Herbal Emotional Support and Modulation

Current students: View class content here!

Live session: January 12th, 19th, and 26th 7:00-8:30PM EST

Herbal Emotional Support and Modulation is a discussion-heavy, 3 week workshop for individuals, beginner herbalists, careworkers, and anyone who wants to spend some time talking about Mad liberationist, nonclinical approaches to mental health.

While I have great respect for spiritual herbal modalities, they’re not something I teach. This course focuses on the functional application of phytochemicals rather than spiritual work such as flower essences or homeopathy.

This workshop is relatively low-lift. Each of the three sessions are 90 minutes on Tuesday evenings. There will be easy, optional exercises to practice and discuss.

Due to the potentially personal nature of the discussion topics, this workshop will NOT be recorded.

Have you ever searched something like “herbs for depression” and found confusing, un-detailed listicles that list the same basic properties for every mentioned plant?

Trying every herb that’s purported to be “good for” any given condition is a little like hurling a handful of thumbtacks at a wall and hoping they’ll stick. You might get lucky. The more you throw, the more likely it is you’ll get lucky—and the more likely it is you’ll get poked.

Herbal traditions use a variety of thinking skills and informational tools to figure out which similar herbs are right for a specific person and situation—and these tools are often neglected by the “wealth and hellness” industry.

This course offers an approachable materia medica with easy to understand, in-depth herb profiles that demystify the process and will give you the tools to actually incorporate these plants into your life.

There isn’t one single right way to conceptualize how and why one may choose to use herbal or other chemical tools to help meet their emotion-related goals. Some goals that are common in this workshop are: reduce suffering, increase one’s capacity to make intentional decisions, and establish emotional security—though you’re more than welcome to come with other goals, or no goals at all.

The guided group discussions in this workshop are purposefully open-ended and crafted to encourage creative, flexible thinking. Participants will be asked to examine their basic assumptions about mental health and think outside of psychiatric frameworks or “common sense”—where you end up with that line of questioning is up to you.

We’ll discuss the nature of emotional suffering as well as body awareness skills. Mirroring this topic, we’ll also cover basic herbal concepts like holistic thinking, scientific vs. traditional forms of understanding, and energetics. You’ll learn several nutritive nervine herbs: The quiet backbone to every brain-focused herbal protocol.

In between discussions of sleep needs and emotional fluctuations, we’ll cover calming, grounding and stabilizing herbs and how they can apply to intense emotional experiences.

Finally, we’ll talk about un/alternate reality and learn about herbs that nourish desire. We’ll round out the workshop by covering a few miscellaneous topics like self-data collection and herbal protocol refinement.

Open to all! Content is specifically geared towards total herbal beginners; those with more experience will get more out of the discussions and protocol points :)

This offering prioritizes those of us who have faced psychiatric violence. People employed in any way in any psychiatric facility that provides non-consensual “treatment” are banned from attending.

The suggested donation for this workshop is $60-$120. If you can only afford less, that’s okay too. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please be aware that I live off under $5,000 a year, the majority of which comes in the form of food stamps. I don’t want anyone’s rent money; I do request that folks realistically assess their ability to pay for education and recognize that virtually any form of full-time employment is worlds away from what I make work. Even $5 adds up.

You can donate via ko-fi; cashapp & venmo available upon request.

Donate & Register here!