Why Community Herbalist?

I see a Community Herbalist as a village herbalist, as an herbalist who is mostly interested in the plants themselves, interested in the gardens, interested in people, interested in animals. This is a path that takes a big heart.

To me a Community Herbalist is someone whose main focus is more of a spiritual/emotional than a scientific/rational. This is not to say that there is not value in a scientific focus, but Community Herbalists lean more towards hands-on, direct contact with plants and people.

Traditionally, too, the village herbalist was also the shaman, which brings in the whole idea of somebody who is in tune not only with the plants and body, but also with the spirits or energies of the bodies, places and plants. Their healing may not just be the traditional allopathic “treat the symptom.” It might be much more: holding somebody while they cry; giving them Bach flower remedies for their emotions. “Treat the person, not the disease,” has always been my philosophy of healing.

So what is it that differentiates a Community Herbalist from a village or folk herbalist?

I like the traditional idea of village and folk herbalists. The difference is that now we have a need for certification, a need for knowing that somebody is trained. A Community Herbalist uses more of a folk approach, which means more of a heartfelt approach, and focuses more on the connection between the plants, the person and the environment.

Community Herbalists will be trained, tested and certified so that a person who is coming to them will know that they are a trained herbalist and that they are an expert in the plants. They will know the basic needs of the body and the more common things that go wrong with the human body – especially in the environment in which they live, because that’s very important.

In the Pacific Northwest we have a lot of coughs and colds throughout the winter. A Community Herbalist would be aware of which plants to use for different common conditions. The herbalist would also study how to use them safely, and be aware of any contraindications – so that a pregnant woman, for example, wouldn’t take something that could hold risks for her pregnancy.

How does a person become a Community Herbalist?

Plants are the foundation of any herbal training, so training starts with the plants. That means taking people out into the parks and identifying the wild plants; bringing them into my backyard, where I have at least 50 cultivated medicinal plants growing; and getting them connected to the plants, helping them understand the medicinal values and the strengths and weaknesses of each plant.The next section of training covers how to prepare the herbs and administer them, really trying to get back the whole idea that not everything is done by a pill. We’ve really turned into a pill culture. Whether they’re herbal or drugs, it’s like: “pop a pill.” That’s fine. I pop herbal pills myself, because I’m a busy person.  But I also have herbal baths; I also eat herbs from my garden; I also make my own tinctures and my own teas. Teaching budding herbalists all the ways of preparing and using herbs is important.

We want people to get into doing baths and poultices, etc., because this is really great healing. If you look at a lot of the traditional systems like Ayurveda, there’s a lot of hands-on work. I think people’s bodies are hungry for that. It’s really nice to have your feet soaking in a bath of hot water with a bunch of herbs in it. It’s very different than swallowing a pill.

The idea of paradigms is also very important. A lot of the traditional methods – which I consider community herbalism, involving practitioners being trained to work in their villages and the areas in which they live, in how to gather the plants from that area and use them – work on an energetic model more than a chemical model of medicine.

Allopathic medicine attempts to copy nature, trying to figure out what herbs and chemicals are in what plant and how they work. That’s fine. It’s a body of knowledge, and it’s useful. But as Community Herbalists we look more at the energetics of herbs, whether they’re heating you or cooling you down, whether they’re drying you out or moistening you. We teach that model of the energetic of herbs, which goes back in all western and eastern traditions.

Then we go on to the herbal therapeutics, giving people basic anatomy and physiology, teaching them basic pathophysiology. In other words, we teach them about the conditions they’re going to encounter in the particular area they live in, and what treatments and herbs will be best for those conditions. Last is the actual consulting, where students learn how to talk with people to find out the information they need, and to impart a sense of healing and a sense of comfort so that the person feels good about it. Maybe they’ll sit with them and have a cup of tea.

Also, we really encourage them to go into people’s homes. I’ve found in my practice that if I go to somebody’s home it’s a whole different story than if they come to my office. We would encourage Community Herbalists to get out of the white-coat clinical office setup.

What certification is currently available for Community Herbalists?

At this point there is no government body in place for the certification of Community Herbalists, but there are a number of guilds with requirements in place. The one in B.C. is the Modern and Traditional Herbalist Guild – of which I’m a founding member. We have in place the necessary level of training for Community Herbalists. I am also a professional member of the American Herbalists Guild, and they have in place the requirements for a Registered Herbalist, which is  the next level up.

What is your vision for Community Herbalists?

My vision for Community Herbalists is that we would have herbal specialists. As I’ve been saying, these specialists are very well trained in, and connected to, the plants that can be grown in their communities. I like the image of barefoot doctors. Instead of white-coat medical doctors, they’re barefoot doctors. They wander around the community, and they have the knowledge and skills to help people.

They can come to your home, or they can meet you at the coffee shop. They can talk to you in the park, and they can listen to you. They can listen to your suffering and offer you sound advice on some of the things you can do. It’s not expected that they can do everything for somebody, but lots of times, in my experience, you can help somebody along. Just listening to somebody is often a great help, but if you have some tools – Bach flower remedies or some simple herbal remedies for relaxing people – this can complement any other therapy that they’re doing, whether it’s medical or not. Everybody needs a healer. They need somebody who is going to support them.

My vision is that Community Herbalists will be very supportive people. It is also that they will carry on from the tradition of the elders that I’ve studied with: Norma Meyers, a Mohawk medicine woman who has passed over to the other side; Dr. John Christopher, who was the herbalist who turned so many of us on to herbs in the ‘60s and early ‘70s – the whole American Herbalists Guild is full of herbalists who originally studied with Dr. John Christopher; and Ellen White, a Coast Salish native elder from the Nanaimo band. She’s still alive and will be turning 86 on September 13 – I’ve just been speaking with her recently. She’s one of my personal trainers.

The idea is to keep that knowledge alive. The native tradition was much more of a Community Herbalist. They knew the plants intimately. They knew the spirits. They knew the energies. They knew the songs. They knew the ceremonies. My vision is to bring those aspects back into healing.

We no longer have ceremonies. Everyone goes through changes, and we have nothing to mark them, no rites of passage. My wife and I have done very powerful work with young people on that.

Also, I’m working with Royal Roads University and first nations elders from around the province of British Columbia on non-timber forest products. We’ve established protection for medicinal plants in logging contracts. Again, that’s the idea of a Community Herbalist. It’s not just about the herbs in a clinical practice. It’s also about the herbs in your back yard and the herbs in the forests. It’s about the herbs in the community.

Finally, we’re going to bring members of the business community into the program to tell us what they want to see in the way of training for Community Herbalists, to show the Community Herbalists what is needed in the retail setting. A lot of people go into retail stores with problems like a cough or a cold, and they want to know what to do. We’re going to train people to better assess those situations, and to potentially give better, more trained, advice in that environment.

I also see education as a huge part of being a Community Herbalist – taking people from the community on herb walks, going into people’s gardens and telling them what plants to grow for their health. Hopefully, we’ll be able to go in and set up herb gardens in schools so that the kids can learn from an early age. My first herb walk was with a four year old on a farm in California. He took my wife and me on a walk and showed us about 20 plants. He knew them intimately, because he lived with them. This is the way it was traditionally.

That’s my vision for Community Herbalists: to give them a sense of power and place in our communities.

If you are interested in becoming a Community Herbalist, contact Don Ollsin at 1-866-592-7523, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or visit his web site at herbalhealingpathway.com