Here at Traditional Roots, we love nothing more than getting our hands on the plants in real time — and sharing this with you. But we understand that sometimes life intervenes.
That’s why we embrace the opportunity to use technology to spread the herbal love. We record many of our classes and conference sessions so you can join us virtually if not always in person.
Below are some of our top recent offerings. You can find even more on theNUNM Continuing and Community Education website. But take a look here and see if something strikes your fancy. And we still hope to see you in person some day.
Presenter: Greta de la Montagne, RH (AHG)
2.0 general CEUs approved by OBNM
Herbal First Aid takes advantage of widely available materials such as kitchen spices, weeds and wild plants. Knowing which useful remedies are often close at hand can be empowering to communities, especially those facing economic challenges, a catastrophic natural disaster, or just simply those who wish to live closer to the earth and focus on resilience and self-sufficiency. This class covers basic herbal first aid skills and assessment tools gathered from Greta’s 26+ years of herbal first aid and healthcare practice.
Botanical Medications of CNS Diseases: Dementia, Epilepsy and Cerebral Vascular Disease
Presenter: Jillian Stansbury, ND
2.0 CEUs (0.5 pharmacy and 1.5 general) for NDs approved by OBNM
This session will investigate inflammatory and oxidative stressors that contribute to central nervous system diseases, and botanical influences on circulation, neuroprotection and cerebrovascular circulation. We will delve into molecular research on neurotransmitters, herbal mechanisms of action, and clinical trials to best review the evidence for using herbs to treat central nervous system diseases.
Culture is Medicine
Presenter: Gary Ferguson, ND
2.0 cultural competency CEUs approved by OBNMMany of our natural healing approaches have a deep connection to indigenous cultures around the world. As we examine the cultural roots of these modalities, as we deepen our understanding of the contexts from which our medicines come, we deepen both our understanding and practice of these healing agents and techniques. In this workshop, we will dialogue around the healing plants along with the stories and ceremonies that go with them from the indigenous cultures of the North. We will cover the origins of blockbuster drugs like Tamoxifen, whose analog is from Taxus brevifolia (Pacific Yew), and how intellectual property in the future of medicines from plants is being handled differently than in the past.
2.0 CEUs (0.5 pharmacy and 1.5 general) for NDs approved by OBNM
This addiction primer reviews concepts in the field of addiction and herbal intervention. We will begin to review past and current conceptualizations of addiction and addictive behavior. Going beyond the idea of addiction as solely patterns of over use, we will review key ideas and frameworks such as safety, tissue dependence and harm reduction. With a solid understanding of addiction and behavior, we will review an addiction materia medica and go in depth to look at our plant allies in the realm of addiction.
Other classes by Lydia: That Gut Feeling (2.0 general CEUs for NDs approved by OBNM)
Fever generally has a series of distinct stages, the early stage when the temperature is rising, a middle stage when the temperature is at its peak, an intermittent stage when it fluctuates, and finally, a period of recovery after the fever has passed. Individual herbs and complex formulation should be selected according to the presenting symptoms in the different stages. We will cover differentials in herbal actions and materia medica and describe formulation strategies to address the different stages of fever.
Many herbs can be used to support a person with cancer – well researched options include turmeric, green tea, medicinal mushrooms and adaptogens. However, less frequently used are the cytotoxic herbs that target cancer cells directly. These are often drop-dose herbs with significant risks and side effects, but are also some our most useful materia medica in treating cancer. Knowing when and how to use these herbs, understanding their complex phyto-pharmacology and risk profiles, and their constitutional indications can significantly improve clinical outcomes. Specific discussion includes herb / drug interactions and combining herbs safely with chemotherapy. Botanical remedies discussed include: Artemisia annua, Podophylum peltatum, Taxus brevifolia, Asimina triloba, Camptotheca acuminata, Phytolacca sp., Chelidonium majus, Thuja occidentalis.
The number of people suffering from chronic back pain in this country is staggering. Chronic pain has far-reaching impact on all aspects of wellness, deeply affecting the spirit as well as the body. Conventional treatment usually involves strong pain killers and surgery. Both of these approaches come with significant side effects and risks, and often do not yield the relief they promise. The world of plant medicines offers another avenue to address these injuries, sometimes providing radical benefits in restoring wellness to beleaguered backs. Herbalist Jim McDonald will share his experiences using plants to address back and joint injuries, emphasizing the underlying patterns and imbalances too often left unaddressed.
Using a case of a 2-year old girl with gastritis and rheumatoid arthritis caused by medication overuse, we’ll springboard into the impact of diet, lifestyle, and medical interventions on kids’ health, and how to prevent and reverse allergies, eczema, asthma, and autoimmune conditions.
