Herbalist Lifestyle
ProgramAfter a wildly successful first year as east Tennessee’s first
herbalist training school, registration is now open for
2018 HERBalachia Lifestyle Program!
HERBalachia offers a unique education through teaching local plant identity, holistic health, world herbal traditions, sustainable harvesting practices, medicine making, and an overall inward journey of the self. The school meets one weekend per month, March through September, and is designed for beginning herbal students, health care practitioners, and healthy lifestylers.
Our school offers a hands-on approach to abundant local botanicals, allowing us to pass on our Appalachian heritage healing herbal remedies. By “studying herbs”, we don’t mean watching a video! Students learn through herb walks, communion with Nature, lecture, discussion, and hands-on harvesting, preparation, and home remedies.
Class time will include plant identification field trips to local habitats: Cherokee forest, the Nolichucky river, an Appalachian species propagation garden, a Chinese herbal apothecary, and various other herbal wonderlands in our midst.
My heart and my Head are full of love for plants,
for these teachers and for this wonderful journey. Aho!
—Victoria Hanson
We will focus on a specific Materia Medica of 40 locally growing medicinal herbs selected by our faculty for their safety, ease of identification, and usefulness. Each plant will be studied in terms of scientific and common names, identification, part used, preparation/dosage, actions/indications, and safety/contraindications.
We will visit and identify the herb growing in its outdoor habitat, learn to connect with the plant’s energy, handle it, smell it, taste it, and prepare its medicine together. Part of your learning will be to observe and document your own personal physical and energetic interactions with several herbs.
In addition to your Materia Medica, you will complete the program with a small apothecary of your own prepared medicines in the forms of decoction, infusion, tincture, percolation, salve, honeypill, and syrup. Our aim is for you to feel confident in aiding friends and family during times of common illness such as sore throat, cough, upset stomach, etc with your preparations. This comes from study and experience, and we will learn together!
Read about our all-star faculty, which includes Master’s degree herbalists, botany and anthropology professors, a Chinese tea master, an Ayurvedic physician, a native American medicine woman, mushroom and herbal propagation experts, among others.
Although, we all came in with varying degrees of knowledge (understanding) of the topics,
there was no shortage of help with those that may have needed assistance.
—Henry Layne Jr.
Syllabus:
Herbalist Lifestyle Program
105 hours
- Materia Medica: 40 Appalachian Plants
- Abundant field trips
- Hands-on Medicine-Making
- World Herbal Traditions (Chinese, Ayurvedic, Native American)
- Botany/ plant identification, herbal energetics
- Wildcrafting: art and ethics
- Intro to homeopathy/ flower essences/ aromatherapy
- Herbal ecology and stewardship of at-risk species
Tuition: $1650
HERBalachia will accept 32 students this year.
Last year 20 spots were filled in the first 3 weeks of registration,
so sign up soon if you plan to join us!
How do I register?
- Pay your deposit of $550 then complete the online application.
This will hold your spot in the program. - Balance may be paid in payments.
- Full tuition due by March 1, 2018.
Please budget an additional $200 for books, tools/gear, and alcohol/bottles/materials to create your herb projects for your home apothecary. A textbook and supply list will be sent to you upon registration.
Payment may be made at Appalachian Acupuncture, Tuesday–Thursday from 9-5, Friday 9-1.
We accept cash, check or credit card. You may pay by card by phone: 423-928-9394.
2018 REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.
Class Schedule for both Mimosa and Nettle groups:
March 23/24/25
April 20/21/22
May 18/19/20
June 15/16/17
July 13/14/15
August 10/11/12
September 7/8/9
7-weekend modules, 15 hours each weekend:
Fri 6-9pm
Sat 10-1 & 2-5
Sun 10-1 & 2-5
Each weekend is a balance of field classes, hands-on medicine making, energy exercises, lecture, development of plant monographs, and projects.
Approximately 3-4 hours per week of home projects and reading is required in addition to class hours.
Goals of HERBalachia:
- connect herbalists, growers, and educators
- promote safe herb usage through training responsible and compassionate community herbalists
- be a repository of Appalachian herbal knowledge, traditions, and seeds
- build confidence in the medical community of the contribution herbalists can make to patient health
- create opportunity for local experts to teach and share their knowledge
- instill stewardship of at-risk species and sustainability of foraging practices
- connect to a market of dispensing herbal clinics to support herbs grown by local farmers