Thank you for your interest in our online herbal courses! Below you'll find a brief overview of each course in the Professional Herbalist Path Package to familiarize you with what you will learn from them. Keep in mind that we recommended students have a beginning level of knowledge in herbalism before enrolling in the Professional Herbalist Package. If you find you have particular questions, please feel free to email me!
The Intermediate Herbal Course reviews basic concepts in the first unit and then dives in deeper, working through each body system and the herbs (their actions, energetics, indications, and contraindications), diet, and lifestyle practices that can support wellness and balance disharmony and disease in each of these systems.
We devote one unit to food as foundation—using foods (and phytochemicals) to support wellness and ease common complaints like digestive distress and infection, and include many recipes for infused vinegars, oils, honeys, syrups, cordials, and elixirs, so you can gain experience making a variety of useful herbal products. We discuss wild edibles, plant identification, and wildcrafting and provide guidance on creating a materia medica. There is plenty of inspiration for you to incorporate some of your local foods and herbs into your studies.
The bulk of the course walks through each body system one by one, devoting a unit to each system, including digestive, immune, nervous, cardiovascular, liver, respiratory, and urinary systems, and discusses anatomy, physiology, balance, imbalance, herbal support, appropriate materia medica, and guidance on herbal formulation. We end with a unit on herbs for children and common childhood complaints, as well as a bit on the legal issues related to herbalism.
You can view an outline for the Intermediate Herbal Course here.
The Advanced Herbal Course is geared towards those with a solid foundation in herbalism who are interested in becoming a professional/clinical herbalist. It provides the knowledge and encourages the critical thinking skills needed to turn to the daily and/or therapeutic use of plants to support wellness and correct imbalance. The course dives deep into the body systems not previously covered in the Intermediate Herbal course, exploring the anatomy, physiology, common complaints, etiology of imbalances, and herbal therapeutic approaches appropriate for the blood, lymph, and mucous membranes, the endocrine system, and the musculoskeletal system. Turning from a system-specific approach, the systems covered in the Intermediate Course are again explored in the Advanced Course but not in the same way - instead, through the lens of Female, Male, and Elderly Wellness. The male, female, and elderly wellness units take a thorough look at general wellness approaches and support for common imbalances of gender-specific body systems as well as the unique physical and emotional changes experienced by pubescent youth. Case studies are used to illustrate imbalance experienced by real people and the clinical assessment and herbal protocols used to correct that imbalance.
You can preview a sample lesson from the Advanced Course here and a course outline here.
If you are interested in gaining qualifications to work towards clinical practice, we have bundled these two courses into the Professional Herbalist Package at a discounted rate. Alternatively, you can register for each course 'a la carte' so to speak, one at a time.
Your enrollment comes with Lifetime Access to the course so you can enjoy your herbal studies at a pace that is most convenient to your schedule! We suggest students complete the Intermediate in 2 years and the Advanced Course in 3 years. Each course unit also comes with a downloadable PDF for offline study.
Keep in mind that we very strongly recommend additional hands-on training with an experienced herbalist/mentor after completion of the Professional Path in order to gain the hands-on experience needed to work with clients. This could be an apprenticeship where you are observing your mentor's process in consultation and then ultimately practicing it yourself and then getting feedback from your mentor. We give suggestions for receiving this type of training in one of the lessons in the Advanced Course.
