every day. I still do with myself. I'm in a play mode, I'm in a playful mode, I'm in a curious mode. I'm going around the world in different places, to different traditions, in different practices. I'm investing a lot in learning and bringing teachers to work with me, to study various pieces.

• 2:36:41Speaker 00

  And it is a very important trait. And that led me to read. And in the beginning, it was, I thought I was learning in that sense of like, I tried to apply, but I discovered it doesn't work. And then later, because that corrupts you, a lot of reading. That's a corruptive thing, just like the body can corrupt you. You can become overly identified with it.

• 2:37:08Speaker 00

  And then later, I realized the real benefit of it is some kind of a supportive thing.

• 2:37:17Speaker 00

  Some kind of a

• 2:37:23Speaker 00

  a story of a journey that somebody took, that you also took, that is supportive, verifying, assisting in that sense. It cannot give you nothing. If you were not there, it's not for you, actually. It's not, it's not what... You understand what I'm saying? And that's a major confusion that people have, going to read the Gita, the, you know,

• 2:37:55Speaker 00

  the Daoist scriptures, the Jewish ones, or the Sufi ones, or...

• 2:38:05Speaker 00

  And they think, okay, oh, wow, cool. Oh, they quote this, they quote that. I've been there with myself, and I... Sometimes I still fall trapped to this.

• 2:38:17Speaker 00

  The practice is what gave me the books, not the books gave me the practice. You read a lot as well?

• 2:38:26André Duqum?

  I have, I have read a lot. It comes in waves. Sometimes I just stop reading entirely.

• 2:38:34Speaker 00

  Good.

• 2:38:35André Duqum?

  And sometimes I find thinkers like David Deutsch or Feynman or someone who like really is a novel insight into something that is, yeah, provokes something.

• 2:38:46Speaker 00

  I have a student. She's a, she was a physicist, a theoretical physicist. But she stopped. Now she's working with practice, with movement. And she has a very warm place for Feynman. I, I didn't have, I didn't really dive deep into, but it's, I need to at a certain point because I heard, I appreciate her and what she thinks. There are, there are letters that he wrote, some book that has those letters. I, I heard very powerful.

• 2:39:26André Duqum?

  Yeah, the, the pleasure of finding things out, I also think you might resonate with. Sounds very alignment with the way that you've been describing the curiosity and the journey there. We had a, we have one or two questions from our online community that sent in something.

• 2:39:42Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:39:43André Duqum?

  Matt from Salt Lake City asks, "For someone who does inner work, therapy, meditation, developmental practice, but largely ignores the body, what are they missing? What does the body know that the mind can never access through thinking alone?"

• 2:39:59Speaker 00

  There is no access to the mind in this way that we often think. And we get corrupted. It's the intellect. There is a discursive quality. We might think we're not working with it. We might think we are being present and being, the body helps and also the heart.

• 2:40:32Speaker 00

  These paths, they are complementary.

• 2:40:38Speaker 00

  You can get there from any way. There are many doors.

• 2:40:45Speaker 00

  The universe, God, whatever it is, left a door in every atom, every cell is a door. Every individual, all the information is inside. That's why it cannot be covered, erased, or broken. It always comes out. But when people speak of the mind, what they don't realize, and it's too late by the time that realization, if it ever comes, realize they didn't work with the mind. And the word "mind" is already problematic. Because that's already this muddy terrain.

• 2:41:31Speaker 00

  But what I'm offering is not like the body way. I'm just offering the practice way. And part of it is to realize this has a lot there for you. The physicality, the movement as well, the stillness of the physical movement, which is often present for these ways. And also the heart. I learned the importance. For me, it was a big thing with the heart. Because the body, I'm not inclined to the body. I'm not gifted with the body. My gift is with the intellect. That is the original inclination. I went to the weakness, not to the strength. So I strengthened my weakness and I devoted my life to the movement practice,

• 2:42:15Speaker 00

  the physical movement, for many, many, many decades. So I gained those two. What was neglected was the heart. So I didn't care about people, nor did I care about myself. I cared about their success, and they were successful. I've transformed the world around me, everyone that I touched. And they're all, they all hate me.

• 2:42:43Speaker 00

  I didn't care about them, I cared about their success. I could twist it into some kind of a greater good. That's not what I'm suggesting. I learned, not that it's important to be loved. No, that's not important. That's a corrupted motive as well. But I've learned the importance of the balance of having the heart in it. So it doesn't mean to care for people, but it means to be in an emotional strata as well when you are at practice and devoting things to it. That's what I'm suggesting.

