Deep Currents

Do you know who you are in the face of danger?

Adam Kavanagh is an Australian survivalist who has dedicated much of the last decade to getting back to basics and living off the land in the remote areas of northern Australia. Initially triggered by a health crisis and then evolving into a way he chose to live, his deep connection to nature has profoundly shaped his understanding of bushcraft and survival skills. 

Adam was invited to learn and hang out with the Indigenous communities of Doomagee, where he spent nearly five years living solo, aside from the times he spent with the locals. This experience deepened his understanding of what it truly means to live in harmony with the elements and natural cycles, the necessity to know who you are in the face of a wild beast, to hunt and live off the land while embracing the unpredictability of Mother Nature.

He gained national and international recognition as a participant on the reality show Naked and Afraid, describing the experience as life-changing. Surviving 21 days in the harsh conditions of the African desert tested his limits and showcased his resilience. Adam later returned for Naked and Afraid XL, where he faced new challenges in the Colombian badlands, further demonstrating the importance of teamwork and resourcefulness in survival situations.

In addition to his television experiences, Adam leads guided tours into the bush, taking participants on immersive experiences that reconnect them with nature. These tours are transformative; many participants find themselves challenged physically and mentally in ways they never expected. Stepping outside their comfort zones, they learn vital survival skills while discovering their own resilience and strength. The experience often leads to profound personal growth, fostering a deeper appreciation for the natural world and a sense of community among participants.

Kavanagh’s approach to survival emphasises mental toughness, adaptability, and the significance of community. He believes that survival is as much a psychological challenge as it is a physical one. 

✹ Adam’s journey through the natural tendency toward depression ✹ His experience with thyroid issues and the steps he took for natural healing ✹ The full circle of leaving the mines and the path that brought him back for now ✹ The crucial importance of knowing who you are when facing a threat ✹ The most vital survival skill and why it stands out ✹The primal ‘switch’ that nature can activate within us ✹ How this dormant switch often reveals itself in men ✹ The transformative impact of facing life-and-death situations on a man’s sense of self and personal power ✹ Adam’s experience with identity destruction on national television and the unexpected gift it brought ✹ The significance of 40 days and 40 nights of fasting, leading to a re-feeding experience that resulted in psychosis and his insights from seeing ‘the other side of the curtain’ ✹ The development of intuition and its importance in survival.

Michelle Palasia is the first guest on Deep Currents for a very good reason.

Deep Currents is all about the stories that connect us and the wisdom that helps us remember who we are and what we are.

From my 12 years immersed in Rites of Passage work, I know how babies are born—including the mother’s state, the birth itself, and the care of both mother and baby in the early years—shapes the rest of their lives. In the creation of life, the connection to the core of our Spirit is either nurtured or fractured. This connection is key to our capacity for wholeness, intimacy, relationships, joy, pleasure, and a sense of belonging.

The wounds we see in our hearts and humanity often stem from power structures that put self-interest above communal well-being. These structures are driven by those who seek personal gain at any cost. As an expression of this mindset, colonisation has caused deep fractures in our societies and cultures. When cultures are destroyed by invasion, theft, manipulation, and dominance, the sacred rites, traditions, and values that connect us to ourselves, each other, the natural world, and Life’s greater intelligence are lost. As a result, people become disoriented and disconnected. The tradition of birth is one of those that has been lost.

In many Indigenous cultures, birth is a ceremony central to the mother’s innate wisdom and her natural ability to bring her baby into the world, listen to her baby, and be the authority over her own body and birth. It represents a transition of death and rebirth, where the maiden is left behind, and a deep sense of power is activated. Growing a human without outsourcing decisions, having well-being and authority outside of herself, and birthing her baby undisturbed initiates the mother into this activation.

✹ The energetics and patterns of abusers, on a micro and macro level, in relationships, communities, cultures and countries.

✹ Michelle’s path from the shadows of abuse in a relationship with her two children.✹ How she left one day with her beautiful sons, a bag of clothes prompted by a deep knowing that it was time.

✹ The reality of how incredibly challenging it is to leave a relationship where abuse is present, particularly if it has slowly increased over time.

✹ The birth of Michelle’s sons, how she was silenced, and how she moved through this in menopause.

✹ Why Michelle chose to step away from supporting Birth in hospitals.

✹ The statistics of intervention in Birth and the consequence on Baby, Mother and family.

✹ Specific examples of disrespect, abuse, coercion and neglect of Mothers, partners and babies in the hospital system.

✹ Some reflection on colonisation and its role in systemic control of Mothers and women and the ripple effect on a person's capacity for wholeness. 

✹ Freebirth and why Michelle chooses this path in her work with Birth.

✹ Michelle as a guest at Alchemy Rites October 3rd-6th 2024

⟶ International Helpline for Domestic Violence

• Website: DomesticShelters.org

• Description: While not a single global helpline, this resource provides a directory of domestic violence services worldwide, including crisis hotlines and support services in various countries.

⟶ The Global Network of Women's Shelters (GNWS)

• Website: GNWS.org

• Description: A network connecting various women's shelters and support services around the world. They provide information and resources on how to find help in different countries.

In Australia ⟶ 1800RESPECT

• Website: 1800RESPECT.org.au

• Phone: 1800 737 732

• Description: Provides 24/7 support, information, and resources for people impacted by sexual assault, domestic or family violence.