Weeds are despised, poisoned and known for creating significant environmental damage. We spend billions of dollars and endless work hours in our attempts to eradicate them, while damaging our environment further by spraying toxic herbicides. What if there was a way to reduce their spread without dangerous chemicals that also provided people (and animals) with time-tested medicines to cure our ills? In this class we explore the medicinal use of common aggressive weeds and how they are used in other cultures (TCM, Ayurveda, TEM) as effective remedies. By encouraging the use of these plants we provide environmental benefits, reduce pressure on over-harvested indigenous herbs and have an almost endless source of fresh, potent and effective medicinal plants growing in our gardens, backyards, farm fields and forests.
We know that people experience and heal from trauma differently. Have you ever wondered why herbal and other therapies that should be effective don’t seem to work in some cases? The emerging field of psychogenetics offers important insights that can help us better individualize our herbal, flower-essence and nutritional therapies and to help people truly heal. We’ll begin with an overview of basic genetic variances that raise the risk of developing PTSD and discuss how to identify them in practice – with or without genetic testing. Using those insights we’ll differentiate among different herbs, flower essences and nutrients for each PTSD subtype.
We recognize the cultural significance and value of gardens and connection with the land to heal and build community health and resilience; First Foods, Traditional Foods, Healthy Foods, Plant Medicines, all restore and reclaim our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. How do we re-Indigenize the urban landscape through ceremony and create sacred space for recovery from historical trauma and transformational healing? We’ll look at examples of Healing Gardens integrated into urban office spaces, schools and institutional settings, as an experiential and cultural component for growing and gathering culturally significant native plants for food, medicine and ceremony.
Organ reserve was first was described in the 80s by Dr. James Fries after seeing the significant variability in function in geriatric populations. Defined as innate and environmentally induced modes of favorable adaption that lead to extended cellular defense as well as physical and cognitive function, this construct is not just about genes. Environmental exposures such as diet and medicinal plants appear to play a significant role in extending functional capacity. Unfortunately, the paradigm of organ reserve is poorly understood in clinical therapeutics four decades later. We discuss this insightful and clinically relevant model and the implications of the trophorestorative plants that may preserve our reserve and induce the ability of organs to successfully return to their original physiological state following repeated episodes of biochemical, physical and emotional stress.
The difference between medicine and poison is indeed dosage, but some feel drawn to explore the shadows: the path of using toxic botanicals. What is a poison? What some many would call poison, might not be so for others. Not all herbalists feel called to this realm, but for those that do this is an opportunity to go deeper. This presentation covers uses, parts used, preparation, safety and other considerations when employing these plants in the practice of modern herbal medicine. Telkes also compares how some of these are used in homeopathic medicine and flower essence therapy versus whole plant preparations.
2.0 (.25 pharmacy, 1.75 general) CEUs approved by OBNM
In this 2 hour presentation Dr El-Hashemy shares his experience using botanical medicines in complex conditions in developmental pediatrics as well as pediatric psychiatry. The focus will be on game-changing, evidence-informed use of selected traditional botanicals from eastern and western traditions. In pragmatic manner, we cover indications, traditional uses, state of the evidence, dosing, concurrent use with prescription medications (safe to combine, interactions and contraindication), how to motivate compliance in a child, and my favorite getting kids to make their own formulations! Dr El-Hashemy shares practical pearls in prescribing, stocking, dispensing of common and not so common botanical medicines. This presentation focuses on the child exhibiting cognitive delay, the impulsive/inattentive child (ADHD), the anxious child, the depressed child, and the child with substance-related or addictive disorder.
Depression and anxiety are major public health problems and contribute to cancer, heart disease, obesity, and neurological diseases. They often occur together and include debilitating restlessness, fatigue, anger, concentration problems, tension, irritability, and/or sleep problems. Constitutional assessment, blood testing and examination of the environment help to build an effective protocol using herbs, essential oils, nutrients, foods, and life-style changes, which may allow a patient to reduce or eliminate use of benzodiazepines, SSRIs and other medications.
Aromatherapy Deluxe
Presenter: Amanda Lattin, MA, BA, RA, Dip.Aroma., MH
10.0 CEUs (7.0 general and 3.0 pain management) approved by OBNM
In this weekend intensive, Registered Aromatherapist Amanda Lattin reviews six of these exotic oils, covering phytochemistry, biochemical effects in the human body, clinical protocols, case studies, safety, indications and contraindications. The weekend includes an in-depth discussion of the ethics of harvest, production and export/import of essential oils. The class wraps up with an interactive segment on custom formulation and protocol design for common complaints including migraine, PMS, grief and loss, insomnia, depression and anxiety.
Numerous native American herbs have largely fallen out of use (Morella/Myrica, Sassafras, Chionanthus, Fraxinus, Polymnia, Chelone, Asarum, etc.). The reasons for this are discussed, including the concept of “herbs of commerce” and how profit-driven enterprises has real toxic effects on clinical practice, the move away from contact with plants as urbanization continues unabated, as well as possible failures in the education system for herbalists today. Dr. Yarnell also discusses how to use some of these valuable, forgotten herbs. The case of revival of use of Pedicularis and Fouquieria is used to show that this trend can be reversed, and that there is enormous opportunity for clinicians and herbal scholars today to help maintain and broaden the materia medica.