• 2:43:24Speaker 00

  The body will give you flavors that it's very difficult to get otherwise, and the heart will give you the way of the path of the heart. There are all these flavors already existing in all these figures. Jesus Christ is the way of the heart. And then Buddha is a very different flavor. Mahavira, very different flavor. And it keeps going like this. Abraham, that figure, very different figure. Padmasambhava, very different flavor. And on and on. Muhammad. So that's, that's maybe a useful bit.

• 2:44:09André Duqum?

  What was the catalyst for the heart for you? Was there a predominantly?

• 2:44:12Speaker 00

  Failure.

• 2:44:13André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:14Speaker 00

  Not that there is a success, but just like this doesn't go anywhere. I'm stuck. Here is the body. I've achieved freedom. A certain critical mess. There is no ultimate freedom, but I could do a lot. I could, you know, dance, fight, perform acrobatics, manipulate objects, do extreme coordinational things, move beautifully, efficiently, solve problems. I could always improve this area, that area, but I could do a lot. And intellectually, the same thing, I could play many games with my mind.

• 2:44:57Speaker 00

  I'm really gifted, actually, in music. This is the, maybe the natural inclination. I never took it. But when I was a child, you know, already in school, we used to play instruments. I used to sing in the choir.

• 2:45:13Speaker 00

  My sister is working with it, my young sister, Gilli, she's a musician. And also, my big sister, we all, like, sang. So the inclination was, this was the missing piece, which I totally pushed away. And my family is the family of the heart. I was the exception. I became the hard. Certain experiences in childhood, certain inclinations, make it, made it for me. Me against them. This is the way that I saw reality. And this made me a very potent practitioner and aligned me with the intellect.

• 2:45:55Speaker 00

  I'm smarter than you and I'm more powerful than you physically. This was the inclination, so that's where I got. The heart was left way behind. And then at a certain point, it's like, I'm not actually strong. I thought I was. I'm not actually smart. This is just, what is this? This, this is thinking? It's like, this realization, I remember this moment that it dawned upon me. This, this association, this is thinking? Chicken, egg? That's all that there is there? I refuse to accept that.

• 2:46:40Speaker 00

  I said it to Huberman yesterday. I said, as a neurologist, let me guarantee you, it's not. But he couldn't actually provide an answer what it is, which is very important and potent, even as a neurologist to say, I don't know. But I can tell you, it's not just that. Negation again, right? So I realized I cannot think, I'm not smart, I'm not intelligent as well. So slowly, slowly, the heart came there for me. And still, still something I work with and I need to work more and more with. Maybe part of that softening, maybe that you can see from the outside.

• 2:47:25André Duqum?

  Yeah, I mean, when you walked in my home, I was like, who's this ball of light? You know?

• 2:47:30Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 2:47:31André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:31Speaker 00

  That's a first.

• 2:47:32André Duqum?

  Yeah, no, you were, I mean,

• 2:47:35André Duqum?

  just like you have a very generous, kind spirit.

• 2:47:38Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 2:47:39André Duqum?

  And, I mean, I've seen your stuff online for a long time, and you probably are more recognized for being kind of a fierce, disruptive,

• 2:47:52André Duqum?

  which of course is still in there. But it's beautiful to see the evolutions of us, you know, and how they integrate. And it's like a spiral staircase, you know? We revisit these core patterns with a little bit more level of awareness, more heart, and that's amazing. And it's inspiring to see people change and evolve. And one more question from Benjamin from Dallas, Texas. What sort of small, daily, and actionable exercises can we implement in our lives to see relief from our bodies' normal wear and tear? Take it where you may.

• 2:48:34Speaker 00

  Let's surface it.

• 2:48:39Speaker 00

  I'll offer something. I don't know if people will pick it up, but here it is. Stop foam rolling. Start floor rolling.

• 2:48:53Speaker 00

  And use as hard floor as you can, while remaining as soft as you can. So if you can't remain soft, start with a mat or a rug. Take 10 minutes.

• 2:49:09Speaker 00

  If you can do it technically, by looking online on some technical material, how to do a roll, or this or that, can pursue it this way, or not technical. Just start by rolling side to side, in different ways, into sitting, back into like, from chest to... But spend...

