🌿 Join Us for the 36th Annual Symposium, August 14–16, 2026 in Black Mountain, NC!

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Symposium Class Descriptions

Pre-Symposium Intensives (Friday, August 14th):

Hands on Reishi Double Extraction Workshop

Gina Rivers

This immersive 4-hour, hands-on intensive invites participants into a modern, clinically relevant approach to crafting functional mushroom dual extractions. Blending traditional wisdom with contemporary technique, we will walk step-by-step through the full dual extraction process from start to finish.

Participants will engage directly with the extraction process using tools such as a pressure cooker and Magic Butter machine, allowing us to complete and observe the full preparation within the workshop. These methods are designed to be practical, scalable, and adaptable to a wide range of medicinal mushrooms.
Beyond technique, we will explore the why—examining the biochemical and clinical rationale behind dual extraction, and why simple hydroethanolic preparations are often insufficient for mushrooms. The discussion will extend into clinical applications, with a focus on Reishi (Ganoderma spp.), including its role in clinical practice and how to pair it effectively with complementary herbal allies

This intensive is designed to equip herbalists with the skills and clinical insight needed to confidently prepare and integrate mushroom extracts into their clinical work, as well as for home or community use.
Participants will leave not only with a deeper understanding of functional mushroom extraction, but also with their own 2 oz dual extract in hand.

Healing Connections: Plant-Forward Protocols for the Hypermobility Syndromes & their Co-Morbidities

Lauren Eadline

The genetic connective tissue diseases that impact collagen such as the Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS) and their multi-factorial cousin Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD)   are as complex as they are devastating. Far from being “loose joint diseases”, and far from being rare, these conditions are gaining time in the “wellness” spotlight while also continuing to cause confusion, skepticism, and a significant amount  of debility for folks afflicted with them. Separating fact from medical fad, and weaving  the  fundamentals of clinical anatomy & physiology with traditional herbal energetics, join us first as we work through the real and surprisingly far-reaching domino effects that defective collagen has on the body, in particular in the joints, brain, spinal cord and autonomic nervous&nb sp;system.

Much of our  focus will be on presentation identification: a thorough review of the signs & symptoms of hEDS & HSD both in the history & physical assessment that should prompt the consideration of these often-missed conditions. The energetic patterns of imbalance that often present  in hypermobility disorders will be addressed, and lastly, we will review&nbs p;protocols for support that focus on interventional support, botanicals, and stability-focused movement. While the list of potential co-morbidities  and consequences of EDS & HSD is long and complex, we will primarily address their impacts in the musculoskeletal & nervous systems, including pain management, joint instability, dysautonomia and disorders of the structural nerves. We will spend special time with POTS, its multifactorial root causes in the hypermobile body, pathophysiology and potential impacts. Furthermore, we will directly address how to assess for POTS and other forms of dysautonomia effectively, including methods to correctly identify root cause(s).  

Keynote Address: Patricia Kyritsi Howell

Honoring Our Legacy, Embracing the Future: 37 Years of the American Herbalists Guild

[ Description coming soon! ]

Symposium Classes (Saturday, August 15th & Sunday, August 16th):

A Walk on the Wild Side (Plant Walk)

David Winston

Join David Winston as he explores the rich and diverse flora of Western North Carolina through both ethnobotanical and clinical perspectives. This guided plant walk will highlight the traditional uses, cultural histories, and modern therapeutic applications of regional medicinal plants.

Autoimmunity IRL: Stories from the ESHM Clinic

Thomas Easley

Most of what gets taught about autoimmunity in herbal circles is too clean. There’s a protocol, the protocol works, the folks we work with get better. Sometimes that’s how it goes. A lot of the time it isn’t, and the cases that broke from the script are the ones that taught me how to actually practice.

This is a session on cases from the ESHM clinic. Real folks, real moments where I had to throw out what I thought I knew about the case and start over. Some arrived with a confident diagnosis that turned out to be wrong. Others did everything the protocol asks for and didn’t move. A few got better on what looked like the wrong intervention, which is its own kind of teaching. I’ll walk through three or four of them in enough clinical detail that you can see where the reasoning had to bend.

I’m not going to use this hour to teach my autoimmune protocol systematically. That’s what the post-conference intensive is for, and you can’t fit a real autoimmune approach into ninety minutes anyway. What a short review of cases can do is leave you a little more suspicious of your own categories, which in autoimmune work is the right direction to be moving.

