Pacific School of Herbal Medicine Masthead

"The Pacific School of Herbal Medicine is dedicated to meeting the healthcare needs of our student's future clients."
Adam Seller
School Director

Scarlet Sage

Scarlet Sage

Herb Classes 2007-2008

Class schedule for Autumn 2007 -Winter 2008

Want to sign up for a class? See our Registration page.

Medicinal Plants: Survey of 178 Herbs

Materia Medica and Therapeutics

Mondays, 7:00-11 PM
January 21 - May 19, 2008

73 hours

Oakland

This nineteen session materia medica class covers 178 individual medicinal plants in detail. For each herb, the student will learn where to get it, how to evaluate its quality, basic pharmacology, physiologic actions, when to use it and when not to use it, dosage and preparations, diagnostics, as well as its application in disease, constitutional therapy, preventative medicine, and in supplementing other forms of medicine and healing. Class also includes an introduction to the politics of healthcare, public health issues, history of medicine, multicultural issues, counseling skills, ethics, and wildcrafting. Class will include samples of each herb. Please let us know if you prefer alcohol-free samples.

Includes two herb walks, wild food, and optional discussion section.

$438 to 880 sliding scale

There are three textbooks, one set of monographs and two booklets for this class. Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West (2003), Medicinal Plants of the Desert and Canyon West (1990), and Medicinal Plants of the Pacific West (2003) by Michael Moore. The plant monographs are extracted from The Eclectic Materia Medica, Pharmacology and Therapeutics by Harvey Wickes Felter, M.D. (1922). These monographs can be read online at http://www.swsbm.com/FelterMM/Felters.html as pdf files, or purchased as newly typeset hard copy from the Pacific School. HERBAL REPERTORY IN CLINICAL PRACTICE Third Edition, by Michael Moore can be found at http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsMM/HerbRep3.txt and HERBAL ENERGETICS in CLINICAL PRACTICE can be found at http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsMM/HRBENRGT.pdf.

Introduction to Herbs

Four Wednesdays, 7-9:30 PM
TBA, 2008
Two weekend herb walks
In Oakland

From field to kitchen, bath and medicine chest, this class is a simple, pleasurable way to introduce healing plants and edible weeds into your life - while learning the basic tools of the herbalist. Learn field identification, harvesting, wild food cooking, basic preparation of home remedies: tinctures and teas, working with fragrance and hydrotherapy in potpourris, bath salts and herbal baths, herbal cosmetics, and ecological awareness. Through a hands-on approach this class gives a sensual understanding of herbs - opening instinct and intuition, while providing a clear intellectual grounding in the principles of herbology. A nice class for children, too!

Join us for lots of samples, medicines we'll make, and delicious wild food!

$70 to 150 sliding scale

Beginning Herbal Medicine

Section 1:

Two weekends, Saturdays 9:30-2:30 PM and Sundays 1-6 PM
January 27-28, and February 3-4, 2007
In Oakland

or Section 2:

Nine Tuesdays, April 17 2007 to June 5, 2007 7-9:30 PM
In San Francisco or Oakland (tba)
Includes two herb walks

This class gives the student a holistic approach to western herbal medicine based in anatomy and physiology. Emphasizing practical and rational use of herbs to bring about change and balance, the student learns whole body approaches to healing.

Actions of herbal medicines in health and disease for the following body systems: digestive, liver and gallbladder, respiratory, cardio-vascular, urinary, reproductive, endocrine, immune, nervous, muscular-skelatal, skin.

Class covers plant identification, wildcrafting, herbal formulation, elements of diagnosis, and medicine making. Class includes wild foods and medicines we make.

Learn to make: infusions, decoctions, syrups, tinctures, liniments, oils, salves, capsules.

$160 to 360 sliding scale

Clinical Case Study and Counseling Skills for the Herbalist

Offered Fall semester 2007 dates TBA
In Oakland

This class is for advanced students who want to refine and expand their skills as herbalists. Through case review, homework, and class exercises we will explore the many strategies available to the practitioner to promote flexibility in meeting clients' needs. We will explore the interaction between herbalist, client, and therapeutic options. Through self-assessment, the student learns that their skills, strengths, weaknesses, biases, and limits are an active and malleable part of a therapeutic relationship. Student will enlarge and refine their capacity for clinical discernment.

