Welcome to
Sophia's Wisdom School
of Healing Arts

Medicine of Place:

A 10 Week Intro to Herbalism Course

Rooted in the Bay Area

~ 60 hour course ~

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About the Class:

This class welcomes the beginner herbalist and those who have been self teaching, taking classes here and there, or tinkering away with herbs in their kitchen and are now ready to take a deeper dive.  This is an all in person class taking a hands-on and bioregional herbalism approach.  Let's listen to the plants themselves and learn the medicine of place.  

To begin our journey together, we will make an offering to the land and give acknowledgement to the First Nations people, the Lisjan Ohlone, who still live here and actively tend these lands and the many medicinal plants that grow.  We will be discussing what it means to live on unceded indigenous land and how we can honor, protect, and love it well as community herbalists rooted to place.

Throughout the course, we will learn what grows around the Bay Area in abundance.  We will ask, what grows in our own backyards, local community gardens, urban farms, neighborhood parks, and green spaces?  And how can we develop deep relationships with these plants and become the people who tend to them and make medicines with them to share with our communities?  As herbalism gains popularity, and the industry imports so many plants from far away lands, many of which can and do grow locally, how can we return to a place based, deeply rooted, and more sustainable approach.  Wildcrafting and foraging have also become big trends, but are these practices sustainable in a highly impacted urban area?  Part of lovingly walking on this land is protecting wild spaces for future generations, so we will focus on how we can grow our own medicines and tend them in community.  We will develop relationships with growers of plant medicine locally and learn to become those growers ourselves, translating the slow food approach to slow medicine.

To illuminate this, our classroom will be a variety of community gardens, urban farms, backyards, parks, and botanical gardens which will provide a taster of the many greenspaces we can get involved in.  And of course, this will allow the plants and ecosystems to speak for themselves and be our greatest teachers.

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We will also learn about each body system and the plants with affinities to each.  Within that, we will discover practical ways of using plants to support common health imbalances addressing body, mind, and spirit.  We will also learn a variety of medicine making preparations including: tinctures, teas, infused oils, salves, liniments, glycerites, vinegar extracts, syrups and more.  By the end you will have a foundation to start growing your own home apothecary with confidence and begin the process of becoming a community herbalist and plant whisper rooted to place. 

Let the forest and garden be our classroom and the plants our wisest teachers!

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When:

Mondays 10-5pm

August 19 - October 28, 2024

*No class September 2nd

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Where:

Moving throughout various East Bay parks, community gardens, urban farms, botanical gardens and other green spaces 

in Berkeley and Oakland, CA

Huchiun, unceded Lisjan Ohlone territory

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Cost:

3 Tier Sliding Scale:

Tier 1: $900

Tier 2: $1200

Tier 3: $1500

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Payment Plans Also Available in 3 Installments:

Tier 1:  3 Payments of $300

Tier 2:  3 Payments of $400

Tier 3: 3 Payments of $500

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1st payment due to secure your spot in the class.

2nd payment due September 15th

3rd payment due October 15th

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* I use a sliding scale with a payment plant option to make this offering accessible to as many people as I possibly can.  Please pay what you can truly afford.  Those who pay the highest tier make it possible for the lowest tier to exist.  Let's foster a community of taking care of each other and valuing equal access to education.

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Would you like to sponsor another student?  

Do you have any questions?

Please reach out!

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alchemiaswell@gmail.com

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