Medicine of Place

Class Description

A 60 Hour Intro to Herbalism Course: When: Mondays 10 - 5pm, April 1 - June 3, 2024 Where: Various East Bay parks, community gardens, urban farms, botanical gardens and green spaces in Berkeley and Oakland, CA Cost: 3 Tier Sliding Scale - $750, $950, $1150 *those who pay $1150 also get a botanical bodywork session with me and a package of custom herbal formulations suited just to their needs! 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. We will learn the medicine of place. What grows around the Bay Area in abundance? What grows in our own backyards, local community gardens, urban farms, parks, and greenspaces? 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. This makes it even more important to develop relationships with the growers of plant medicine locally and to become those growers ourselves in our own communities, translating the slow food approach to slow medicine. To illuminate this, our classroom will be a variety of community gardens, urban farms, backyards, parklands, 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. We will learn how to grow some of these plants ourselves and how to web weave with other growers to create a network of locally sourced herbs. 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 imbalances found in each system. 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.