The truth is, autoimmunity is messier than the textbooks and most of the herbal teaching admit, and the practitioners who do the best work with it tend to be the ones who never quite trust rigid approaches.

We’ll start with a brief orientation, then work through three or four cases in clinical detail. There’ll be time at the end for the questions you only thought to ask after seeing how someone else’s case fell apart. If you came hoping for a clean protocol, you’ll want to be at the intensive. If you came to sit with hard cases and look at where the standard frameworks get us into trouble, you’re in the right room.

Bee Venom Therapy and Chronic Diseases

Patrick Fratallone

This class will discuss the components of bee venom and explore the use of Bee Venom Therapy (BVT) in chronic disease. Participants will also learn to identify additional components of the beehive that may be used to support health and disease beyond BVT.

Beyond Suppression: Fungi & Botanical Strategies for Autoimmunity and Inflammation

Lindsay Chimileski

Autoimmune and inflammatory conditions require a nuanced approach to immune modulation, one that moves beyond simply stimulating or suppressing the immune system, and instead supports balance, regulation, and resilience over time. This lecture explores the use of medicinal mushrooms alongside key botanical medicines commonly used in clinical practice to support individuals navigating autoimmune conditions.

Drawing from both emerging research and real-world application, we will examine how mushrooms such as reishi, turkey tail, cordyceps, psilocybin, and lion’s mane influence inflammatory pathways, cytokine signaling, and the gut–immune axis.

In addition, participants will be introduced to a range of herbal allies frequently used in practice to regulate inflammation, support system integrity, and calm immune reactivity. Emphasis will be placed on formulation strategies, preparation methods—including teas, tinctures, and dual extracts—and how to tailor protocols based on individual patterns and presentations.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all protocol, this session offers a framework for thinking clinically about immune modulation through mushrooms and herbs, supporting more personalized, sustainable approaches to care in autoimmune and inflammatory conditions.

Bitter Medicine and Sacred Digestion: Traditional Herbal Approaches to Inflammation, Gut Health & Emotional Holding

Iya Angelique “Sobande” Greer

In many ancestral healing systems, digestion was viewed as more than physical assimilation; it was understood as the body’s relationship to emotional processing, resilience, nourishment, grief, and survival. This workshop explores traditional herbal approaches to digestive regulation, inflammation, stagnation, and chronic depletion through the lens of ancestral and spiritual herbalism.

Participants will examine how bitter herbs, aromatic plants, mineral-rich foods, ritual eating practices, and community nourishment traditions historically supported regulation and recovery within African and Southern folk healing systems.

Special attention will be given to how chronic stress, emotional suppression, disrupted eating patterns, and disconnection from traditional foodways may contribute to inflammatory conditions and long-term dysregulation.

Botanical Allies for the Post Menopausal Landscape

Mimi Hernandez

While much of the menopause conversation centers on the transition itself, far less attention is given to the new baseline that follows in the postmenopausal years. Postmenopause represents a distinct physiological terrain shaped by patterns within oxidative stress pathways, inflammatory tone, metabolic communication, and cellular defense mechanisms. During this phase, estrogen, increasingly linked to NRF2 regulation, settles at postmenopausal levels, raising important questions surrounding endogenous oxidative stress regulation within the postmenopausal landscape. This class explores these emerging connections alongside the foundational role botanical allies may play within the terrain of postmenopause.

Botanicals & Nutrition in the Management of Endometriosis (INT)

Betsy Miller

Endometriosis is a life-long, often debilitating condition that impacts physical, emotional and social wellbeing, drastically reducing quality of life in those suffering with the disorder. Herbal medicine, alongside nutrition, offers an in-road to addressing the endocrine, inflammatory and autoimmune roots of endometriosis. In this class we’ll explore the role of herbs in reproductive health from a traditional perspective, as well as modern and anecdotal evidence for the use of botanicals in addressing endometrial lesions, hepatic metabolism of hormones and regulating immune dysfunction.

Care for the Caregiver: Addressing Burnout in Care Work

Janet Kent

Health care providers have a high rate of burnout. Despite the fact that holistic practitioners theoretically have the tools to recognize and prevent burnout, we too fall into this pattern all too often. In this class I will talk about the risks of overwork specific to herbalists, ways to recognize signs of impending burnout, talk about compassion fatigue and growing callous, and look to the future of increased work load with the impending collapse of the American health care safety net.

