Thierry – Mondays 6 – 8 pm – Holistic Biology and the Foundations of Life
Chanchal – Wednesday 8am – 1pm – Herb garden practicum
- Seeding trays, potting up, planting & transplanting, weeding, pruning, taking cuttings, harvesting, processing the herbs.
- Tending to the learning and amenity gardens, alongside volunteers from the community who garden with us every week. Consideration of garden design for horticulture therapy.
Chanchal – Wednesday 2:30 – 4pm – Herbal medicine tutorials
- Week one : review of personal learning goals and development of study programs; library and resources including review of google drive
- Week two : biophilia lecture and a forest walk
- Weeks three – eight : review body systems and discuss clinical formulating for conditions. These classes are hosted in the apothecary garden, learning directly with the herbs – plant features and forms (field botany), phytochemistry and pharmacology (constituents and actions), materia medica and clinical applications.
- Plus Q&A at the end of each class
Tuesday classes – times TBA:
Herb walks – 2x 90 minutes with Zhyfhs (3 hours total)
- Tuesday June 11th (Session 1)
- Tuesday July 2nd (Session 1)
- Tuesday July 30th (Session 2)
- Tuesday August 6th (Session 2)
Herb-Drug Interactions Class with Alina
- Tuesday July 16th (Session 1)
- Tuesday September 5th (Session 2)
This class will explore the clinical implications of herb-drug interactions and challenge the dichotomy between “alternative” and “conventional” medicines. We will explore how to make the most of beneficial herb-drug interactions for optimal clinical outcomes and how to perform risk assessments where there is potential for harm. This three hour lecture will include a review of concepts such as dosing, pharmacokinetics, and toxicology and include in-depth explorations of some commonly misunderstood plants such as Licorice and St. John’s Wort. By the end of the class, you will feel confident knowing if, how, and when it is safe and beneficial to prescribe herbs alongside common pharmaceutical drugs.
Additional classes with Chanchal – Session one
June 7 – Evolution of Plant Medicine and Implications for Clinical Practice – Botany and Materia Medica (5 hours) [click to show more info]
Being a good herbalist means knowing your plants, how and why they came to be as they are, how they live and reproduce, what they look like and how to tell them apart. This class will explore:
- The evolution of primitive plants like blue-green algae, horsetails, club moss and lichen and the particular medicinal value they offer.
- Why mushrooms are not plants, and their uses in medicine
- Botany and the medicine of the conifers
- The relationship between form and function of plant parts
- Using a botanical key to identify a plant
July 5 – Quality Control and Dispensary Management (5 hours)
To be a good herbalist you need to know where your herbs are coming from and if they are of good quality. This is botany in practice– you will learn to properly describe and assess the plant material, compare it to standard specimens and know if you are buying good herbs. This is a practical lecture that anyone running a botanical apothecary or making herbal medicines will find very useful.
June 21, 22, 23 Vancouver Island Herbal Gathering (18 hours)
The event runs over three days and is hosted at Innisfree Farm. Apprentices will be able attend at no additional cost. See https://www.herbconference.org for more information.
Additional classes with Chanchal – Session two
August 16 – Advanced Herbal Formulation and Plant Synergy (5 hours)
This class will enable you to go beyond the paradigm of “this herb” for “that condition” and allow you to apply a truly holistic lens to your herbal formulation. We will explore topics such as plant synergy, causal chain of disease, proper dosing and toxicity, and the pyramid prescribing principles.
September 13 – Poison Plants and the Role of the Clinical Herbalist (5 hours)
Many of the most effective remedies in our materia medica are potentially toxic in the wrong patient or in the wrong dose, and practitioners are understandably wary of using them. Unfortunately, of course, the less they are used the less they are understood, and the less we understand them the less they are used.
In this detailed discussion we will review the principles of toxicology and the relative risk from herbal medicine, and we will consider the pharmacology as it applies to botanicals; safety guidelines and adverse events.
27 July – 1 August Herb Camp with Kat Maier
23 – 25 August classes with Rosita Arvigo
(18 hours total)
Are you already a herbalist but longing for greater connection to the plants you work with? Are you a student of herbal medicine ready for a deep dive into materia medica and clinical applications? Are you concerned about where your herbs are coming from and how secure they are? Do you want to learn how to grow food and medicine?