We will examine physiologic strategies in acute, chronic, and constitutional care, both holistic and allopathic, working adjunct to other therapies and therapists, energetics, emotional work, intuitive styles, advocacy, multicultural issues, and ethics. We will cover legal issues in clinical practice, and how to do research on medical testing and evaluating lab results and pharmaceuticals. We will cover client interviewing and evaluation, creating treatment plans and formulation, and evaluating client progress. This class provides excellent preparation for clinical practice, giving the student clear problem solving tools, and communication skills.

Class includes one library field trip to learn research skills.

$408 to 611 sliding scale

Classic Texts of Herbal Medicine

Tuesdays 7-10pm January 29 - May 13 2008

This class will combine lecture and seminar discussion. We will discuss the history of Western herbal medicine, its growth and development of treatment strategies and changing understandings health, disease, suffering, and the role of the client and practitioner .We will cover major authors and social movements in historical context, Starting with Hippocrates, Galen, Avicena, El-Rhazzes and Hildegard, we will spend most of the class on American Herbal traditions that have left us writings in English.

We will cover the often-unacknowledged yet vital influences and contributions of Native American, Asian, African and Islamic medicine towards what became the dominant medical culture of North America. We will read mostly primary sources from the popular health movement starting with Thomson and the Physiomedicalists, the Eclectics, early Naturopaths, and water cure writers. We will finish with Christian sectarian writers Kloss and Christopher.

We will discuss the growth of materia medica, and medical understanding with special attention to the biological revolution of 1859.

$280-612 Sliding scale

Herbs and Psychiatric Issues

TBA 2007
In Oakland

This class offers a harm reduction approach toward working with clients with psychiatric concerns. Herbal medicine has a great to offer those suffering serious psychological pain and trauma, sometimes as a primary therapeutic, sometimes as secondary support, and sometimes as part of a comprehensive self help strategy. Herbs often can fill the space between no meds and prescription drugs, allowing clients treatment options with fewer unpleassant side effects. We will discuss working with and preventing crisis, short term and long-term management strategies, and client education for self-management.

We will cover basics of neurotransmitters in mental health and the social construction of psychological disorders.

We will cover counseling issues in goal setting with clients, and discuss common issues for practitioners working with clients who have serious behavioral and mental health issues.

We will cover interactions between herbs and common psych meds, and parameters for supporting clients transitioning off psychiatric medication, when appropriate.

Slide Scale TBA

TBA 2007
In Oakland

This class offers the herbalist an introduction to law and regulation with the aim of understanding, honoring and protecting the trust and responsibility we hold for our clients in a world in which medical pluralism is rapidly shrinking.

We will begin with a discussion of the nature of ethics and law as standards and guides for offering a high level of care to our clients. We will then proceed to discuss the basic structure of American law, and regulation on local, state, and federal levels. We will explore constitutional underpinnings, case law, statute, regulation, and Supreme Court rulings.

We will discuss rights to practice from the clients point of view, discussing health freedom acts, focusing on California's sb577, its constitutional underpinnings in privacy rights afforded to the client. We will compare California's law with those fo several other states, reviewing the advantages and disadvantages with in each.

We will cover the legal meanings of certification, registration and restriction of title and licensure including the process used to achieve each and the trade-offs each entails. We will discuss their impacts on quality of care, public health and cost to the consumer. We will discuss the role trade and professional organizations have in regulation.

We will cover the legal meanings of medicine, diagnosis and prescribing, fiduciary responsibility and trust, duty of care, informed consent and disclosure, and scope of practice.

We will discuss the historical development and important practical implication of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), cGMP's, Medical Practice Acts, as well as appropriate applications of and common misunderstandings of the Free Excercise Clause.

We will end with a discussion of trends in international law and regulation relating to Traditional Knowledge, intellectual property rights, cultural sovereignty and biopiracy.

This class's exploration of law and regulation serves as an underpinning for understanding and analyses of politcal organization, such as industry efforts in creating GMP's and groups such as the Traditional Medicines Congress as well as providing frameworks for creating effective political strategy.