Dance of the Hormones: Navigating PMOS (INT)

Betsy Miller

Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS), previously known as Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), is one of the most common disorders affecting women in their reproductive years, impacting up to 21% of women of reproductive age worldwide. While historically viewed as a disorder of the female reproductive tract, the new classification as PMOS finally recognizes that this condition is truly a complex interplay between endocrine, metabolic and neurological health.

The beauty of this complex interplay is that it offers multiple opportunities for therapeutic interventions across nutrition and botanicals, from regulating the menstrual cycle to improving insulin sensitivity and mental health. This class will explore both traditional and modern evidence for botanicals in endocrine regulation and metabolic function, as well as the evidence for key nutritional interventions to partner with the plants in improving therapeutic efficacy.

Deep in the Tissues: Autoimmune Disease

Kat Maier

While there are distinct presentations on the spectrum of autoimmune disease, from MS to Hashimoto’s, there are similar patterns. This class will look at the immune system from an energetic framework and the primordial understanding of the connection between kidneys, blood, bone marrow and immunity. We will examine immune factors produced in the marrow, possible deep lingering infections leading to deficiency and herbal remedies that address this complex disease. We will move through the six tissue states and see how this condition expresses itself in our inner terrain.

Early Morning Bonus – Healing Sounds & Smiling Organ Meditation (Sun AM 7–8am)

Erica Macrum

This experiential class explores the classical Qi Gong practice of healing sounds and the smiling organ meditation to nourish the Five Yin organs, the Heart, Liver, Spleen, Lung, and Kidneys. Through breath, sound vibration, focused awareness, and gentle meditation, participants will learn practices traditionally used to release tension, harmonize emotions, and restore internal balance.

Each organ system carries physiological and emotional associations within Chinese medicine. By combining specific sounds with mindful attention, practitioners can help regulate internal states, cultivate calm, and strengthen vitality.

Participants will be guided through a complete practice sequence and leave with practical tools for personal wellness, stress reduction, and client self-care support. No prior meditation or Qi Gong experience is necessary.

Early Morning Bonus – Qi Gong for Health and Vitality (Sat AM 7–8am)

Erica Macrum

This interactive movement-based class introduces foundational Qi Gong practices that help cultivate, regulate, and harmonize the movement of qi through breath, posture, and intentional motion. Rooted in Classical Chinese Medicine, Qi Gong has long been used to support vitality, emotional balance, circulation, and overall resilience.

Participants will learn accessible practices designed to awaken energy, release stagnation, calm the nervous system, and strengthen connection between body, breath, and mind. Emphasis will be placed on how regular Qi Gong practice can support stress regulation, recovery, and long-term wellness for both practitioners and clients.

No prior experience is necessary. Movements can be adapted for varying abilities, making this practice accessible to a wide range of participants.

Herbal & Holistic Support for Hypothyroid & Hashimoto’s

Maria Noël Groves

Thyroid conditions are increasingly common. While both synthetic and natural medications have great value, there is so much more we can do to support people with hypothyroid and autoimmune thyroiditis, even within the non-medical scope of herbal practice. In this content-dense class, you’ll learn the signs and symptoms, make sense of labs, understand standard medication pros, cons, and interactions, iodine controversy, and — our primary focus — specific herbs and natural remedies as well as big picture holistic support for long-term vitality.

Herbal and Nutritional Approaches to Autoimmune Disease and Allergies

David Winston

Over the past 50 years, the incidence of autoimmune disease and allergies has increased dramatically. In this class we will discuss the underlying pathophysiology of each process and suspected reasons for their rise. Using herbal and nutritional protocols (especially the use of immune amphoterics, immuno-regulatory herbs and alteratives) I will show students how they can create a clinical framework that can be individualized to the specific patient and their unique illness.

Herbal Pairings in Chronic Disease Formulas

Feather Jones

This class explores strategic herbal combinations for addressing complex, long-term conditions through the lens of constitutional differences and formulation techniques. Participants will examine how herbal synergy can offer deeper therapeutic influence than the use of simple remedies alone. The class will discuss both well-known herbal pairings, such as turmeric and ginger, as well as lesser-known combinations like mimosa and kava, along with their specific indications and applications.

Herbaceous Perennial Wildflowers (Plant Walk)

Adam Bigelow

Join Adam for a guided plant walk exploring the world of herbaceous perennial plants. Together, we’ll observe key botanical characteristics, discuss identification strategies, and explore the ecological and practical significance of these species in the landscape.

