A Clinical Herbalist helps people form a plan about how to improve their health holistically, and then follow through on it. You might sit down for a consultation with a client, talk about their health goals, and come up with a plan together that includes herbal formulas and other holistic strategies. Perhaps you then formulate the herbal blends together so that your client can learn how, or maybe you work with a local apothecary where your client can pick up their blend. You and your clients might check in every month to talk about progress and make adjustments in the plan.

This is important work: as more and more people are interested in herbalism, they are looking for Clinical Herbalists who can help them learn what they need to do to improve their own health. A Clinical Herbalist is part coach, part educator, and part problem solver!

Whether you’re a total beginner or you’ve been practicing for a while now, we can help you get to your goal! Here is a description of the complete path from start to finish, but if you’ve already had some training, you might start somewhere in the middle. If you’re not sure where to start, feel free to contact us – there’s a contact form at the bottom and we’re happy to help!

Building the Foundation

The Family Herbalist program forms your foundation for this work – you’ll learn over 100 herbs that are most important in our practice, and how to turn them into all the different types of herbal medicines, products, and even treats! You can work on this concurrently with the next step, if you like!

Managing Daily Health

Your next step is the Community Herbalist program. This covers all of the body systems: how they work, how they break down, and how to build them back up again; as well as phytochemistry, formulation, energetics, first aid, etc, to give you an organized, systematic understanding of how to approach all aspects of health support.

Some people like to take Family and Community concurrently.

At the end of the Community Herbalist program, there is an exam – but don’t worry! By the time you get there, you’ll be ready! 🙂

Advanced Studies

Then you can move into the Clinical Herbalist program – this covers more advanced topics like working with people who have cancer, autoimmune issues, endocrine disorders, Lyme, and more. This is also where you’ll learn clinical skills, legal issues, advanced formulation, and herb-drug interactions.

Clinical Mentorship

In Clinical Mentorship, you will be observing clients live, and taking your own clients too! All of our work is done online, so you don’t have to live in Boston. Even if you plan to work in your local community, it’s great to get experience with doing clinical sessions online, because having a session online means folks don’t have to get childcare, and makes your sessions more accessible to folks who have disabilities or who are immunocompromised.

This mentorship meets weekly, alternating between live clinical sessions and case review round table discussion. Clients are provided for you, so that you can focus all your effort on refining your clinical skills. When you’re ready, then we’ll work with you on getting good at finding new clients for yourself, too!

Mentorship is done in small groups: you’ll get our feedback, feedback from your peers, and you’ll get to share your ideas on their cases too. This means your mentorship time exponentially expands your exposure to different types of cases. Plus, because we’re working in small groups, you’re building community so that you have a network of support as you move into your career as a practicing herbalist. 

As you begin to build up your own practice, you’ll have the confidence of knowing you’ve got support for as long as you need it! We’ll review your cases with you as long as you like!

We also have a Business Mentorship track, which covers all of the administrivia you need to start your practice or herbal business – getting registered, building your website, getting all the technical stuff in place, building your newsletter, learning GMP if you want to make products, finding an office space if you plan to do in-person work, even getting your marketing up and running.

Become a Registered Herbalist

We will also help you apply to be a Registered Herbalist in the American Herbalists’ Guild, which is the highest recognition that you can achieve in the US right now. Our program was specifically designed to meet and exceed the educational and mentorship requirements to become a Registered Herbalist, and we’ll help you at every step of the application process 🙂

We’ve even developed a free tracking tool you can use to keep all of your application requirements organized so that when it’s time to apply, everything is ready in one place for you. You can find it here.

You can do this!

We need more clinical herbalists. If this work interests you, we’d love to help you make it happen! You can jump right into the course work, and we will be so excited to meet you at the live Q&A sessions – and of course to answer all your questions in the discussion threads and community groups!

If you have any questions before you get started, just let us know – we’re happy to help! 🌿❤️️