Herbal Medicine Immersion for Health and Wellness

Learn how to begin or expand an herbal practice at home by exploring the plant world in Esalen Farm & Gardens. Experience the touch, taste and “personalities” of common garden plants that can add to your vitality and ease common ailments like indigestion, headaches, muscle strains, and colds and flu. You will gain a broad overview of home-scale herbalism and learn techniques and guidelines for incrementally expanding your herbal repertoire in a fun, joyful and safe manner.

Over this month-long immersion, you will spend time in the beautiful gardens, identifying key patterns in plant identification and learn how to use your senses to discern some of the medicinal qualities of cultivated and wild plants. Through experiential learning, you will gain confidence in how to harvest, dry and process fresh medicinal herbs.

Every week, you will experience new ways to take and make herbal medicines, including teas, decoctions, tinctures, nut butter balls, syrups, medicinal oils, creams and salves. You will also learn how to infuse more nutrition into your regular diet with medicinal pestos, herbal vinegars, tangy and refreshing shrubs, culinary oils, herb infused jello and nourishing broths.

The majority of time will be spent in the field with the plants or in the kitchen processing herbs. Additional activities include lectures and focused study to create a personalized health-promoting herbal regime designed to fit your needs and lifestyle.

You will leave with an individualized plan of which herbs, and in what form, can support your health and wellness. You will also have samples of herbal preparations to take home and the recipes to make them again on your own.

Required reading: Chech, Making Plant Medicine.

(A $50 materials fee will be added to the cost of the workshop.)