The Village Herbalist—Online Herbalism Certification Program

It’s finally happening – we’re officially offering our herbalism certification program live online!

Click Here to Apply

For more than 20 years, we have held our herbal certification classes at our campus in Berkeley. We have helped hundreds of budding Bay Area herbalists grow into practitioners, create product lines, become medicine makers, and heal their communities with traditional medicine.

We have known that we wanted to offer an online herbalism program for a while, and we are finally at a point where we can say, “it’s time.”

Why Are We Offering An Online Herbalism Certification?

Well, to put it simply, this is something that potential students have been asking for, for years.

It is our mission to offer high-quality herbal education to as many people as possible. We believe that learning to heal yourself and your community empowers you to make real changes in the world for the better.

Only having classes in one place has been lovely because we can hug and celebrate our own healing journeys together over cups of tea. But we realized that the global community needs us to step up, grow into today’s worldly reality, and train even more urban herbalists to fight the good fight.

That’s what BHC is on this planet to do, and this broadens our opportunity to do it. 

The Difference Between Online and In Person Curriculum

The good thing about our curriculum is that we have been teaching the traditional methods of healing for so long, that we really have the syllabus nailed down. Each week, we have three hours of class time with two separate focuses – a lecture and a relevant medicine making demonstration. 

Herbal Medicine Making Demonstrations

We utilize powerpoint slideshows and we offer hands on step by step demonstrations in medicine making right at our center. We have been able to easily convert this method to serve an online class! This is especially true since the Coronavirus shut down our on campus classes for a little while in 2020. The difference here is that your demonstrations are in front of you to watch rather than doing each week’s medicine making as a class.

More days, Less Hours

In our on-campus classes we offer these two parts over a single three hour period once a week. Because our online students don’t have the opportunity to be in our Herbal Room during our breaks, we decided to split up the class time. Instead of three hours once a week, you’ll have two separate days of 1.5 hours within the week. This also allows us to keep the hours earlier for East Coast students.

Gone are the Monthly Herb Walks

We also won’t have monthly herbal walks in the Bay Area Nature reserves since our online students are located all around the US. (Though we do encourage getting a field guide for your own area and taking yourselves on a plant identification walk!)

Instead we will offer an herb camp intensive at the end of the year (see below for details).

Herb of the Week

The Herb of the Week is regularly a favorite of our Alumni. We knew didn’t want to give this up for the online class!

So at the beginning of this long term herbalist certification class, you will receive a package on your doorstep! It will have various teas and tinctures of singular herbs that you will work with throughout the course. A different herb for every week!

In the lecture at the beginning of each week, we will talk about the herb from the week before. This time is to share the actions of the herb and hear anecdotes about the plant medicine itself.

“This One Time at Herb Camp”

Admittedly, the online class is missing being physically in touch with your classmates and the herbs around us. Because we’re creating a class for people around the United States, or the world, we won’t see the same plants on all of our walks. This poses an interesting challenge for plant identification.

But we solved that too. Instead of the several herbal field trips that we take in a year, students will be invited to our very first HERB CAMP!

This is a week long, glamping adventure created only for the students of the Village Herbalist. We will provide the meals and the lodging for an entire week, along with teaching you sustainable harvesting, on-site medicine making, and plant identification in the seriously beautiful California Mountains. (pending wildfire safety)

This is optional for students, but highly recommended for practitioners that want to connect deeper with the land they’re harvesting from.

How to Sign Up for the Online Herbal Certification Program

To sign up for The Village Herbalist – Online Herbalism Certification Program, you do need to apply.

After we receive your application and the $250 non refundable processing fee for your application, we will reach out to you with more information about the program!

To learn more about the program structure and fill out your application click here.