Happy New Start everyone! Our founder Sam Coffman brought the vision of this school and everything we teach to life in 2007, first in our backyard, next at a reclaimed Texas hill country rock quarry that we nurtured into a thriving campus, and now, nestled among high-altitude pines in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range of New Mexico. The first courses were survival and scouting trainings with plant walks and these grew into the deeply intensive herbal medicine programs that our school proudly shares today, 18 years later.
This coming year is all about sharing this important knowledge with as many of you as we can. Our goal is to help you develop as much medical independence as we can, so that regardless of the situation, you’ll have tools to help yourself or your loved ones. Many people are moving into the healing arts fields — either in Western medicine or working with plants, or exploring options for medicine outside, in the field, after a disaster or in an area without healthcare at all.
Students have set up herbal clinics post-hurricane along the Gulf Coast of Texas, in the jungles of Nicaragua, within a Mennonite village deep in the Chihuahua state of Mexico and all over the United States in under-served areas to bring plant medicine and direct person-to-person care. Students have worked with hundreds of people at these clinics and gained experience that is very hard to get any other way. Its what we’re known for, and what we’re going to be diving into deeply in the coming year.
I am delighted to share that our school will be doing a free herbal community clinic in the San Bernadino Valley area of California in late February where we hope to serve up to 200 people over several days. Clinical and apothecary students will be able to get their hands-on training in person while helping communities that have difficulty accessing healthcare at all. Our small apothecary store is donating all proceeds from sales made during January towards the clinic so that we can provide free herbal formulas, salves, liniments and herbal first aid for those that need it.
Winter courses are up on our calendar, new formulas are in our apothecary store and students are putting together the first ambitious clinic of the year, to be followed by a mobile clinic for the unhoused community in Taos. We’ll have remote medicine trainings in California, Colorado, and in New Mexico and beyond. Students will learn how to answer the question, ‘what do I do when there is no higher care’ and knowing how to respond to an emergency. Students will also learn how to set up a clinic, how to dress a wound, plan out a homestead, make herbal medicine from their kitchens and how to run an apothecary of their own. Its a new year with new possibilities. Jump in with us and we’ll guide you there!
Herbal Medics Academy Director, Suchil Coffman