• 2:49:32Speaker 00

  5 à 10, jusqu'à 20 minutes sans stopp. Vous pouvez mettre la musique, pour vous aider, vous immerger dans elle, et voir ce qui se passe avec votre corps. Récemment, il y a un moment ou deux, mais nous amenons aussi les gens dans certaines expéditions.

• 2:49:58Speaker 00

  Ce ne sont pas seulement des expéditions pour le mode normal, mais ils prononcent plus ce qui se passe pendant une aventure. Il y a une pratique là-bas, et ils se mettent vraiment à l'oeuvre. Et nous sommes allés dans cette culture très traditionnelle, une culture de 3000 ans. Il n'y a rien là-bas, très difficile d'entrer et de sortir. Aucune électricité, rien. Aucune chaise pendant 11 jours.

• 2:50:30Speaker 00

  Asseyé sur des matelas qui ne sont pas plus que des matelas de yoga.

• 2:50:35Speaker 00

  Oui.

• 2:50:39Speaker 00

  Ce qui s'est passé, c'est que

• 2:50:42Speaker 00

  trois, quatre jours après, toutes les douleurs, la basse, les jambes, les genoux, ont été améliorées. Certaines vraiment, vraiment ont été améliorées, d'autres moins, mais elles ont toujours été améliorées. Et des douleurs nouvelles sont arrivées. Des douleurs de la chair, le grindage du ventre. Vous savez que la chair était blessée à cause de la rigidité des structures, mais les joints et le mouvement se sentaient lubricrés. Et puis après quelques jours, elles sont aussi unies. C'est la expérience des gens. Donc si vous avez cette vieillesse, ces joints douleurs, commencez à passer du temps. Prenez vraiment du temps, ça vous aidera. Mettez un timbre et ne pas stopper.

• 2:51:27Speaker 00

  Vous n'avez pas besoin de le faire vite, ou vous n'avez pas besoin de souffler, mais continuez à explorer. Et si vous ne vous sentez pas connecté à ça, essayez d'utiliser une couche technique. Utilisez l'un de ces tutoriels, il y en a énormément en ligne, et poursuivez-le pour le timeframe. Et puis lentement, construisez-le et faites-le sans escalier votre situation aussi. Donc observez les jours suivants si vous vous êtes inflamé, si vous avez excessé. Tout mon conseil est dangereux, dans le sens où il est potentiel, il fonctionne, mais les doses s'appliquent. Yeah.

• 2:52:03André Duqum?

  Amazing. So lay on a hard surface, five, 10, 20 minutes, roll around and experiment.

• 2:52:10Speaker 00

  Roll around. Some of it can be crawling, but not so much using the hands quadruped. Why? Because I want to get deep into the architecture, into the inner frame. I need the rib cage to change. This is not happening through flexibility. This is not happening through stretching. This is not... You need to really... So stop foam rolling, start flow rolling. I'm sure somebody will make a business from it, a slogan from it, and will sell some system around it.

• 2:52:47André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:47Speaker 00

  Good luck.

• 2:52:48André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:48Speaker 00

  You know? Wish you best of luck with that.

• 2:52:54André Duqum?

  Is there... I think that is... That feels really helpful and is like a beautiful, simple practice. And at the end of a three-hour conversation, feels immediately actionable for people as well. Because your advice is potent, like you've been able to see patterns with reoccurring low back, shoulder problems, whatever.

• 2:53:16André Duqum?

  Could I give you a couple other areas of the body and see like what have been some useful tools? And you could share a couple useful tools, maybe?

• 2:53:22Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 2:53:22André Duqum?

  Amazing. So shoulder pain is pretty common. I feel like especially...

• 2:53:29Speaker 00

  So for that, I have a lot of tools I already put out for free and people should go search for it. And one of them, it's been engaged with tens of thousands of people and became quite a phenomenon, all the way up to Joe Rogan and presidents of countries and that I got thank you letters and then hanging. And you can search Idoportal Hanging Challenge. And that's very potent for shoulders. And it's basically bringing back the suspension, the point of opening the whole body and allowing gravity to start to align it, relaxed hangs. If you can. Some people can't. They have to use the active hangs, what we call.

• 2:54:14Speaker 00

  But I'm not going to go into all the details because people can find it online, including videos, old blog, Idoportal Hanging Challenge, 30 days.

• 2:54:25Speaker 00

  It will help your shoulders.

• 2:54:27André Duqum?