Slide Scale TBA

Herbal Therapy for Harm Reduction

TBA 2007
In Oakland

We will cover the safe use of herbal medicine for common issues facing active drug users, giving providers specific tools, as well as an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of herbal medicine as a primary and secondary supportive modality. We will also touch on legal issues for licensed and unlicensed care providers, culturally appropriate herb use in different ethnic populations, and herbal preparation needs of homeless clients.

We will cover herbal support for client selfcare and care offered by providers for maintenance, detox, withdrawal, crisis management, safer injection drug use, hepatitis, hiv related issues, herb-drug interactions, and contraindications. We will discuss goal setting for both short term and long term support for positive change in clients dealing with current and past substance abuse.

Slide Scale TBA

Advanced Seminar on Constitutional Therapeutics

TBA 2007
In Oakland

This advanced class furthers the students' knowledge of constitutional evaluation and therapeutic strategies. Understanding people's unique physiological style, we can create focused and detailed treatments not only for disease, but also for strengthening the individual's health, and to tonify against the tendency toward disease. We will study patterns of health, acute and chronic disease, and recovery within the framework of innate and acquired strengths and weaknesses, as well as nervous, endocrine, and organ system balance. A class on tailoring the treatment to the individual.

Lectures emphasize pattern recognition, and treatment strategies. We will begin with an overview of this approach to constitution and then move into more advanced topics. Advanced topics will include immunophysiology of mucosa, chronic pain and hyperalgesia, post traumatic stress syndrome, the effects of sleep cycles on disease and recovery progression, and adrenal cortical anabolic and catabolic patterns, systemic effects of thyroid hormones, CRH, dopamine, oxytocin, somatomedins and growth hormone, prolactin, rennin-angiotensin, aldosterone, and cytokines. Dialogue and active participation are encouraged during the lectures.

$200 to 475 sliding scale

Life Gardening for Herbs and Food

TBA
In Richmond and Oakland
Taught by Iyalode (Kathi) Kinney

This class will take place outside in a Healing Garden. Join us for to learn of gardening in the fall. Most of us have at times forgotten the essential interrelationships amongst the members of nature's community. Gardening inspires us to know and remember the journey from soil to seed and back again. This class will take you full circle so that you will have an intense and private relationship with soil. When we make our own products from herbs, a cup of tea, a poultice for sore limbs, we can go to the "semi orchestrated mini-wilderness" of our gardens.

Learn to heartfully create a place in your backyard, balcony, rooftop, or staircase where you can have quiet, peace, and beauty that will speak to your soul, while touching, tasting, smelling, looking, and contemplating the medicine plants, native plants, and food plants in this class. You can meet most of your needs by growing your own (veggies, herbs, nuts, fruit). We will cover soil science, composting, monoculture vs. biodiversity, ideal conditions for certain plants, propagation, medicinal, aromatic, and culinary plants, natural pest control and herbal household products. Come to this class remembering that Nature, by herself, attracts all the diversity.

$55 to 120 sliding scale

Wildcrafting Trip: High Sierra, Inyo Mountains & Panamint Valley

Monday July 14 - Sunday July 20 2008

This is a trip of moist, cool mountain passes, alpine meadows full of flowers, high desert scrub resplendent with juniper, pinion pine and Joshua trees, a few low, hot desert floors, natural hot springs, and desert waterfalls. Traveling through spectacular vistas, we’ll find some of the most fascinating medicinal plants in California. Beginning in the Central Valley, we will spend most of the trip in the Sierras and spend a night in Death Valley.

This trip offers a deep exploration of California's medicinal plants. This is a car camping trip and includes gentle easy hikes. We will often camp at beautiful wild hotsprings. We will cover ethical ecological harvesting, and medicine making. Clear understanding of each plant’s medicinal actions and use in healing is emphasized. Students are encouraged to understand physiologic plant actions through their senses, as well as intellect. For each herb, the student will learn where to get it, how to evaluate its quality, basic pharmacology, physiologic actions, when to use it and when not to use it, dosage and preparations, diagnostics, as well as its application in acute and chronic disease, constitutional therapy, preventative medicine, and in supplementing other forms of medicine and healing. Lots of clinical information and discussion. And of course physiology made fun, and accessible. There will also be time for quiet rapport with the weeds, shrubs, trees and flowers, as well as plant lore, history, and wild food.

