Podcast 264: Our Model for Clinical Herbalism Mentorship

We’ve been running a clinical herbalism mentorship program of one kind or another for more than fifteen years. We have some thoughts! Today’s episode is all about our model for an herbal mentorship, what we think it needs to include, and how it’s structured to benefit our students and clients most fully.

For context, we do have prerequisites to join mentorship – you need to have your herbal know-how dialed in before you can join! Completing our Family Herbalist and Community Herbalist programs, and performing well on the exams, is the baseline. Our mentorship students are also working through the Clinical Herbalist coursework concurrently, because mentorship is less about knowledge and more about communication, connection, strategy, and practicality.

Our students participate – first as observers, then as clinicians with faculty backup, then on their own – in our Free Clinic and Student Clinic sessions each month. We hold roundtable meetings with them after each of these events, so that everyone can share their cases and get feedback or suggestions. When they’re ready to conduct their own sessions, we roleplay clients whose health issues – or personalities! – present a helpful challenge for that student. In this way they get prepared to take on whatever may come.

We also work with our students to get their systems & marketing on point. It may not be what attracted you to herbalism in the first place, but if you want to be a clinician, you’re running a small business! You need these skills in order to sustain your work for the long haul, so we see them as equally important to formulation strategies or protocol construction.

Overall, our goal is to provide a clear path, with supports all along the way, toward greater independence and confidence as a clinical herbalist.

If you’d like more information about the program, and its pre-requisites, you’ll find it here. You’re also welcome to contact us with any questions!

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Our theme music is “Wings” by Nicolai Heidlas.

Episode Transcript

Katja (00:14):
Hi, I’m Katja.

Ryn (00:15):
And I’m Ryn.

Katja (00:16):
And we’re here at Commonwealth Holistic Herbalism in Boston, Massachusetts.

Ryn (00:20):
And on the internet everywhere thanks to the power of the podcast.

Katja (00:22):
Woohoo.

Ryn (00:23):
It’s better than only being on the internet in Boston.

Katja (00:26):
On the internet somewhere.

Ryn (00:30):
If you can find where you get a gold star and some gold thread as well. Yeah.

Katja (00:36):
Oh hey, make it herbal.

Ryn (00:37):
That’d be pretty good.

Katja (00:38):
A gold star but make it herbal, yeah. Excellent. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. You know, lately we have been filming episodes of the pod, recording episodes of the podcast kind of independently because we each have had other projects that we’re working on. Adding in worksheets and other materials to right now it’s the Clinical Nutrition course that we are updating and adding lots of new information to. And so we haven’t done this together in a hot minute.

Ryn (01:10):
Isn’t it nice to be together?

Katja (01:11):
It’s so nice to be together.

Ryn (01:12):
It is nice. Yeah.

Katja (01:16):
Yeah. And so together we are going to talk about our Clinical Mentorship program because we get a lot of questions. There aren’t very many Clinical Mentorship programs in existence. And we get a lot of questions about what is it? How does it work? How do we move through it? What’s going to happen?

Ryn (01:36):
What do you even do? Yeah.

Katja (01:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we get enough questions that it seemed to make sense to talk about it on the pod so that you can get a real good idea of how this works, and if it’s something you’re interested in. Or if you’re listening, and you run a school or something like that, you can learn what our model is and see if it would work for your people too.

Ryn (01:57):
Yeah. That’s the reason. That’s why we’re here. All right, cool. So, if you’re down for that, then stick around. And we’re going to just first give you our reclaimer. That’s where we remind you that we’re not doctors. We’re herbalists and holistic health educators.

Katja (02:12):
The ideas discussed in this podcast do not constitute medical advice. No state or federal authority licenses herbalists in the United States. So, these discussions are for educational purposes only.

Ryn (02:23):
We want to remind you that good health doesn’t mean the same thing for everyone. Good health doesn’t exist as one objective standard. It’s influenced by your individual needs, experiences, and goals. So, keep in mind, we’re not attempting to present one single dogmatic right way that you need to adhere to.

Katja (02:41):
Everyone’s body is different. So, the things that we’re talking about may or may not apply directly to you. But we hope that they’ll give you some good information to think about and some ideas to research and experiment with further.