Join Richo Cech on a photographic tour through his gardens at Strictly Medicinal Seeds in Williams, Oregon. Participants learn about the medicinal uses, horticulture and landscaping potential of elderberry (Sambucus nigra), hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), linden (Tilia cordata), witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), slippery elm (Ulmus rubra), spice bush (Lindera benzoin), horse chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) and Eleutherococcus (E. senticosus). Richo also discusses herbaceous medicinal plants that grow well in the shade of these trees.
Simply changing what we drink can have a profound impact on our health. In this hands-on workshop Elise Krohn will share knowledge from Native Infusion: Rethink Your Drink. Elise co-developed the curriculum and educational resources with Muckleshoot Traditional Plants Program Director Valerie Segrest through First Nations Development Institute to promote healthy and culturally rooted beverages. Elise will share specific seasonal plants that can be prepared as flavored waters and teas including evergreen tree tips, dandelion, hawthorn, huckleberry, nettle, strawberry and rose. Strategies for educating people about the health impacts of sugary drinks will be included, as well as time to sample teas.
Sue Sierralupe discusses the four most common mental health conditions she sees in her street clinic in Eugene, Oregon, including anxiety, schizophrenia syndrome and symptoms, substance abuse and several forms of depression. She shares the herbal and nutritional protocols that have been most effective clinically along with principles of patient-centered care.
Herbalists, naturopaths and traditional healers have all understood the power of bitters to support digestion, ease bloating and gas. Now, new models and research point to the possibility that bitters have a much wider role in health and disease. Could chronic thyroid disease, heart disease, metabolic disease, and diabetes be a bitter deficiency? Is our aversion to bitter foods and herbs hurting our health? This talk covers the emerging theories and describes a new world of activity for the most ancient of tastes.
In 1896, Benedict Lust had opened up his first business selling health products, including a full line of Father Sebastian Kneipp herbs. Kneipp’s apotheca became the foundation for the early naturopaths and continue to form the main elements of an herbal apothecary today. Lust had studied with Kneipp and used the entire Kneipp apotheca, which consisted of less than 50 common herbs all of which were classified as non-toxic. Over the next two decades, Lust enriched and expanded the Kneippian apotheca to include more than 175 herbs — with uses that may surprise that may surprise the modern practitioner.
This lecture covers clinical management of common problems in women, integrating the use of traditional plants as used for generations of herbalists and naturopaths, while simultaneously incorporating the best of modern scientific botanical research. Examples will include cystitis, PMS, endometriosis, PCOS, menopause, anxiety, depression, insomnia and more.
Medicine-making is rooted in many cultural healing traditions. Throughout history we find at the center of medicine-making, a knowledge of the way in which the elements of all matter, including the Self of the healer, as ether, fire, air, water and earth can be embodied in care. Making medicine is a healing practice in which the ancient Hermetic maxim “As Above, So Below” can be demonstrated as healing art, science and spiritual practice. Today, however, the act of writing a prescription may be the only connection between practitioners and their remedies. Herbal medicine-making tradition, in which the “medicine” of the maker can be embodied in simple caring acts — such as infusing a tisane, applying a compress, preparing a footbath and simmering syrup — offers an opportunity for meaningful reform of practice.Drawing upon botanical practice, the science of caring and pattern recognition and lessons learned from primary historical research, this session focuses on skills associated with making, becoming and being medicine. Learn making medicine from caring communities during the “lost decades” in American history, specifically the Shakers, who were renowned medicine makers and healthcare reformers — founders of American pharmacy as we know it today. Become medicine as you participate in the ancient ritual of tea tasting and learn to prepare and apply baths and topical remedies, which serve as chalices for the embodiment of the elements of Self. Explore the science of demonstrating care and the art of peacemaking, the expression of being medicine as a living ethic that serves as a foundation for sustainable healthcare reform.
Empower your patients with potent home remedies they can grow in their gardens – and use as daily support for their health. Herbs can be the most accessible medicines, but buying them in capsules, as tinctures or even as bulk tea quickly becomes expensive. Fortunately, reclaiming the people’s medicine requires as little as a sunny windowsill. This class will review some key herbal medicines patients can grow and use easily and safely, forming a foundation for overall wellness while reconnecting both practitioner and patient with the roots of holistic medicine: nature.
Traditional Roots Conferences
Get the best of our signature event! Classes are available a la carte or as a discounted package.
The House that Herbs Built: Creating Safe Space for People with Mental Illness
2019 Traditional Roots Herbal Conference
2018 Traditional Roots Herbal Conference
2017 Traditional Roots Herbal Conference
2016 Traditional Roots Conference
2014 Traditional Roots Conference