Immunomodulating and Amphoteric Materia Medica

Sajah Popham

This class explores the two categories of immune system remedies that are outside the realm of typical “immune herbs” like Echinacea and Elderberry. We’ll look at herbs that act more deeply on the immune system as tonics, or having amphoteric activity- tempering excesses and strengthening deficiencies. Juxtaposed to this will be the immunomodulators or immunoregulators, which are commonly used to temper excessive immune activity during autoimmune flares.

Integrative Treatments for Lyme Disease

Patrick Frattallone

This class presents a detailed treatment approach for Chronic Persistent Lyme Syndrome, including the use of diet, herbal therapies, and intravenous applications such as colloidal silver, methylene blue, and Supportive Oligonucleotide Therapy (SOT). Participants will gain insight into how these modalities may be incorporated into a broader treatment plan for chronic Lyme presentations.

Making Sense of Mast Cell and Histamine Presentations: Differentiating Complex Reactivity

Dave Meesters

Multisystem reactivity is one of the most challenging presentation patterns in contemporary clinical practice. Clients arrive with overlapping complaints—food intolerances, flushing, GI distress, cognitive fog, autonomic instability, skin reactivity—and often carry a tangle of tentative diagnoses that have accumulated over years without a coherent framework to sort them.

The core clinical problem is that several distinct conditions—complex atopic disease, histamine intolerance (HIT), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and the newly-identified hereditary alpha-tryptasemia (HαT)—share nearly identical symptoms. They can all look like MCAS. They can all appear to respond to antihistamines. They can all be amplified by CNS sensitization. And they frequently coexist and amplify each other in the same client.

Without a systematic approach to telling them apart, practitioners and clients default to a single label—most recently, MCAS—and often miss the most appropriate therapies.

This session attempts to build that systematic approach, organized around the clinical questions that discriminate between conditions: temporality, key history, triggers, therapeutic trials, and more. Participants will work through each condition’s distinguishing features and core herbal/integrative therapeutics. We’ll also cover safety and referral thresholds, and a universal starting protocol appropriate to use while the differential is still being worked out.

The session is grounded in current clinical evidence, including the consensus framework for MCAS classification, the DAO-histamine axis and its relationship to SIBO, central sensitization neuroscience, and emerging data on hereditary alpha-tryptasemia—a recently characterized genetic syndrome that unifies many clients carrying multiple poorly-explained diagnoses.

Participants will leave with a decision framework they can apply immediately, including clear guidance on when each condition falls within herbal and nutritional scope, when physician involvement is required, and when trigger avoidance is therapeutic versus when it worsens the clinical picture.

Medicinal Plants of Southern Appalachia (Plant Walk)

Janet Kent

Join Janet Kent for a guided plant walk around the grounds of the Blue Ridge Assembly. Originally planned for the fall of 2024, this walk now takes place in the wake of Hurricane Helene, offering a unique opportunity to observe the landscape through the lens of resilience and recovery.

Medicines That Shift Perception: Psychedelics, Consciousness, and the Mind–Body Interface in Autoimmunity and Inflammation

Lindsay Chimileski

Autoimmune and inflammatory conditions reflect a complex interplay between immune dysregulation, nervous system signaling, and lived experience. As research continues to evolve, a growing body of evidence suggests that certain medicines which influence perception—including psychedelics, empathogens, and select botanical and fungal compounds—may play a role in modulating inflammatory pathways, neuroimmune communication, and stress physiology.

This lecture explores emerging perspectives on how these medicines may impact inflammation pathways, cytokine activity, the HPA axis, and epigenetic expression, while also influencing patterns of thought, behavior, and emotional processing that can perpetuate chronic illness.

Particular attention will be given to the bidirectional relationship between the mind and immune system, including the role of chronic stress, generational trauma, and internalized patterns in shaping inflammatory tone over time.

Drawing from current research alongside naturopathic and herbal traditions, we will examine how shifts in consciousness and perception may support greater adaptability, resilience, and regulation across systems.

While we want to celebrate this research, this session will also emphasize the importance of protecting the cultural, traditional, and ceremonial contexts from which many of these medicines originate. As scientific interest grows, there is a risk of reducing complex, relational healing practices into simplified interventions for mass consumption.