Ryn (02:53):
Finding your way to better health is both your right and your own personal responsibility. That doesn’t mean you’re alone on the journey, and it doesn’t mean that you are to blame for your current state of health. But it does mean that the final decision when you’re considering any course of action, whether it’s discussed on the internet or prescribed by a physician, that’s always your choice to make. So, choose wisely. All right. So yeah. So like you said, we’re sharing this today because lots of people are seeking mentorship. At some point in their journey, they understand that this is part of what’s expected of somebody who’s going to become a practicing herbalist.

Why a Clinical Mentorship, the Hard Way, Online

Katja (03:33):
And it’s just smart too. If you’re going to go out there and work with clients. Or even if you’re not going to do it as a job, as a career, but you’re going to work with community members regularly in this kind of capacity. It is really hard to do that if you have had no mentorship at all, and you haven’t had any kind of guidance about how to structure that work, and be successful in that work, and help your clients be successful in that work. So, it’s really important that you’re getting mentorship and guidance through the stages and developing your skills in practice. This is a little bit less about your herbal skills. By the time that you get to Clinical Mentorship, you have those. We may be finessing them, refining them, but this is about clinical skills. It’s about working with people successfully. You can have the best ideas in the world, but how do we get that to the people? How do we help them succeed and feel motivated and encouraged to do it? How do we look at their situation, the whole galaxy of their situation, and swirl it all together into a really comprehensive picture, and then form a plan about what to do about it? All these different things don’t just happen intuitively. You need practice, and guidance, and development to get really good at that stuff.

Ryn (05:06):
Right. Yeah. So, we wanted to share our model and recognize that there are lots of different ways to conduct a mentorship relationship, or program, or whatever for people. And we’ve seen a whole bunch of them over the years. We’ve tried a bunch of different things ourselves to see what would work best. And also our context has changed over time. You know, a decade ago if we were going to be sitting down with our mentorship students, we would be sitting down in the same room with them. And we would be talking things through face-to-face. They would also be seeing their clients in our space initially, and we could sit right there next to them, right? There’s positives to that, no doubt. But the positives of internet-accessible client consultations and mentorship sessions are greater for us certainly right now.

Katja (05:59):
I think so.

Ryn (06:00):
Where we’re living, and how we’re working with the students that we’re working with, and where they live and everything, it wouldn’t be possible if we had to be in the same room all the time.

Katja (06:10):
Well, right now in our mentorship groups we have students who live all the way on the coast of California straight on through to Germany. So, it would not be possible. Every time zone between the actual ocean in California and the middle of Germany is represented in mentorship. That just simply wouldn’t be possible in an in-person situation. But also clients want online options.

Ryn (06:40):
Yeah, they do.

Katja (06:41):
Yeah. It’s true. Some clients still want in-person options. And if you have the capacity to offer that, that’s fantastic. But it is harder to do this work in a Zoom session. And so I feel like learn the hard way. It’s like can you drive a standard, or can you only drive an automatic? Learn the hard one first, and then you can do anything. So, if you learn how to do this online really effectively, really compassionately, really, with all your energy out there, then you can help anyone. Many people in your own community will still prefer a Zoom option because they’re immune compromised. Because they’re caring for an elderly parent, and they can’t get substitute care. Or they have young children, and they can’t afford a babysitter and a consultation, whatever. There’s all kinds of reasons. People have tight work schedules, but they could do it during their lunch hour. All kinds of reasons that it is just something more convenient for people to be able to work with you online if you have that skill. And so I feel really excited. I mean, we moved mentorship online because of COVID. But I’m really excited to continue it online that way, because it is the harder skill to learn. And it is so valuable for you as a clinician as well.

Prerequisites

Ryn (08:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that’s part of the context in which this mentorship works. Another part is that there are prerequisites.

Katja (08:13):
Yes.

Ryn (08:14):
Yes. We have requirements for people who want to join the mentorship in terms of their training and experience with herbalism.

Katja (08:23):
It’s not possible to jump right into mentorship. People ask us that all the time. No, that’s not possible. We really need to have those skills already, all those herbal skills already developed. And the application of those skills developed before we start sitting with actual people. Yeah.