$250 to 550 sliding scale

Wildcrafting Trip: Redwoods, Trinity Alps & Six-Rivers Area

Monday June 30-Sunday July 6 2008

This trip offers an exploration of the rich northern California flora from west to east. Starting in the coastal redwood forests by the Pacific Ocean we’ll travel east to study plants descending from the Cascades. We will cover the plants of mid-elevation mountains and low rivers ending at the border of Nevada.

This trip offers a deep exploration of California’s medicinal plants. This is a car camping trip and includes gentle easy hikes. We will often camp at beautiful wild hotsprings. We will cover ethical ecological harvesting, and medicine making. Clear understanding of each plant’s medicinal actions and use in healing is emphasized. Students are encouraged to understand physiologic plant actions through their senses, as well as intellect. For each herb, the student will learn where to get it, how to evaluate its quality, basic pharmacology, physiologic actions, when to use it and when not to use it, dosage and preparations, diagnostics, as well as its application in acute and chronic disease, constitutional therapy, preventative medicine, and in supplementing other forms of medicine and healing. Lots of clinical information and discussion. And of course physiology made fun, and accessible. There will also be time for quiet rapport with the weeds, shrubs, trees and flowers, as well as plant lore, history, and wild food.

$250 to 550 sliding scale

Weekend Trip: Point Reyes National Seashore

Saturday and Sunday May 17 - 18 2008

Summer Clinical Intensive

Date TBA
In Washington or Oregon TBA

Midwifery 101

Saturdays 9 am- 4 pm
TBA 2007
In Oakland
Open to all women
Babies at the breast warmly welcomed
Taught by Susan Claypool

Is midwifery your calling? Honor the possibility. Ally with dynamic women pursuing education rooted in woman's ways of knowing. Consider the political, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of motherhood. Deepen your compassion through clinical excellence. Ground yourself in the physiology of pregnancy and birth. Understand the distinctions between doula care, nursing, midwifery and medicine. Develop trust in your own perceptions, hone your ability to think critically, and expand your autonomy. Let your desires ripen. Put your love into service.

In this ten week beginning intensive you will gain insight, knowledge, and hands on skills through passionate discussion, demanding didactics, and practical experience. Excellent preparation for apprenticeship or clinic training, this core class covers the fundamentals of complete midwifery care.

Learn to take blood pressure, measure fundal height, determine fetal position, do routine urinalysis, evaluate fetal heart tones, and assess pelvimetry. Learn differential diagnosis: the normalcy of breeches and twins.

$800

Physiology for the Herbalist

Fall Semester 2008 7:00-10:00 PM

51 hours
In Oakland

Oriented towards the student and practitioner of holistic or alternative healthcare, this class will give the student:

This class requires some outside reading. Although at times challenging, this class promises to be fascinating, explorative and fun. This fall we have good multimedia support.

There are two textbooks for this class. Choose one or both. Textbook of Medical Physiology, by Guyton and Hall tenth edition, Saunders 2000, and Physiological Medicine, by Lingappa and Farey, McGraw-Hill 2000. Textbook of Medical Physiology is dry, very detailed, and fact filled. It emphasizes the "what" of physiology. Physiologic Medicine is juicy, full of guidance in using physiology as a tool to understand and serve people in need. While not as detailed in the facts of physiology as the forementioned book it will help you think physiologically-it emphasizes the "how" of physiologic understanding.

$320 to 695 sliding scale

Creating Your Own Herbal Medicine Chest

TBA 2007
In Oakland

This two part class teaches you the basic skills of medicine making: from harvest, through preparation, to medicine chest. We will make the basic medicines that are the foundation of self-care for common ailments and first aid.

Class includes one herb walk. We will make lots of medicines - participants will each prepare a personal medicine kit.

Learn to make:

$75 to 132 sliding scale

Spanish for Healthcare Providers

Fall 2007 dates TBA
In Oakland
Taught by Óscar Alvarez

This is a beginning conversational Spanish language class for healthcare providers. We will cover basic vocabulary, special vocabularies for herbalists and other CAM practitioners as needed, verb tenses, medical and anatomical terminology, greeting, and interviewing. This class will help practitioners communicate effectively and respectfully by taking into account the client's social and cultural context.