  Amazing.

• 2:54:30André Duqum?

  What about low back stuff?

• 2:54:32Speaker 00

  Low back can be also engaged with hanging. And also from another tool, which is the squat challenge. Again, idoportal squat challenge. And you can find, both of them will really work from both ends, upstream and downstream, and can affect the lower back. And there is another thing which touches it. And those are three challenges that are free. Idoportal. It's always the easiest thing to find. Spinal waves.

• 2:55:01André Duqum?

  Where you go up against the wall?

• 2:55:02Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes. And those three things can do a lot of good. I cannot promise anything. But they can do a lot of good for lower backs.

• 2:55:16Speaker 00

  If I need to add the fourth one. If this didn't work. You do one month of the hanging challenge.

• 2:55:24Speaker 00

  You don't do it together with the squat challenge if you don't have the time. They take a lot of time each day. Not a lot, but substantial amount of time. You can do the next month the squat challenge and maintain the hanging instead of like fully doing it. And then, along with these two, you can already from the beginning start to practice the spinal waves, which creates a very micro movement in the whole system and especially all around the spine. And these micro movements brings with it life. Circulation, information, synovial fluid, blood, etc. is moving.

• 2:56:08Speaker 00

  And the most important thing, which is failed to be realized by the scientist many times and by various people. It's not about so much the structure. It's about the model. And what happens when you stop paying attention to things? They deteriorate. You can't, there is no status quo. There is only improvement or degradation. So it means the spinal wave is more about moving information. I'm not trying to heal the tissues. I'm moving information throughout the whole spine.

• 2:56:49Speaker 00

  And it's a rather safe thing to do because the movement is so small and it's unloaded. Great combination with the other two things. Those are three challenges that people can use for the whole body. That's why I issued them in that order as well. One of them is also opening the whole shape. One of them is compressing. The squat is the full compression. And one of them is in between. And they all service the totality of the body, the upper body, the torso, and then the lower body. Yeah, and the other thing that can be added later is exhalation. Improving exhalation, which I'm gonna, I'm not gonna go into this. Let's leave it as a mysterious thing.

• 2:57:35Speaker 00

  You don't know how to exhale. Learning to exhale will do a lot for lower back problems. But that has to be pursued properly. It's part of what we teach as well. The many, many, many things that we do. And this is a very potent tool. And people can also explore by themselves in various ways. And to realize the depth of your exhalation, the quality of your exhalation. I thought I knew how to exhale. I more knew how to inhale than to exhale. But also the inhalation was not great.

• 2:58:17Speaker 00

  It cannot be without full exhalation. And the exhalation hence is a very potent thing. As the old, the ancient yogis realized as well. There is a lot of work with the exhalation in yoga. And the inhalation is oftentimes left as a self arising entity in many ways.

• 2:58:40André Duqum?

  Yeah, no, I resonate with that. That's, we can leave it a bit more mysterious, but even just the inquiry to explore, how can I feel my exhalation deeper?

• 2:58:53Speaker 00

  Feel it, connect. You can't refine what you can't define. We have to feel the exhalation, and we have to improve it. And by feeling it, by sensing it, we can improve it. And then the other thing is, I can't exhale. How I eat, my emotional state, my relationships, they create a scenario in which I can't exhale, never. And you get into this place of realizing, oh, wow, wow, I've moved so far away from the animal that I can't even exhale. Now, oftentimes, people realize that they cannot inhale, and they report it.

• 2:59:38Speaker 00

  I can't inhale fully. So that's why I'm offering, no, no, no, no, no. Go to the other side. What you think you have, you will never have. Because you thought you possessed it, remember?

• 2:59:54André Duqum?

  And is there any, one of my last questions is just, again, we think of movement and exercise from that term as in the gym, whether it's bench press and bicep curls or up dog and down dog. You know, we get stuck in our modalities. And it feels like the way that you explain things, you're addressing the system and almost like the animal that is this human body. I can't help but think of us being one of the only, you know, animals, beings in the animal kingdom that have this ability to disconnect from our body and be so split mind, body.

• 3:00:39André Duqum?

  And I'm just curious, what, if any, analogies do you draw from examining the animal kingdom and the way that they use their body and how we're stuck with it?

• 3:00:49Speaker 00

  I'm not sure you're right about that.

• 3:00:52André Duqum?

  Yeah, well, it's more of a question. I'm just, do you?

