Traditional Healing for a Modern World: A Week-Long Herbal Intensive

August 2-8 -- Boston, MA
www.commonwealthherbs.com
with Katja Swift, Sean Donahue, Darcey Blue French, Ryan Midura, and Mischa Schuler

Throughout history, most people around the world have depended on the plants around them as medicine for their bodies, minds, and spirits.

Here in New England, we have our own living herbal traditions, drawing from the knowledge and practices of Native American and European herbalists. Each new generation adds its own insights and experiences to the mix.

Come spend a week in Boston learning from practicing herbalists whose work is rooted in Traditional Western Herbalism, informed by science, inspired by the beauty and magic of the living Earth, and grounded in their own direct experience working with the medicine of the wild, feral, and cultivated plants that grow around them.

This intensive will provide beginners with a solid foundation in the fundamentals of herbalism as well as providing more experienced herbalists with an opportunity to deepen their knowledge and sharpen their skills.

Topics will include:

-- Herbal energetics and herbal actions
-- Plant identification and ethical wild crafting
-- Nutrition, food allergies, and food as medicine
-- Techniques for making and using tinctures, elixirs, decoctions, infusions, oils, and salves.
-- Clinical skills
-- The language and intelligence of plants

Tuition for the week is $950. Participants will bring a bag lunch and will be responsible for their own lodging.

Teachers include:

Katja Swift -- Katja Swift is an herbalist and teacher working to help adults, children, and families rebuild their relationships with their bodies and with their own ability to heal. By teaching people how to eat real food and use plants as medicine, she helps them to reestablish their connectivity to the earth, to themselves, and to one another. Katja believes that traditional medicine and modern medical practices can coexist as allies, and works to help people make good choices about which methods to use to bring about better health in their own lives. Katja trained with Rosemary Gladstar and later with Guido Masé, and presently runs a family practice in Brookline, MA. She has a beautiful seven-year-old daughter who would like to tell you all about linden, plantain, and dandelion.

Darcey Blue French -- Darcey Blue French is an herbalist & nutritionist, wildcrafter, gardener, food lover, Earth lover and wild woman. She was trained as a Clinical Herbalist & Nutritionist at the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism under Paul Bergner, and studied under Rosemary Gladstar and Charlie Kane. Darcey has been using and learning from the plants, both wild and cultivated since childhood, and it is her deep love of the wild Earth and its creatures that fuels her passion for healing and teaching about plants, wilderness, spirit, nourishment and healing. She spends her time leading Edible and Medicinal Wild Plant walks, Plant Spirit Medicine groups, teaching herbal and nutritional classes and intensives both in person and online, creating nourishing and delicious meals, wildcrafting and making medicines from the plants, seeing clients and enjoying the wild places on the earth.

Sean Donahue -- Sean Donahue is an herbalist, poet, activist, and witch committed to healing and transformation through connection with the living Earth. As an herbalist, Sean works primarily with the wild plants of the forests and fields of New England. He views the plants as teachers, helping the body, mind, and spirit learn to correct imbalances that stand in the way of health. As a teacher, poet, and ritualist, Sean works to connect people with their own wild nature and with the life of the world around them. He believes that personal, community, and cultural healing are all deeply intertwined with the healing of our planet.

Ryan Midura -- Ryan Midura began his formal herbal training with the apprenticeship progam at the Boston School of Herbal Studies, with Katja Swift and Mischa Schuler. He continued with the advanced training program, led by Tommy Priester and Madelon Hope. He's become good friends with sage, solomon's seal, and the salamander living inside ginger; he's learned to feel the kidneys' fire in the pulsing of a wrist. As he develops his attunement to the world green and growing, he looks forward to sharing its gifts with the people all around who are in need of care and compassion, and those who seek to understand the connections from all things to all things.

Mischa Schuler -- Mischa Schuler is a community herbalist specializing in women's reproductive and sexual health . She also counsels on choices around natural contraception and general emotional and physiological health. She works with adolescents to support the menstrual cycle, ease allergies, and improve skin concerns and with children and infants to support the immune system in cold and flu. She has an M.S. in Herbal Medicine from the Tai Sophia Institute and has also studied and worked with Rosemary Gladstar, Deb Soule, and Dr. Mary Bove. She is Adjunct Faculty at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. And she is currently working with Robin Rose Bennett on a national study on the use of Wild Carrot as a contraceptive.