⟶ Lifeline Australia

• Website: Lifeline.org.au

• Phone: 13 11 14

• Description: Offers crisis support and suicide prevention services, including help for those experiencing domestic violence.

⟶ Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre

• Website: safesteps.org.au

• Phone: 1800 015 188

• Description: Provides 24/7 crisis support, emergency accommodation, and practical support for women and children experiencing family violence.

After a three-year break from this podcast, it's back. It has a different name, a more refined intention, and is still connected to the art of storytelling. I touch on how currents, vibrations, and resonance are the cause and effect of life itself, taking you on a short journey from the beginning of time. I speak to the power of story and how it has shaped history and our culture. I also discuss how currents, connections, and stories can support us in returning to a deep place of belonging.  I share a little about my journey of being smashed into a million pieces by Motherhood and what the future looks like (or doesn't) for my work and creative endeavours.  I look forward to sharing the next episodes soon.  Amber

This podcast is the epitome of an example of organic self-discovery.

Adam shares how it was one foot in front of the other for him. Listening to the big nudges and following the subtle pulls of what felt right for him and of course, moving towards what was both confronting but liberating.

The adjective primal describes something that’s essential or basic, like the primal urge to protect yourself and your family from harm. The Latin root of primal is primus, which means first. If your friend talks about his primal self, he means the most basic, important part of who he is.

Adam is a living breathing experiment of what it looks and feels like when we strip everything back to the basics.

“After lots of reading, research and curiosity, I was lucky enough to stumble across the caveman diet (paleo). Within a few weeks of starting to eat a more nutrient rich wholefood diet, my health dramatically improved. My thyroid was healing.

As I started to improve more and more, I realised getting back to basics and focusing on the simple things were really important for me. Kicking my shoes off and getting barefoot has been powerful.

Working in the mines gave me a high paying job but I was miserable. Shift work and all-nighters were shitty. It was a scary decision, but I quit my job to travel Australia. I had zero plans but to get back into nature and just immerse myself into some beautiful scenery and see where the road would take me.” – Adam Kavanagh

Some of the points we weave in and out of include:

• How long Adam hid his symptoms of food intolerances, depression, anxiety attacks and everything else that came with hyperthyroidism.
• The doctors’ suggestions for a *solution* that lead him to shifting to a paleo diet.
• Adam’s inner process for leaving the mines: his fears, hesitations, conditioning and action plan.
• His journey to Africa that was a strategy for his wellbeing and ultimately supported his decision to leaves the mines.
• What it was like to meet the locals, community and be invited into the indigenous community in outback Australia.
• His step-by-step process to stripping things back to as clean and simple as possible and the improvement in his wellbeing.
• What it’s like to eat and live off the land using indigenous tracking techniques, a bow and arrow and fire pit cooking.
• His three-week experience of being on the reality TV show, Naked and Afraid where he was dropped in the middle of no man’s land in a part of Africa with a woman he’d never met, naked and had to survive without assistance for three weeks.
• How he survived one of his most confronting encounters in the outback including being ripped up by a wild boar and collecting honey from killer bees.
• What he believes is the most important skill of all for surviving the outback.
• What he learned from the land and the indigenous friends he made who now feel like family to him.
• What he’s now doing (taking people to have bush experiences, working with fire making and re-wilding).

Contact Adam and find out more about this legend in these places:

Website: https://adamkavanagh.com.au/

Instagram: @adam_kavanagh_

The Amber Hawken Podcast is available to subscribe to on your chosen platform  - iTunes, Spotify, Libsyn - if it feels good for you, we always love a review of the show. Grateful in advance and thanks for listening. 

What a subtitle, eh?

Let me begin with a little appreciation for your patience. It's been a minute between podcasts as they draw the short straw when I'm elbow deep in projects. I can assure you, this is worth it. 

Laura Corcoran is a Holistic Psychologist. Her 10 years of experience in the field range from forensic, mental health, and addictions primarily. She's also an incredibly honest, raw, intelligent, kind woman and a Mum of "two light beams", as she puts it.  

This episode is vast in its topic and while it began with the contradictions around some of the principles of psychology, we weave in and out of rabbit holes that most people can relate to including repressed trauma emerging in the *stressful* now of life and toxic bonds in passion relationships. 

Including:

• Trauma that we might not realise is trauma (it's not always how it seems).
• All of us have in our life experienced a time where what we were feeling was too much.
• Toxic bonded relationships we think are filled with passion but are bound together by pain.
• An embodied approach to healing and the basis 
• The basics that psychology can forget that make all the difference to long term change
• Sensory experiences, breath and movement for regulation and healing
• A ton more...

This little quote is from one of Laura's influences, Peter Levine, and somewhat encompasses the point Laura unpacks around the dire need for embodied practices within psychology treatments. 

"If frightening sensations are not given the time and attention they need to move through the body and resolve or dissolve, the individual will continue to be gripped by fear." - Peter A. Levine, Psychologist

Find more of Laura here:

IG @hersuccessfulmind

Facebook

The Amber Hawken Podcast is available to subscribe to on your chosen platform  - iTunes, Spotify, Libsyn - if it feels good for you, we always love a review of the show. Grateful in advance and thanks for listening.