Announcement: Pop-up Concept Clinic in June @ Edge Esmeralda
Research and learning is one pillar of Care Culture, but I'm slowly standing up a second: engaging with and transforming care practices. I am calling this second pillar Concept Clinic.
Concept Clinic is a behavioral health studio and experimental test lab for new wellness practices. For Care Culture members who are mental health professionals, coaches, and guides, it'll be a way to get referrals. But it's also a sandbox—a way for us to test out new clinical models, modalities, and client-centered interventions.
Concept Clinic won't be just a virtual idea, but an on-the-ground clinic that pops up wherever I go with members. The first of these pop-up clinic events will be in June in Healdsburg in Sonoma County, at Edge Esmeralda. Check out the video above for a brief interview about the project with Timour Kosters from Edge Esmeralda.
And if you're interested in participating in an unconference on integrative care that I'll be hosting, read on.
Concept Clinic @ Edge Esmeralda
If you read my field report from Vitalia, you'll have heard of pop-up cities or villages. Pop-up villages are like lengthened versions of Aspen Ideas festival: multi-week gatherings of people, situated in a physical space. They are a cross between a conference, a work retreat, and a festival. People come with the expectation to share ideas and meet new people, but also to work and get things done. The organization that puts on these pop-up villages is called Edge City.
Edge City is putting on a pop-up village this June, this time in the town of Healdsburg in Sonoma County, California. I've arranged with the organizers to bring Concept Clinic to Healdsburg (dubbed Edge Esmeralda for June), where I'll be running interventions all month.
I was excited to find out about the pop-up city in Healdsburg, because Sonoma County, as well as neighboring Marin and Berkeley to the south, are a historical hotbed of integrative practices. For instance, the Lomi School, a well-known mind-body clinic and training center, is just a short drive away in Santa Rosa. In a brief search I was able to surface dozens of integrative practitioners in and around the Healdsburg area.
This June, I want to bring those practitioners in contact with wellness enthusiasts who think in terms of longevity and healthspan. Edge City and Esmeralda are tech-minded communities, and longevity is a tech-inclined culture of health. Californian integrative practitioners on the other hand are informed by a variety of different care cultures, spiritual traditions, and bodywork lineages. At Edge Esmeralda, my aim is to stimulate field-building by bringing together a diverse range of mental health clinicians and wellness experts, cross-pollinating information and techniques.
Here's what Concept Clinic will be consist of at Edge Esmeralda:
- We're providing free behavioral wellbeing services with practitioners Johnny Heppner and Hamdin Sula. Johnny and Hamdin practice a mode of philosophical counseling fused with psychological insight called Enlightenment Therapy.
- 3 larger modality-based activations for larger groups:
- Ellie Hain and Ryan Lowe with a Values Exploration event;
- Johnny Bowman leading Mens Work;
- Catarina Brazao and Markus Pesonen of Olo hosting a Somatic Sound Journey.
- 2-3 low-key evening dinner conversations for small groups interested in discussing psychology and wellness topics.
- Finally, we're hosting 1 larger unconference for 30-45 participants on the theme of uniting physiological longevity and mental health modalities.
Curious Esmeralda attendees, Healdsburg residents, and local mental health professionals will all be able to participate in these interventions and try out unique modalities for themselves. In the coming weeks I'll have more to say about how we are organizing this "pop-up clinic" conceptually.
Unconference on Interprofessional Practice (Sunday, June 23)
An unconference is a day of impromptu, short-format talks and opportunities for connection across normal professional boundaries. It's a conference, but no formal presentations are prepared—only topics of conversation are selected. It often makes for a much more spontaneous and generative event.
The unconference we'll be hosting is a one-day event themed around interprofessional practice in behavioral wellbeing and longevity.
We’re aiming to bring together:
- Mental health practitioners, somatic therapists, physical therapists or fitness coaches, nutritionists, and other other integrative practitioner.
- Clinicians who already practice interprofessionally, or are looking for ways to build a more integrative practice in collaboration with other professions.
- Lay wellness & longevity experts curious to deepen their understanding of how emotional and physiological health are related.
- … who are located in the Sonoma region (~2 hours from Healdsburg).
As with the overall Concept Clinic program, our goal is to foster dialogue and skill-sharing about integrative clinic building and interprofessional collaboration. If you're in the area and would like to join, I'd love to hear from you! Please fill out this interest form.
Concept Clinic started as a conversation 6 weeks ago with my friend and Care Culture member Jaan Li. Jaan and his partner Yi Li are passionate about public space as a social determinant of health, and the three of us have recently been discussing the importance of parks, low-cost commercial spaces like coffee shops, and social wellness spaces like bath houses and saunas. We know these spaces have a positive impact on emotional well-being, and their recent quest is to figure out how to quantify the benefits of these spaces and create more.
In conversation, I innocently said: "it would be cool to try a pop-up clinic in real life and see what practices play nicely together! What if you could hit the sauna before or after you meet your therapist, have a session with your physical therapist, and then play with musical instruments?" 6 weeks later, the first Concept Clinic is coming to life.
See you in June in Healdsburg!
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