Stay Curious. Connect Deeply. Heal Gently.
Sometimes a dream begins with a carefully constructed plan. And sometimes it begins with a hippopotamus.
When I found a property in February, I thought I was looking for a new home for my medical practice. My lease was coming to an end, so I was thinking practically.
The property, apparently, had other ideas.
There were two buildings, beautiful old trees, outdoor spaces, a pool, and enough room to imagine things I hadn’t quite imagined yet.
And there was a hippopotamus.
A large hippo statue was already living on the property, quietly presiding over the grounds. I couldn’t possibly have known then how appropriate that hippo would become.
Following the Hippo
For years, much of my work in integrative medicine has involved helping people understand the relationships among the body, brain, emotions, environment, relationships, and lived experience.
One part of the brain I especially love is the hippocampus.
The hippocampus helps us with memory and learning, but also with something even more interesting: context.
It helps the brain ask:
Where am I?
What has happened before?
Is this situation really the same as the one I remember? Is there another way to understand what is happening?
Those are remarkably useful questions—not just for brains, but for human beings. And so Hippo Campus began to emerge.
Not as a brand I had carefully planned, but more as a name for something that seemed to be revealing itself.
Then I looked up some of the symbolism associated with the hippopotamus and found descriptions of strength coupled with gentleness, moving between land and water, going beneath the surface, protecting boundaries, living in community, and remembering the importance of rest.
I smiled.
Apparently, the hippo had gotten there before I did.
And Then There Was the Iguana
There was another creature waiting on the property: an iguana statue. That made me smile too.
If the hippocampus helps us understand context, the more primitive parts of our brains are extraordinarily good at detecting danger.
Sometimes a little too good.
We all have our version of the “lizard brain”—that ancient protective circuitry that warns:
Be careful. Don’t do that.
Something might go wrong.
I have spent much of my career helping people understand and reframe those signals.
And during the creation of Hippo Campus, I have had plenty of opportunities to practice that myself.
There have been permits and construction decisions, unexpected expenses and septic systems, financial calculations, and moments when I have wondered what on earth I was doing.
There have also been people asking me, quite reasonably:
“So what exactly are you going to do with all of this?”
Sometimes my answer has simply been:
I’m still listening.
That may be one of the lessons Hippo Campus has already taught me.
We don’t always have to know exactly what something will become before we begin. Sometimes curiosity needs to come before certainty.
A Different Kind of Medicine
I have practiced medicine long enough to have watched many health movements come and go.
I love science. I love learning about new therapies, new technologies, and new ways of understanding the extraordinary complexity of the human body.
But I have also become increasingly cautious about a culture that tells us we must constantly optimize ourselves.
Measure more. Track more.
Supplement more. Detox more.
Fix more. Age less.
Some of these tools are genuinely useful. Some are mostly marketing. And most are far more interesting when we can approach them with curiosity rather than fear.
The medicine I want to practice in this next chapter is not about rejecting sophisticated science. It is about remembering that sophisticated technology is not the product.
The relationship is.
The listening is. The discernment is.
The ability to sit together with uncertainty and ask better questions is.
I want us to be able to distinguish evidence-based interventions from fashionable ones—and still remain open to things we don’t completely understand.
I want medicine to have room for data and wisdom. For physiology and story.
For treatment and relationship. For laughter.
For beauty. For mystery.
Creating the Conditions for Healing
Perhaps the simplest description of what I hope to offer at Hippo Campus is this:
We will understand you deeply, help you make sense of your health, and create the conditions in which healing and healthy aging can happen.
Sometimes that will happen in an exam room. But not always.
It might happen during a conversation around a table. Walking a labyrinth.
Sitting outside beneath a tree. Learning about the nervous system. Meeting a visiting healer or teacher. Talking about a provocative book.
Making something with your hands. Sitting in silence.
Laughing with a group of women.
Questioning something you’ve always assumed was true.
Or simply discovering that other people are asking some of the same questions you are.
That is why Hippo Campus is becoming something broader than a medical practice. I think of it as an experiment in:
Integrative medicine + healthy aging + human connection + experiential health.
There will continue to be individual medical care.
But there will also be Curiosity Circles, salons and conversations, educational programs, visiting practitioners and teachers, contemplative experiences, creative gatherings, opportunities to move and play—and things we haven’t thought of yet.
That last category may be the most important.
Stay Curious
Curiosity is at the heart of both science and healing. Instead of immediately asking:
What’s wrong with me?
we might sometimes ask:
What is my body trying to tell me?
Instead of:
What’s the newest treatment?
we can ask:
What does reasonably good evidence actually show?
Instead of:
How do I stop aging?
perhaps:
How do I want to live while I age?
Curiosity gives us permission to question both conventional wisdom and alternative-health dogma.
It lets us say three very important words:
We don’t know.
And then keep exploring.
Connect Deeply
Human beings heal in relationship.
The longer I practice medicine, the more convinced I become that connection isn’t something nice we add after we’ve taken care of the “real” medicine.
Connection is part of the medicine.
Being known matters. Belonging matters.
Having someone listen long enough to understand the context of your life matters. Sharing stories matters.
Community matters.
Hippo Campus is intentionally small because I want to protect that. This isn’t intended to become a wellness factory.
I want it to remain a place where people know one another’s names.
Heal Gently
This may be the phrase that matters most to me.
Our culture often approaches health as another arena for achievement. We battle disease.
Fight aging.
Attack inflammation. Crush our goals.
Optimize our biomarkers.
And sometimes vigorous intervention is exactly what medicine requires.
But healing also requires gentleness. Rest.
Patience.
Self-compassion. Nature.
Movement. Meaning. Joy.
And occasionally, permission to stop trying so hard to become a better version of ourselves. Healing gently doesn’t mean doing nothing.
It means remembering that more is not always better.
It means using powerful interventions when they are useful without forgetting the remarkable healing capacities already present within us.
The Campus Is Part of the Experiment
There is something else I didn’t fully appreciate when I first found this property:
Place matters.
The land itself has changed my thinking.
Medicine feels different when you can walk outside. A difficult conversation feels different beneath a tree.
A group feels different gathered around a table rather than sitting in rows. Learning feels different when there is room for play.
And healing feels different when the environment reminds us that we are living creatures rather than collections of laboratory values.
So I have begun thinking of the campus itself as part of the medicine. Not because there is anything magical about a particular acre of land.
But because we can intentionally create places that invite us to slow down, pay attention, connect, and become curious again.
And perhaps that is its own kind of magic.
A Personal Quest, Too
I want to be clear about one thing.
The words on the wall at Hippo Campus are not instructions for everyone else. They are for me, too.
Stay curious.
When I think I know the answer.
Connect deeply.
When busyness tempts me toward efficiency instead of relationship.
Heal gently.
When my own expectations become another form of pressure.
Hippo Campus is not the culmination of something I have figured out. It is a place where I intend to keep figuring things out.
At this stage of my life and career, that feels much more interesting.
An Invitation
So this is my invitation to everyone who comes through the gate—and perhaps to anyone standing at the edge of a dream of their own.
You don’t have to know exactly where something is going before you begin. Pay attention to what keeps calling you.
Notice the unexpected hippos.
Listen to the lizard brain when it has something important to say—but don’t necessarily let it make all the decisions.
Leave some room for mystery.
Leave some room for community.
Leave some room for the possibility that the next chapter might look quite different from the one you had planned.
Hippo Campus is still becoming. So am I.
Perhaps we all are.
Welcome. Stay curious.
Connect deeply. Heal gently.
