What You’ll Learn
The Herbalism in Practice apprenticeship follows seasonal and community-centered rhythms, offering you hands-on experience and foundational herbal skills rooted in integrity and reciprocity with mentor oversight. Here's an overview of our 9-month journey together:
Month 1: Stepping into Your Role
- Basic Botany
- Creating sacred space for your practice
- Plant spirit connection & integrating herbal teas
- When is it responsible to wildcraft & sustainable harvest practices
- Writing your first plant monograph
Month 2: Seeds of Relationship
- Understanding wellness through relationship with nature & self
- Deepening your botanical language and sensory observation
- Building your home apothecary & intention-setting
- Seed-saving & sharing as intentional herbal practice
- Final project assigned
Month 3: Language of Herbalism
- Aligning herbal practice with seasonal transitions
- Herbal energetics, qualities, and actions
- Holistic herbalism vs. allopathic herbalism discussion
- Lacto-fermentations & brews
Month 4: Going Inward
- The body as part of the ecosystem
- Nutritional foundations: micronutrients & macronutrients
- Crafting and refining Fire Cider
- Supporting your body through winter
Month 5: Kitchen Medicine
- Continued deep dive into digestive health
- Emotional, social & physical factors of digestion
- Nourishing herbal foods & bone broth preparation
- Personalized nutrition assignment
Month 6: As Within, So Without
- Movement, recovery & embodiment as medicine
- Beginning your own medicinal garden
- Seasonal altars & offerings to the land
- Deepening community herbal practices
Month 7: Math for Herbalists
- Foundational tincture-making techniques
- Percolation methods & advanced medicine making
- Math for herbalists
- Creating intentional and safe herbal preparations
- Understanding formulation
Month 8: Community & Self-Care
- Acute care & herbal first-aid basics
- Remedies for stress, sleep, wound healing, cold & flu
- Oils, salves, and balms for acute care
- Empowering self and community through herbalism
Month 9: Offering the Harvest
- Embracing personal limits & ethical boundaries
- Limitations of practicing herbalism in California
- Assignments due
- Final project presentations
- Closing circle & honoring community (potluck)
Throughout this apprenticeship, you'll build a personal materia medica with a total of 10 plant monographs, deepen your connection to the land, and become confident integrating herbal practices into your daily life and community.