54 | Adam Kavanagh | The Primal Approach | The Amber Hawken Podcast

The primal approach is about doing less, better.

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).

You can listen along here

You can listen along here

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, .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}