We will explore the importance of maintaining reverence, context, and community-centered approaches, recognizing that these medicines are not simply tools for symptom management, but part of broader systems of healing that include relationship, meaning, and collective care.

POTS in Practice: A Clinical Framework (INT)

Camille Freeman

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and related dysautonomias are showing up in our practices with increasing frequency. Many of these clients have been dismissed, misdiagnosed, or told that nothing can be done. This session offers a clinically grounded overview of POTS, including its subtypes and pathophysiology, and explores the herbal, nutritional, and electrolyte-based strategies that can support autonomic regulation and improve quality of life.

As practitioners with both clinical training and the time to actually listen, herbalists and integrative clinicians are well positioned to help clients who have POTS. In order to best support these folks, we need both an understanding of the underlying physiology, as well as a sense for how herbs and dietary strategies fit into the picture.

This session will be organized around three themes:
Understanding POTS: A clinical overview of pathophysiology, major subtypes (hyperadrenergic, neuropathic, hypovolemic, post-viral), and common comorbidities including MCAS, hypermobility spectrum disorders, and small fiber neuropathy.

Electrolytes and Nutritional Support: A practical look at electrolyte physiology, evidence-based rationale for sodium and fluid loading, and nutritional considerations for different subtypes.

Herbal Strategies: A review of botanicals for autonomic regulation (adaptogens, nervines, cardiovascular herbs, anti-inflammatory plants), with a focus on matching herbs to client presentations and reviewing supporting research.

My goal is for participants to leave with a practical clinical framework for helping POTS clients.

Plant Family Patterns: The Key to See (Plant Walk)

Marc Williams

Plant Family Patterns can greatly aid in demystifying the “green wall” of species around us. Over 400,000 species of flowering plants are known to global science. These species have been grouped into around 15,000 genera and over 400 flowering plant families. About 200 flowering plant families grow in the temperate world where it annually frosts and or freezes.

You will know something significant about the majority of plants that you see in the temperate world if you learn the top 30 families around you. It is often possible to guess whether a plant is edible, medicinal, or poisonous simply by the family it occupies. However, some exceptions are important to know as well.

We will engage in a walk and talk around the Blue Ridge Assembly grounds where we will delve into the major plant families of the Southern USA. Students will reinforce plant identification skills by observing family patterns such as leaf, flower and fruit types. Uses including edibility, medicinality, craft, wildlife promotion and landscape beauty will be discussed. Participants will gain a more holistic understanding of the major plants comprising the Southern US flora and their potential ecological and ethnobotanical applications and specifically their roles in chronic health conditions as well.

Relational Herbalism in Practice: Clinical Outcomes Through Plant Connection

Lupo Passero

Relational herbalism is often spoken of as a philosophical or personal approach, yet its clinical implications are rarely articulated in practical, applicable terms. This experiential class explores how cultivating a deeper, reciprocal relationship with medicinal plants can directly inform and enhance clinical outcomes in practice.

Participants will be guided through sensory-based and observational practices designed to deepen awareness, presence, and attunement with plant medicine. Through these exercises, we will examine how relationship-centered approaches can influence formulation, increase client engagement and compliance, and support nervous system regulation for both practitioner and client.

Drawing from lived practice, this session bridges intuitive and embodied ways of knowing with clinical application. We will explore how relational skills can be integrated into intake, assessment, and protocol design without sacrificing rigor or professionalism.

Participants will leave with practical tools to bring relational awareness into their work in ways that are grounded, ethical, and adaptable across clinical contexts.

This class is designed to be interactive and experiential, with an emphasis on direct engagement, reflection, and discussion. It is suitable for herbalists of all levels who are interested in deepening their connection to plants and exploring how that connection can translate into more effective and meaningful clinical care.

Ritual is Regulation: Herbal and Ancestral Approaches to Nervous System Care

Lyani Powers

In a world of chronic stimulation and ongoing stress, the nervous system is often treated as an afterthought—or addressed only in crisis. But across traditional healing systems, regulation was not an intervention. It was a way of life.

In this session, Lyani Powers explores how herbal practice itself—both in the making and the taking—functions as a regulatory act. Drawing from clinical herbalism, ancestral traditions, and lived experience, this session reframes medicine not only as something administered, but as something practiced.