Ryn (08:44):
Right, yeah. And we have very good reasons for this, right? Again, we’ve seen lots of different models and the way different schools try to run these sorts of programs. And I have seen some where it’s like I’m not interested in your experience. You’re going to show up, and we’re going to do whatever’s required. The trouble is that it often turns into herbalism 101 because it becomes apparent that somebody has a huge gap in their training, or their experience, or their study. And now instead of talking about ways to shape a basic recommendation for a more complex case, or to get herbs into somebody via a feeding tube, or something else like that.

Katja (09:26):
Like really complicated issues.

Ryn (09:28):
Yeah. Then you might find yourself talking about how to make an infused oil, and it’s not really a good use of anybody’s time. Yeah. So yeah, so we feel pretty strongly that there needs to be some prerequisites for a program like this if it’s going to be as beneficial as possible to the people who are participating.

Katja (09:44):
On the flip side you know, it takes a long time to become good at herbalism. And it takes a long time to be good as a clinician. So, we’ve structured our program so that students can start mentorship at a point that makes sense, but they don’t have to wait until every single thing is completed. So, for us that is the Family and Community program are finished. You’ve passed the exam at the end of the Community program. And at that point, yes, there is still Clinical coursework to do. But most students choose to do that Clinical coursework in tandem with their Clinical Mentorship. At the end of the Community program, you’re ready to handle a lot of stuff. And we make sure that in the beginning, you’re getting the easier stuff that you are able to handle, that you’re really confident in. We’re going to save the really challenging, complicated stuff until you’re ready for it. We’re not going to like throw you into the deep end. But that also allows the overall timeline to shorten just a little bit, because it doesn’t have to be all the way linear. There are some things that you can be doing concurrently. And it just means that you can be moving into practice in those areas that you feel safe and confident as you are developing some of the areas where you feel it’s a little more challenging. And we are right there with you. So, we are also helping you gauge where is your scope of practice? Where is it expanding? Where does it need shoring up? Where do you need support? Where are you ready to go? Yeah.

How Mentorship is Structured

Ryn (11:26):
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. So, what is actually involved in my mentorship? If I’m involved in it, what am I doing? Where do I have to be and when? So, the one-on-one or group interaction that we get with folks is every week. And at present that’s taking place on Wednesdays.

Katja (11:52):
Yeah. Depending on when you’re listening to this, it’s possible that schedule could change. But we have small groups, so they’re like three to six students and two faculty. And right now we have two of those groups. But at various times we’ll have various amounts of those groups. And so right now we have kind of an earlier group so that accommodates the folks in Germany. And a later group, so accommodating the folks in California. We do try to make it ergonomic in the schedule. And so that happens every week with a very structured plan for each time. Let’s break that down first as an overview, and then we’ll talk about what happens during each one. So, over the course of each month there are usually four Wednesdays. The first Wednesday is always free clinic. The second Wednesday is roundtable. So, there’s clients happening on the first one. Then we talk about it on the second one. Then the third Wednesday is student clinic and then roundtable. So again, clients happening, then we talk about it. So, every week is either clients happening or talking specifically about all of those cases, breaking them down. Why did you do this instead of that? Could this have happened instead? If this client had had an allergy, could we have gone in this direction? All those kinds of things that come up when you’re reviewing cases.

Ryn (13:31):
Right, right. Yeah. Roundtable is the opportunity for everybody to say why didn’t you do this instead? Why didn’t you include this herb in that formula? Or what made you focus on this aspect of the problem? Why did you spend so much time talking about sleep in this particular case? I thought we were going to talk a lot about topicals for the joint pain. And so then you get a chance to explain your rationale. And as the student it’s a way to really concretely see how you go from the presentation of the case to what we actually do about it. Why did you choose to focus on this area? How would that have been different if they’d responded in another way to one of your questions or one of the prompts?

