Herbal Medicine

An Introduction to our Herbal Studies

With the recent and well deserved revival of the ancient art of healing with plants, the need for more fully qualified Medical Herbalists has never been more acute.

We provide a complete education in health, taking into account the traditional approach of herbal medicine - as a way of life, which cannot always be quantified in terms of strict academia.

In this way, we train a small number of dedicated individuals to be fully competent Medical Herbalists. This requires very practical-based skills, reflected in the many hands-on sessions scheduled throughout the course: the Clinical and Apprenticeship hours spent with a trained Herbalist throughout your training ensures that you have a firm working knowledge of the Herbalist’s craft. You will have gained in depth knowledge of more than 150 herbs and will have personally tasted each one!

If we want to continue to enjoy our right in this country for trained Medical Herbalists to have the right of primary diagnosis (a licence which is unique in Europe and perhaps even in the ‘developed’ world), we have to acquire a high level of orthodox clinical skills.

To this end, the first two years of the course contain, alongside Herbal Science - Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology. Although this is taught in an imaginative and sensitive way, there is no getting away from the amount of work entailed in learning to be safe in practice.

Overall, our aim is to develop practitioners who do not see medicine as a solely clinical science - this has led to our present system which seems to gratify less and less of its practitioners and patients.We prefer to work with students who can appreciate medicine as an art using science properly as its tool. It obviously takes a special individual who can stand comfortably in both fields - by introducing counselling skills early on in the training, students are encouraged to explore personal development to prepare solid ground for group dynamics during training and a person-centred approach once in practice.

Herbal Medicine has provided safe holistic healthcare for centuries: three-quarters of the world still rely on it for their primary health care. As a School, we are proud to be playing our part in keeping this traditional healing art alive and relevant in today’s world and to be working with like-minded people in order to provide a strong crop of Medical Herbalists, to safeguard traditional healthcare in the new century.