Participants will examine how the processes of preparing and engaging with herbal remedies—teas, tinctures, oils, and foods—invite attention, rhythm, and sensory awareness. These shared acts of repetition, scent, touch, and timing engage the nervous system in real time, creating opportunities for regulation that exist within both practitioner and client experience.

Rather than separating the roles of maker and receiver, this session presents herbalism as a relational exchange—where the way medicine is prepared, offered, and taken all contribute to its impact. The result is a model of care that extends beyond constituents and protocols, into lived, embodied practice.

This is not about elaborate routines. It is about understanding how consistent, grounded interaction with plants becomes regulatory medicine—across the full spectrum of herbal work.

Shrubs, Trees, and Woody Vines (Plant Walk)

Adam Bigelow

Join Adam for a guided exploration of the shrubs, trees, and woody vines that shape our landscapes and forest edges. Together, participants will learn to recognize key species, observe identifying characteristics, and discuss their ecological roles and practical significance within the broader ecosystem.

Systemic Inflammation and Chronic Pain Management

Feather Jones

This class examines long-term immune responses, exploring the differences between acute immune protection and the gradual progression into chronic systemic inflammation, including conditions such as arthritis and neuralgia. Participants will discuss the role of stress-driven flare-ups and the use of adaptogenic-like herbs to help regulate pro-inflammatory cytokines that may intensify pain perception. The class will also define and explore the use of anodynes, nervines, immunomodulators, and anti-inflammatory herbs according to organ system support.

The Common Denominator: Understanding Postpartum Through a Global Herbal Lens

Lyani Powers

Postpartum care varies widely across cultures—but beneath the differences lies a shared understanding: birth is depleting, and recovery requires intentional, layered support.

In this session, clinical herbalist and educator Lyani Powers explores the common threads that run through postpartum traditions worldwide. Drawing from her clinical practice, training with traditional midwives, and global ethnobotanical study, she examines how different cultures approach healing after birth—and what they consistently prioritize.

Participants will explore key postpartum patterns, including depletion, digestive recovery, nervous system vulnerability, and the need for warmth, nourishment, and containment. Herbal strategies will be discussed alongside food, rhythm, and practical care models that can be applied across diverse client populations.

Moving beyond trend and tradition as aesthetic, this session asks: What do these systems agree on, and how can we bring that wisdom into modern, accessible care?

Participants will learn to:

  • Identify shared physiological and energetic patterns in postpartum recovery across cultures
  • Apply herbal strategies for depletion, digestion, lactation, and nervous system support
  • Understand the role of warmth, mineralization, and nourishment in postpartum healing
  • Translate traditional postpartum practices into modern clinical and community settings
  • Support postpartum clients with realistic, culturally aware care strategies

The Five Spirits in Chronic Disease: Bridging Emotional and Physiological Outcomes

Erica Macrum

In chronic and autoimmune conditions, physical symptoms are often intertwined with long-standing emotional and spiritual patterns. Drawing from Classical Chinese Medicine, this class explores the Five Spirits and their role in shaping health and disease.

Participants will be introduced to the Five Spirits and will learn how disturbances in them manifest not only as emotional imbalances, but as physiological patterns commonly seen in chronic illness such as disrupted sleep, digestive dysregulation, immune reactivity, and cyclical flares.

Rather than separating mind and body, this framework offers a way to understand how emotional patterns influence disease progression and healing capacity.

Through a clinically grounded lens, we will translate these classical concepts into modern practice, helping herbalists recognize subtle patterns often missed in intake and develop more holistic, effective treatment strategies.

The Healer Must Also Heal: Herbal Regulation, Burnout Prevention & Spiritual Restoration for Practitioners

Iya Angelique “Sobande” Greer

Herbalists, caregivers, and wellness practitioners often serve as emotional anchors within their communities while neglecting their own regulation, restoration, and healing. This experiential workshop explores practitioner burnout, chronic overextension, compassion fatigue, and nervous system depletion through the lens of ancestral and spiritual herbalism.

Participants will engage with traditional plant practices, grounding techniques, restorative rituals, and community-based healing philosophies historically used to sustain healers and caretakers across generations.

This session bridges modern understandings of stress physiology with ancestral approaches to spiritual hygiene, emotional regulation, rest, ritual, nourishment, and herbal support for sustainable practice.

The Horn of the Forest: Devil’s Club and Oregon Grape as PNW Root Medicines

Duncan Lynch

This class explores the use of two important Pacific Northwest root medicines—devil’s club and Oregon grape—in supporting autoimmune and chronic conditions through a regional herbalism framework.