Katja (14:14):
It allows us to really explore all the different approaches that could have happened, and why any one of those approaches might have been good. The value in that for students is that as you see all the different ways that a case could have gone, you get better at creatively finding a path that’s going to work for your client faster. It’s not hard to be creative if you have a lot of time to think about it. But when you’re trying to be creative on the fly and find the thing that’s going to work best for this person in this moment, that takes a lot of mental flexibility. And if you have seen in slow motion all the different paths that could have been taken, and then the reason why the path that was chosen was in fact chosen. Then you’re setting up that thought process over and over and over again in slow motion, that then in a clinical session you’re going to need to do at speed, you know? But it just allows you to go through that process in a practice way. And also it allows you to present your own cases and to say listen. This is the direction I went in, and I feel confident that it wasn’t bad. But I’m not confident that it was great. How could I have done this better? Or I felt really good about these three things. But this fourth thing, I actually was pretty wobbly on. Let’s talk about that. And was it good? Wasn’t it good? Could I have improved it? It really gives you the opportunity to find and poke at every one of your places where you don’t have confidence, or you kind of almost have confidence, so that you can in a safe environment really get to that level of feeling like I absolutely know what I’m doing. I feel great about this. And I am convinced that it’s worth trying. You can never be convinced that it’s going to work because everybody is different. And until we try it, we’re not a hundred percent sure. But we can be convinced that it is worth the experiment.

Free Clinic

Ryn (16:21):
Okay. So, we’ve mentioned two clinics. We’ve mentioned free clinic and student clinic. So let’s explain what those are a little bit more. Free clinic is an event that we run every month on the first Wednesday. And so students who are in the mentorship, they could be at various stages in their participation in the Free Clinic. That could just be that they’re there in the Zoom muted, mic off, observing the session. So, I’m running it. Katja, Kenton, Emmy, one of the faculty here is running a session with the person. And the student is there to observe, to take notes, to come up with questions hopefully if they’re really paying attention, and to have thoughts to share about that afterward. The free clinic sessions are short, and that’s one of the big differences between that and a normal client consult or what happens in student clinic. The way we run our free clinic, we have the sessions be 30 minutes long. And so they’re focused on one particular problem rather than all of the different issues the person is coping with right now. We try to get them to tell me which thing is most an issue for you? What would you most like to work on today? So, we focus on that, and we focus on the herbs too. Rather than we’re going to do a big diet overhaul, and you’re going to change all your meditation habits and this and that, oh yeah, and some herbs. The goal of this is to really focus on the plants. To come up with one or two herbal remedies that are targeted towards the problem and get the person started. And we try to be clear about that both with the client and then also again with our mentorship student clinicians.

Katja (18:03):
The reality is that not everybody wants to sit for 90 minutes to talk about their health. And sometimes they don’t need to. Sometimes they have an issue, and they’re like can we just make some progress on this issue? And 30 minutes is enough to do that. So, for clients that can be really beneficial. And then they can also say oh, I see the value in this now. I would like to sit longer with someone, and we make that available. But on the student side, it gives you the opportunity to sort of hone in on some specific things without having to do the entire galaxy brain all at once. So, you were mentioning that students observe in the beginning. You don’t have to take a client on your very first day. You’re going to observe for a little while so that you see how it goes. You see the order everything flows in. You see the four of us. We’re all working from the same toolkit, but we have different styles about how we implement them. And so you see all four of us and how each one of us handles situations. And that helps you decide well, how do I handle this situation? What does it look like when I am doing this? So, you do that as long as it’s comfortable for you. And when you are feeling confident, then you start working with clients in free clinic. When you do that, we are there with you. And if there was an emergency, you could always say you know, at this point I think I want to hand this over to my faculty member. This is Katja, and she’s going to take it from here. That hasn’t actually ever happened. It’s actually never happened.

Ryn (19:50):
None of our students have ever found that necessary.

Katja (19:53):
But it is always possible.

Ryn (19:55):
Yeah. And I mean, there have been difficult cases that come to free clinic. Every month there are some, and some months it’s like everybody in there has like…

Katja (20:04):
Like really hard stuff.

Ryn (20:05):
There’s a lot going on in this one, you know? But because of the set of expectations that are put forward on the clinician side and that we’re conveying to the client, our students have always felt pretty confident that they can at least again, get the person started. Recommend something that’s likely to help them. And there’s plenty of room for refinement and expansion later. But at least to give them something to make them feel a little bit better. It’s a goal that you don’t want to just leap over and be like well, we can always do more than that. Come on, let’s do the real stuff. Let’s go. There’s lots of circumstances where this is going to be the best way to serve somebody or open the door for them.

