We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Adam Burch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Adam, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?
After spending my early 20’s living in Big cities like New York and New Orleans, trying out everything from modeling to acting, figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do, I felt burnt out and knew I needed to prioritize my health and well-being. Especially after dealing with Hashimoto’s and having a big thyroid crash several years before. In 2016 I decided to enroll in Massage school in Albuquerque, NM and became a Natural Therapeutics Specialist. It was like going to a hippie school. It was a vegan campus full of gypsies and all types of creatives. We learned several types of energetic modalities like Polarity Therapy, Chinese Medicine, Herbal Remedies, Essential Oils, we even studied with a Native Medicine Woman. It had such a huge impact on my lifestyle and I learned so much about, nature, the human body, and how to optimize it. While I was in school, I also began taking my music and songwriting more seriously. I started playing around town and meeting interested musicians, I even met a train hopping gypsy from Montana who I had a fling with, but that’s another story. One of my favorite people to this day who I met in New Mexico is a woman named Kaatje. One night I went to a David Bowie/Prince themed party (since it was the year they had both died) that my sister and her friend hosted, and my friend came up to me and said, “this woman wants to meet you,” I followed him and was greeted so warmly by this woman with a bright smile and colorful clothes, sitting in a wheelchair with pink lights around the wheels. She had seen me and my friend play a show at a theatre a few nights before and complimented our performance. I learned that she did stand-up comedy and she was a former stunt woman who got into a sky-diving accident. She was so genuinely kind and interesting to be around. We developed a strong friendship during my time in New Mexico. We started going to open mics together and supporting each other, planning shows together with her comedy friends while me and my musician friends would open for them. We would take frequent adventures to the hot springs, and she became one of the first people I practiced massage therapy and energy work on. She goes by the stage name, Kaatje Gotcha. Originally from the Netherlands, she grew up in an adventurous, literal trail blazing family. After her accident, her spinal cord injury became adhesive arachnoiditis, which she describes as experiencing bone cancer like pain. One of the few things that has given her the most relief has been ketamine. She takes high level infusions that help her make it through her condition. She did a Tedx talk about her experience with comedy and ketamine and even wrote a book called “The Queen of Ketamine” available on Amazon. The first year I met Kaatje, she got herself to over 100 open mics. Comedy was the main thing that kept her going. More than mine, I hope that one day her story gets out there and is told to millions. She truly deserves it. I’ve never met anyone more inspiring, more resilient, or more honest. Today, we still stay in contact, but I haven’t seen her in over seven years. She still struggles a lot with her condition, but I hope to find a way to get her story out there even more.
Adam, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Music found me at nine years old after my dad picked me up from my first guitar lesson and started jamming with my guitar teacher. Since then I took to music and haven’t stopped. I went to the same private christian school every year from k-4 to twelfth grade, alongside being heavily involved in a southern baptist megachurch in Florida as a music leader. At nineteen I had a big thyroid crash trying to get off of my medication for my Hashimoto’s. Being so young and not knowing exactly what I was doing lead me to a myxadema coma where I experience some heavy psychosis while simultaneously having an existential crisis, attempting to break free from my strong religious programming. I recovered after a couple of months and went on to make some spontaneous decisions to experience the world I was completely unprepared for like moving to NYC with my girlfriend who I was engaged to for a while, following her to New Orleans, etc. In New Orleans I went to yoga school and got my 200 hour teacher training. Yoga helped my nervous system so much after experiencing a chaotic environment like New York. After feeling burnt out from heartbreak and getting fired from my restaurant job in New Orleans, my oldest sister came to visit me and encouraged me to go to massage school. Most of my family is in the health and wellness field. My mom was a nurse for 20 years, two of my sisters and an uncle were massage therapists, my oldest sister is now an occupational therapist and her husband is a psychiatrist, so I grew up around health oriented people. I decided to go to massage school in New Mexico where my sister lives and became a Natural Therapeutics Specialist in 2016. I’ve been practicing for over seven years and I still enjoy getting to help people connect deeply with their bodies and help them learn the language of the body. Massage taught me self-care and how to optimize my body, so it’s been a perfect practice for me as a musician. Now, I get to combine all of my gifts and skills. I offer full sensory intuitive experience that I call “Tune-in + Tune-up” It’s a full body massage that incorporates stretching, energy work, and sound healing. I help people tune into their bodies and tune up their frequency. I literally use a tuning fork, because the body is a tuning fork or an antenna. I sometimes use singing bowls, essential oils, and palo Santo, depending on what the client needs. I offer intuitive readings, in-person and online, a skill I picked up in New Mexico and Austin, I also offer private yoga instruction, nutrition coaching, and of course I offer my music online along with merch. I’m most proud of my resilience, determination and discipline of the past seven years. The path of the artist is no joke. It’s often difficult and lonely but it’s about who I’ve become and the character I’ve developed that I’m the most proud of. I’ve learned to love myself deeply and I’m willing to do what it takes to give myself and others my best version. I’m also very proud of finishing my first full-length album called Adam’s Apple. It’s available only on my band camp under Adam Oracle and It’s about expressing my authentic truth and myl inner child. My current project has been living on my friend Shanna’s artist retreat sanctuary in Georgia called MyLandia. She invited me out here to be a part of her community that she’s building. I live in a tiny house and get to be a part of an intentional community where we take care of each other, take care of the land, and create together. We had our first retreat this year in April, and will be hosting more private events, retreats, and creating music together in the near future. We even have plans to build a recording studio, a project I’m very excited to work on.
Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?
I think success is defined by the individual artist, so it looks different for everyone, but at the same time, it’s something that takes a lot of trial and error. It takes a lot of drafts and mistakes. Mistakes are good and the only way we really learn. At least that’s what it takes for me to learn. Sometimes it’s making the same mistake multiple times. It takes at least two years to build a clientele. Starting a business is about building something sustainable over a long period of time. It’s certainly not something that happens overnight. It takes years to know who you are and effectively communicate that to others. It forces you to adapt and make changes so I feel like I’ll always be learning and growing even if it’s slow. I prefer slow success that lasts builds character rather than quick success that boosts my ego and fizzles out. I already have a strong ego. It’s also learning how to build relationships and ultimately a community that supports you and you all serve each other within the law of equivalent exchange to where you create win+win situations. I’m still at a very early stage in my career and I’m still learning that and how it applies to music, social media, or success in any field. It’s a lot of learning about yourself, providing value, and serving community.
If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?
I wouldn’t change anything about my artistical mystical evolution. I look back on my education and the skills I’ve developed as a mystic and bodyworker, and I’ve gained so much wisdom and understanding about the body. The knowledge and wisdom of the body is so deeply profound it is so worthy of studying. It should be the first thing we learn in life. The technology of the body. Maybe the course should be called “Tech Knowledge Tree. ” I could only imagine what our culture would look like if optimization of the human body was the first thing we learn. It’s the most basic thing, we should be learning how to properly care for and optimize this human vehicle. Knowing and studying the human body has only helped improve every other part of my life. Especially as a musician, the body is the most important instrument, it is literally an antenna and tuning fork and I love helping others tune into the wisdom of their own body.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/alchemysticmind
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alchemysticmind/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@adamoracle
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/adamburchvox?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
- Other: https://adamoracle.bandcamp.com/album/adams-apple
Image Credits
blue photo by Kyle Astrophoto