The evolution of an Herbalist Apprenticeship

Not all educational opportunities are created equally. I attempt to bring balance and harmony back into the educational experience by emphasizing experience and bringing focus back to the Heart-Mind

As I just wrapped up the 2022 Bioregional Herbalist Apprenticeship this past weekend, I missed my weekly Sunday post. But in the spirit of concluding this apprenticeship season after a 6 year hiatus, I’d like to share with you some of my progression towards what I’m offering today.

I offered my first herbalist apprenticeship in 2010 (Sonoran Herbal Apprenticeship) to be held in the Sonoran desert surrounding Tucson, AZ. I limited it to 3 apprentices total. I had to turn 3 people away. I wanted to commit my time and energy to no more than 3 people and build a strong foundation for the ‘army of herbalists’ I had hoped to build. I learned a lot in the process.

Within this concept of my “army of herbalists”, I had imagined that (as I continued to amass more and more information myself) I could drill into my students - through weekly immersive experiences in the field - all the relevant information for the plants of our bioregion via the oral tradition.

They were to learn - from experience - the scientific names, the folk names (in 3-6 different languages), the primary habitat, other plant associations, optimal time to gather, how to gather the herb (or various parts of the plant), how to process it into medicine (various ways and methods), how to apply this medicine, and all relevant associated information including physiology, anatomy, pathophysiology, plant energetics, and more (just as I had embarked to learn and assimilate all this knowledge).

This ‘army of herbalists’ would be at the ready to attend to any complaint or health situation that might present itself, almost entirely self-sufficient (in terms of access to plant material and the knowledge to procure and make use of it), all the while deepening one’s heartfelt, or spiritual, connection to the landscape, continually learning from the landscape, from the plants.

I felt the world needed this. I felt the world would be a better place as this phenomenon took hold and more and more people woke up to the magic and the potency latent in the wild plants of our surroundings.

This was (and in many ways, still is) a beautiful vision, and as you might imagine, a highly improbable and unrealistic vision to manifest.

Yet, I persisted for some time to see this come to fruition. The first year came to a close after over 500 hours spent in the field. I had expected my students to “know more”, to have retained and assimilated much more of the knowledge that I was sharing. “What am I doing wrong?” I thought…

I continued to offer my apprenticeship, but in much more modest form - far less intensive. I also continued to teach for a wide variety of groups, students of related disciplines, and community members. As I found myself exploring the concepts of herbalism more, and continuing to immerse myself in the landscape, through the seasons, I found that there were other voices, and inspirations, coming to me to expand my perspective.

I began to receive feedback from participants on my walk that their entire idea of themselves had shifted. They released deeply-seeded fears (often about being out in wild nature) and surmounted physical limits within themselves that they previously didn’t see possible - and I wouldn’t have considered any of these walks particularly arduous.

There was something happening, something transpiring between the plants and myself, and the participants of my walks, that was gradually allowing a new (and old) perspective to slip back in for me.

When I began this journey it was one of relationship with Nature, an awakening unto myself, a very unambitious journey. I had no notion whatsoever of “becoming an herbalist”, initially. I was curious and wanted to learn something that was unusual and striking in this way to me. But as I deepened and developed my relationship with Nature as an adult, I began to feel a deeply spiritual connection to the natural world, and by consequence, the plants around me. This began my journey.

Somehow, after the initial introduction and immersion into the plant world, something old within me took over, a programmed part of myself took the reins and said, “step aside sonny, I’ve got this.” I relinquished my creative and expansive self and allowed for a tight rein to be placed upon my approach to learning and, therefore, by extension, those whom I was sharing my progress with.

The natural world had taught me vulnerability, fluidity, and expansiveness alongside uprightness, fullness of strength within my muscles, and a confidence in thought, word, and action. These concepts were all intermingled, not at odds with each other. But the programming I received during my childhood education - alongside fundamental trauma responses - took control and I lost an aspect of the heart-mind that had brought me down this path of healing in the first place.

Fast forward to today: My heart and mind have undergone a tremendous (and gradual) transformation allowing me to prioritize space for the heart-mind in my healing work and the work I do with plants. I no longer feel compelled to acquiesce to a “more rational view”, or something that goes against the status quo, when I clearly feel in my heart something else to be true or relevant and in need of expression.

The plants have shown me over and over again that I must simply hold the space for their natural presence to be felt, and to some extent understood, so that humans may once again perceive this medicine and become in tuned to the relevance of these powerful relationships.

The heart mind is all too often over-ridden in our fast-paced society, and in my view is screaming for our attention. All too many disease diagnoses are nothing more than the infinitely creative manner in which the human body expresses its desire to be noticed. When one sits before Nature, one is noticed AND responded to in kind. This is the magic of the work that we do in my apprenticeship today. THIS is what I was neglecting early on for the purpose of achieving an outward goal of appearing competent in the material and extensively knowledgeable in the subject matter.

But if we are not knowledgeable about the contents of our own hearts, how much wisdom do we truly possess?

For this, my apprenticeship has become an apprenticeship to Mother Nature, the plants, and the wisdom of our ancestors, first and foremost.