$150 to 250 sliding scale

Counseling Skills for Healthcare Providers

Fall Semester 2008



In Oakland

In this sixteen week class we will explore boundaries, countertransfererance, confidentiality, burnout, conflict, anger, practitioner self care, trust, active listening, and grounded attention to help participants bring greater presence, appropriate intimacy, trustworthiness, clarity and compassion into their work serving clients. It is this clarity, focus and flexibility that allows us to more truly meet our clients, and further meet the complexity of their needs while growing emotionally, intellectually and spiritually as clinicians.

Other topics include client centered work and harm reduction, the relationship between public health and individual health work, working with social service organizations and social workers, death, grief and suicide, sexual assault and incest, family systems and perinatal support, goal setting and values clarification, ethics, modeling, and communication styles. We will also discuss working with people with serious mental health and substance abuse issues.

We will cover client intake and interviewing styles, history taking and genograms.

We will explore cultural competence and cultural humility, working across class and cultural difference including Native American, African American, Asian American, and Latino cultural health issues, as well as working with members of sexual minority communities. We will also cover working with clients with serious psychiatric diagnosis, and working with social service institutions.

We will have numerous guest presenters.

This class requires emotional presence and reflection, but is not group therapy.

There are three textbooks for this class. On Being a Therapist (Jossey Bass Social and Behavioral Science Series) by Jeffrey Kottler. Get the 1993 edition, isbn 1555425550, Practicing Harm Reduction Psychotherapy: An Alternative Approach to Addictions by Patt Denning isbn 1593850964, and either of the following two books by Rafael Campo: The Poetry of Healing: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Desire isbn 0393040097 or The Desire to Heal: A Doctor's Education in Empathy, Identity, and Poetry isbn 0393317714.

 

 

$288 to 576 sliding scale

Seasonal Chinese Tonic Herbs and Traditional Chinese Cooking


In Oakland
Taught by Nam Singh

This course will introduce the student to the theory and practice of fundamental Daoist principles in the context of traditional orthodox Chinese Daoism.

This class will also introduce the principles of traditional Chinese nutritional cooking with specific information on individual foods and a detailed discussion of herbal combination for a balanced meal. Chef Nam Singh will perform a step-by-step cooking and tasting demonstration of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Students will receive information about practical techniques: selection and preparation of foods. Autumn is the season of harvest when the Earth slowly but inexorably moves towards winter. Pungent foods are best eaten during this period, including an array of local food items which will be described.

The two-part course will also introduce the cooking principles of traditional Chinese dietary therapy with specific information on individual foods and a detailed discussion of herbal ingredients in preparing a meal.

$50 to 100 sliding scale

Herbs for Winter Health

TBA 2008
In Oakland

Winter comes with its long nights, festive gatherings, and colds, flus, and sniffles. In this class we will cover simple treatments for this season's ailments. We will also discuss cooking for winter health. Join us in a light lunch of flavorful winter foods as well as medicine making.

$42 to 87 sliding scale

Epidemiology Microbiology & Infectious Disease:
Basics for Herbalists I

TBA 2008
In Oakland

This is a class about community health from microbial culture to human culture. We live on a planet who's dominant life form is microbial. Nine tenths of the cells in our bodies are microorganisms genetically distinct from us. We are in community with the microbial world. Through understanding microbial life cycles, and their interactions with ours we can better understand health, disease, prevention, appropriate treatment strategies, and public health issues. A Darwinian approach to environmmental medicine. We will study basic concepts, practical applications in our work, and how to do further research.

There is a lot of required reading for this class. Before class please read Guns, Germs, and Steel : the fates of human societies. By Jared M. Diamond. W.W. Norton & Co. 1999. ISBN: 0393317552, and The Coming Plague : newly emerging diseases in a world out of balance by Laurie Garrett. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. ISBN: 0140250913

$84 to 168 sliding scale

Herbs and Massage

TBA 2008, 1 PM-6:00 PM
In Oakland

This class is about the use of herbs in the practice of massage and covers:

$30 to 70 sliding scale and $20 materials fee

Herb Walks

Please see our Herb Walks page