Katja (20:46):
Right. Plus it really forces you to scale back and find what is the most important thing right now. That might change two weeks from now or a month from now. But free clinic clients can get follow-ups, so that’s okay. Not all the work has to happen immediately. And for beginner clinicians, often the inclination is I’m just going to tell you every single thing that would help you as fast as I can all in one session. And the client goes away, okay, with a whole lot of answers. But it’s not implementable because it’s so much that they’re like I’m not really sure where to start with all these things. Or I cannot actually do them all concurrently because that would be too much. I need to build up to it. So, working this way in free clinic really instills that discipline of how do I find the most important thing right now? And then we will do the next thing, and then we will do the next thing. Which makes it much more successful or likely to succeed for the client. So, all the way around there’s a lot of skill building happening here, but also very focused skill building. So that it’s a little less intimidating because you’re not trying to do a full 90 minutes, and change the diet, and all these other things all at the same time.

Student Clinic

Ryn (22:11):
Right, right. Okay. So, that’s free clinic. And then student clinic is a little bit different. And this also is going to depend on how far along the student is, how confident they are, and how ready they are to leap forward. Initial work in student clinic is going to involve again, observations. So, now I’m conducting a longer session with a client. This is the full thing. You’re going to sit in. You’re going to observe and see how we go through our set of questions, and figure out what’s going on, come up with a plan, negotiate, negotiate again, and come to something that they actually feel confident about. So, that’s always valuable, of course. But the next step for us is going to be some role-play. And that’s where we get to either embody a previous client that we’ve had or meld some of them together into a new archetype and be like hello. Today I’m Leonard, and you’re going to have a session with me about my swollen prostate. And it’s actually very fun to create these little characters, and their backstory, and their own personal obsessions or whatever. And we play around too with it’s not only going to be about the difficulty of the health problem. It’s going to be about the person. And so maybe this one is totally resistant to every diet suggestion you’ve got, but you’re going to have to find that out one by one until you catch on, right? Or maybe it’s that this person is so overwhelmed, and their ADHD is uncontrolled to the point that they’re really not able to follow more than a few sentences at a time. And so the way you’re going to share and present information is going to really need to adapt to that.

Katja (23:58):
Yeah. We’ll build clients who are also tailored to your strengths and weaknesses. So, if you are a person who has a really strong and organized personality, and you’re able to really drive a session in the direction you want it to go. Then we’ll build a client for you who is totally squishy like a marshmallow, and won’t be driven in any direction, and won’t give you information. They’re like really shy and won’t speak up. So, that you get the skill of how do you drive a client situation when that client won’t be driven? They’re just like a marshmallow on the floor. Versus if you are a person, a little shy and maybe it’s not easy for you to rein somebody in, and speak up, and keep control of the container. Obviously we want to collaborate with our clients. But we also don’t want to be all over the place all the time, because that’s not efficient use of their time. So, if that’s something that you struggle with, then we’ll make a client who won’t stop talking.

Ryn (25:12):
Yeah. That one’s hard. I have to caffeinate a lot when I do those ones.

Katja (25:15):
Well, that one’s easy for me, no surprise. Yeah. No, we’ll make them that won’t stop talking, and they keep changing the subject, and they resist being reigned in. And these are all things that will happen for you when you are working with clients. And so the point here is that we are doing these role-play clients for you so that you can experience the full range of all the things that you’re going to have to do clinically in a safe space where you can take a timeout anytime that you need it. Where you can say hold on, hold on, hold on. I just need to think for a minute, one second. Which you wouldn’t do with a client. But this allows you to be working with real clients, doing your follow-ups, doing all that stuff, but the real client is us. So, you’re slowly developing more and more skills. You start off with easy ones. They get progressively harder. And you are doing all of that in a safe place where if you make a mistake, you’re not going to hurt anybody.

Ryn (26:23):
Yeah. And we also structure it with each student where the first times they do that, it might not be the full session. It may just be the pre-session work of intake analysis, right? So, they’ve emailed over the intake form or submitted that through however it got to you, right? It’s the day before your consult. And so you’re looking through it. And you’re looking for patterns and trying to identify key points of intervention. Maybe some herbs are coming to mind as you read through. But you’re starting to sketch out some ideas, some things to ask about especially. Like a whole set of questions for the client, for further clarification and detail. Some potential directions you could go in. But that work is really important.