Beginning with an introduction to autoimmunity and the progression of acute conditions into chronic states, participants will be guided through foundational approaches to care centered on regulation, balance, and holistic formulation.

The presentation will include concise monographs on both plants, highlighting medicinal actions, pharmacognostic qualities, and chemical constituents relevant to chronic dysregulation. Special attention will be given to devil’s club’s adaptogenic saponins for immune modulation and Oregon grape’s bitter, antimicrobial, and digestive-stimulating properties.

Participants will also learn how these plants function synergistically within larger formulations tailored to specific chronic and autoimmune presentations, including case examples such as autoimmune arthritis, chronic constipation, and allergic conditions.

The How and Why of Gut Healing

Maria Noël Groves

Herbal support for gut healing and digestive function plays a foundational role in many holistic protocols for good reason. So much of what happens in the gut impacts the entire body, and improving its vitality often has downstream positive impacts on even complicated and autoimmune states over time.

In this class, we’ll explore both theory and scientific literature explaining how and why gut healing can be helpful. We will look at client- and situation-specific differentials and explore herbal strategies and recipes that can be easily customized in clinical practice.

The Medical Astrology of Autoimmunity

Sajah Popham

The practice of traditional medical astrology provides valuable insights into a patient’s patterns of health, disease, and therapeutic pathways to healing.

This class will explore some of the primary archetypal forces that may be active in autoimmune conditions, with a particular focus on the influence of Mars, the fire signs (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius), as well as specific organ systems and their astrological correlates that can be afflicted in autoimmune conditions.

Whether or not participants have prior experience with astrology, the material will be presented in an accessible way to offer insight into the potency of this system of assessment.

Woody Ethnobotany Walk (Plant Walk)

Marc Williams

Spend a class learning about trees and shrubs. We will go for a plant walk to learn how to identify woody plants by leaves, bark, and other characteristics. Common and obscure uses for these plants that may support overall health, well-being, and sustenance will also be discussed.

We will also explore the role of woody plants in relation to chronic conditions such as allergies, along with their broader ecological and ethnobotanical significance.

Post-Symposium Intensive (Monday, August 17th):

The Body Is Not at War With Itself  with Thomas Easley

A day long autoimmune intensive for clinical herbalists

Someone comes in with swollen fingers, hot joints, and a rheumatoid diagnosis. Something is doing this, and it’s the immune system. The obvious story is that the body has turned on itself. That’s the story conventional medicine tells, the story most herbalism textbooks tell, and the story the folks in front of you walk in believing.

It’s the wrong story.

Inflammation is a signal, not an attack. The immune system runs on tolerance, a constant background process of deciding what belongs, what doesn’t, and  what’s worth responding to.  When tolerance holds, autoreactive clones expand and then contract. They get deleted, anergized, or held down by regulatory T cells. When tolerance fails, those clones expand and keep expanding, and the signal that should have quieted keeps firing.

That distinction changes the clinical work.

The  war frame  gives you two moves. Suppress the response, or kill the cells. Methotrexate and biologics. It works, sometimes brilliantly, but it doesn’t ask why tolerance broke. It doesn’t notice when the answer is sitting in the gut, the last three years of stress, or in a botched root canal. Herbalists who borrow the war frame end up doing a weaker version of the same thing. They reach for immune stimulants or suppressants and call them immunomodulators. They tell everyone to eliminate everything  forever.They mistake immune suppression for healing.

The tolerance frame asks different questions. What’s feeding the danger signal?  What’s failing to shut autoreactive clones down?  What does this constitution actually& nbsp;need?  It explains things  the war frame  can’t, like why twenty-five percent of rheumatoid arthritis quiets on its own, why lupus&nb sp;shifts in&nbs p;pregnancy, why  folks get worse  during a divorce and&n bsp;better  in summer.

This class is eight hours of working that frame out. We’re covering the history that gave us the war metaphor and the science that broke it. Tolerance, clonal expansion and contraction, and the gut as the tolerance organ it is. Constitutional pattern assessment. A phased protocol that puts resiliency before restriction. An hour on natural history, because if you don’t know the baseline, you can’t tell whether your protocol worked or the disease cycled. Four diseases walked back to the same upstream questions. Then  we  tackle your cases. Bring messy ones.

If you work with autoimmunity, this class will change how you work.