• 3:00:55Speaker 00

  I don't know. It's a question to ask. I, I, I, I don't know.

• 3:01:00André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:00Speaker 00

  I don't know if the animal cannot do that. I think our disconnect is often something else. It, it's not arising to some other plane, place, like for example, you, you, have you ever had dog, a dog?

• 3:01:19André Duqum?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:01:20Speaker 00

  They dream. What happens in the dream? Where do you go? You're disconnecting somewhere, right? And then you kind of come back into that. Or there is at least an experience of it for people from outside. I also practice dream yoga, sleep yoga. So there is very

• 3:01:40Speaker 00

  weird insight there, in the transitions, in the twilights, and in the ability to cross the boundary with an awareness.

• 3:01:51Speaker 00

  And back to your question, the animals, well, there is this

• 3:01:59Speaker 00

  Hollywood or, or, you know, the old Kung Fu movies, childish inspiration from the animals. The animal walks. People mention me a lot with that, you know, the animal walks. Yeah, I love these things. And not, not so much trying to capture the movement of the animal. A better, a more interesting is to capture the spirit of the animal, which is also not the end.

• 3:02:30André Duqum?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:02:31Speaker 00

  And there is deeper in that. All the animals are

• 3:02:38Speaker 00

  some kind of

• 3:02:42Speaker 00

  semantic primitives or, or some kind of archetypical things, which are so archetypical, primal, that they are part of this evolutionary thing. So they are actually part of the process. We have a fish in us.

• 3:03:05Speaker 00

  We have a mammal, we are mammals essentially. We have a reptilian. And there is this other thing, which we don't know what it is. Is it the ape? The naked ape we call ourselves as well? Or is it something else altogether? And maybe it's not so different than what we think it is. Maybe as we more and more see, we didn't develop artificial intelligence.

• 3:03:47Speaker 00

  We are artificial intelligence. That is just the only thing that we can produce, because that's who we are. But maybe there is a potential to be something else. The work with the animals is important to find this, to locate this. So it's not about the animal movements, you know, "Look at the animal movement." But it's about a connection to the capacity of the body to still produce those things. The spinal waves, when they're practiced a lot, the real spinal wave, people would be shocked

• 3:04:31Speaker 00

  when they are close to the person who can really do it. It can be felt, heard, experienced from outside, and there is no movement almost from the outside. That's what it becomes emblematic. Every practice becomes gestural.

• 3:04:54Speaker 00

  From big circles to small circles to a dot, as the Taoist realized, it's the same. And so this is the real potency of working with the animal archetypes. I think it is rarely done. Most people who speak of the animal usually are in the outskirts of that practice, which is good to start. I love the animal movements and, you know, but it was, it was a nice piece. I also manipulated it to gain certain attention, to, to get what I really wanted going there.

• 3:05:28André Duqum?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:28Speaker 00

  Until today, people approach me for this, for that, and they realize what we're actually doing. Oh, my God.

• 3:05:36André Duqum?

  Hmm. Very last question. And take your time with it. But if you had 60 seconds to share one message with humanity, what would you say?

• 3:05:49Speaker 00

  It's a simple thing. It's a, I'm gonna break my rule. I'm gonna give you an answer. Practice. Practice. Become a practice, not because you choose to in that sense, because you realize that this is the only thing that is going to happen anyways. You are at practice. The universe is at practice. Everything is at practice. Now you can align with it, and you can choose on that strata to join it, which changes the whole game.

• 3:06:26Speaker 00

  That's the gift that we receive, the gift of that choice, that alignment.

• 3:06:35Speaker 00

  That's the message. The message is to join the real party. So this is a beautiful thing to be here, and the beautiful thing is to be in practice. And the most potent thing I could bring, I could give anyone, and I, I gift myself, it, it is that.

• 3:07:06André Duqum?

  This conversation and your work has inspired me to deepen my own practice and bring more aliveness and change it up, you know? Examine where I've been stagnant in it and it's been a very alive and fun conversation.

• 3:07:24Speaker 00

  I enjoyed it as well.

• 3:07:26André Duqum?

  Yeah, it was great, man. We're gonna leave links down in the description where people can find you, stay connected with your work, find those tutorials, explore their body, all of it. That's it for me, man. Thank you so much.

• 3:07:39Speaker 00

  Thank you very much.

• 3:07:40André Duqum?

  Yeah. All right, everyone. Until next time, be well.