Katja (27:05):
We make sure that we give you a lot of practice with people who are taking a lot of pharmaceuticals. Because herb-drug interactions are real, and they’re an important part of your practice. And so again, we are going to go through these skills over and over again so that if you make a mistake, you’re doing it in a simulated environment, and you haven’t actually hurt anyone. And it allows you to get real experience safely until you know that you feel confident. We might feel confident in you before you feel confident in you. Actually that often happens.

Ryn (27:41):
It usually happens.

Logistics & Operating with a Net

Katja (27:44):
Yeah. And then ultimately, once you feel really great, and you’ve done however many of these role-playing sessions is the right number for you. Then you will start seeing real strangers who are real people in the world who book through our student clinic. And then that will be your client. And you will manage all their follow-ups. You will do all the aspects of working with that client, and they will pay you. It’s only $50. Our student clinic is a low-cost clinic. So, those sessions are $50. But hey, it’s your $50 because you’re the one doing the work. And that is… Okay, you’re doing the work. You deserve it. But it’s also part of the skill building. Because at that point when you are working with real people, we also need to make sure that your website is up and running. That your scheduling integration works. That you actually can successfully take money from people. That you’ve integrated all those technologies properly so that when somebody tries to pay you, you actually get paid. And so we make sure that you have successfully done all that stuff. I check all of it before you go live. So, we go through your website, make sure that all that is good. I schedule a fake appointment with you. We go through the whole process. Once we’re sure that all that works, then you start working with real people who we supply. And I feel like that part is also really important. Because as you’re building your practice, you haven’t marketed a practice before. Okay. Well, once we had a psychotherapist, and she was like actually, I know exactly how to get my own clients, thanks. But most people don’t know how to find their own clients because they just haven’t ever done it before. So, we don’t feel like you should be held back in your practice because maybe you’re not very good at marketing.

Ryn (29:40):
Right.

Katja (29:41):
So, we supply those clients for you. But then don’t worry, we also make sure that you get good at marketing,

Ryn (29:48):
Which includes – I don’t know – one-on-one marketing of you’ve come. You’ve shown up to this session. But it’s not going to be your last one, I hope. I really hope because I need to get follow-ups to know if this is working, and I want to see you again. And I expect this to take a while for us to really zero in. So, we’re going to try some things. We’re going to adjust as we go. That’s all part of the work, right? And so helping the student clinicians to learn how to build that into their process, which includes the systems that they use to book things with people. And it includes the words that they say to them at the beginning of the session, at the end of the session as they’re wrapping up. You don’t want to let somebody log off without talking about when your follow-up’s going to be.

Katja (30:29):
Yeah. Really setting those expectations. If it’s something simple, if somebody has a cold, sure, you can do that in one session. But most people who are working with an herbalist, it’s not actually that simple. And a follow-up or two is kind of the minimum to be really successful and help that person make a lasting change. But you might have more follow-ups than that. And so helping people understand those expectations is also part of running the business of clinical herbalism. Not just the business part where I’m talking about you getting paid, but the business part where I’m talking about you having success with changing lives with your clients.

Ryn (31:13):
Yeah. We consider this a necessary part of a clinical mentorship. If we were doing a mentorship, but we were literally only talking about formulation choices, and diet plans, and other instructions and teaching, and knowledge sharing and whatever. The trouble is that people hit the wall of I don’t know how to make a business. I don’t know how to get people to show up. I don’t know how to be visible to the clients that are looking for an herbalist, you know?

Katja (31:46):
I spent all this time training so that I could help people. And now I can’t find them to help them.

Ryn (31:53):
Yeah. And that is very much like, that aspect of developing your systems, your marketing, your business side of things, it’s actually really similar to your clinical skill development. In that you can read about it, you can learn about it, you can attend workshops, you can come to a discussion and have a teacher and everything. But doing it yourself, trying it, and gradually ramping up to more complex or involved elements of it is the best way to actually get there. And so it’s part and parcel of the mentorship.

Katja (32:29):
Right. So, once you start taking your own clients in student clinic, those clients can happen anytime. They don’t have to happen in that Wednesday spot anymore. You could do it Sunday mornings. You could do it whatever time. And so we transition that Wednesday spot into marketing sessions. And so then every month you are getting very personalized marketing advice, marketing exercises. We go through all the different options in your area, both for local but also online stuff. What appeals to you most? Some people really like to be on social media. Some people are like that is not part of my plan. I will not market on social media. Both are fine. We go through all the different possibilities. And then we do them and find out what works for you, what works for your demographic, what even is your demographic? And going through all that stuff while you are also still practicing – because clients are coming into you through the student clinic – builds a lot of confidence and gives you the freedom to find what really works for you without the pressure of I just have to get a client today.

Ryn (33:42):
Yeah. It’s building in the pathway for you to move into independent practice, right? Yeah.

Katja (33:49):
And I think that actually is maybe the whole theme here. Every single step of this process is a net. You are never out there without a net. Every step of what you need to do to be successful in private practice is ramped up for you until you are confident doing that on your own.

Ryn (34:13):
Yeah. So, we think it works pretty well.

Katja (34:17):
I wish this had been available when I was starting.

Ryn (34:20):
Yeah. I had it easy because I just had you in the house to talk to about any of my clients that I need help with. But one other note, right? This does also include asynchronous support as well, just like every other course that we offer, every other program that we teach. So, there are these Wednesday meetings. And we chat, and we have a great time. But these students also have access to us through the discussion threads in their Clinical Herbalist program courses. They have access to our student community in general and a specific area within the community just for Clinical Mentorship students to talk about more complex, more involved stuff, things on the business side, and all of that fits there as well. And yeah, other ways for them to reach us directly so that they’re not kind of like I’m all alone until next Wednesday. We don’t want that to happen either.

Katja (35:10):
No. A lot of times, especially when someone is new in taking real, live clients, no longer role-play clients but actual real people. I mean, we’re real people too, but you know what I mean. Then they’ll get the intake form and say uh-oh, I’m not a hundred percent certain about this. Can we have a meeting real quick? And then we just schedule a one-off meeting with them, so that it’ll happen before the actual session that they’re going to do, to go through their plan. And I tell you. I do these a lot, and every single time their plan actually was great, but they just didn’t feel super confident about it. They looked at the thing and felt maybe a little bit intimidated. And then we go through it together, and they’re like oh, actually you’re right. This is really good. I had a plan. This is great. And so yeah, always during the transition people do that a bunch of times. And then sort of it just doesn’t happen anymore because suddenly they realize that their confidence is real. And that yeah, we don’t always know all the answers, and that’s actually great. That’s fine. We don’t have to pretend like we do. But they’re confident in how they want to get started in the approach. And they’re confident in their ability to make changes on the fly or kind of predict where things might go. And they’re confident in their ability to say okay, that’s the part I’m not actually certain about. So, we’re going to work on these issues that are important to you right now. I’m going to get in touch with my mentor. We’re going to talk about this together on Wednesday. And then I’m going to be able to get back to you on this particular part of the problem, right? So, that support is always there.

Ryn (36:57):
All right. So, that’s our model for clinical herbalism mentorship. We hope you find that enlightening. If this is something you’re interested in pursuing, then there is more detail to be found on our website for it. And we’ll put a link right there in the show notes. You can check that out. And if there are any lingering questions, then you can absolutely reach out to us by email, and we will answer every single one of them for you.

Katja (37:19):
You can find us at info@commonwealthherbs.com. And again, you can find all of our courses at online.commonwealthherbs.com. And if you are a school person, like if you are a person with a school, and you’re interested in this particular model, well heck, you can email us too. That’s totally fine. We’ve been doing this for quite a long time now, first in person and then since COVIDD online, and making refinements along the way. But we’ve really got it kind of dialed in at this point, and it’s working really, really well. I would love to see more programs that are like this because there just aren’t enough options for people to get clinical training. There’s a lot of places to learn about herbs. But there’s not that many options to learn about how to turn that into a career where you’re really helping people make change in their lives. So, yeah.

Ryn (38:16):
Yeah. All right. Well that’s it for this episode. We’ll be back soon with some more Holistic Herbalism podcast for you. Until then take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Drink some tea. And sit around a table with some friends, even if it’s virtual. We think it’s good.

Katja (38:33):
We think it’s good. Bye-Bye, everybody.