Herbal Medics Academy Faculty 2026
Sam Coffman, L.Ac., W-EMT
Founder & Technology Director
Sam Coffman began his medical education in the US Army as a Green Beret Medic (18D) in 1989. Over the years that followed, he dedicated himself to being able to work with botanical medicine as a successful method to provide sustainable health care in remote and post-disaster regions for chronic, acute and physical trauma care. Since that time, Sam has taught herbalism for over 30 years and has worked as a clinical herbalist for over 15 years.
In 2007, Sam founded Herbal Medics Academy (AKA The Human Path), which offers five primary herbalism programs – Clinical Herbalism, Austere Medicine, Advanced Medicine Making, Community Herbalism and Family Herbalism. He teaches the integration of herbal medicine with both functional medicine and austere medicine together with two medical doctors who also specialize in those areas.
Sam and his wife Suchil also co-founded Herbal Medics in 2011 which is an outreach organization that gives their students and interns an opportunity to work in the field while providing free health care and education to underserved communities. They have worked in Nicaragua, Mexico and all over the USA both to provide post-disaster relief as well as provide free herbal clinics, education and sustainable medicine/food projects for underserved communities.
Sam was also the training director for Taos Search and Rescue (TSAR) and part of the canine search and rescue team together with his canine companion, Lucy. His book “Herbal Medic” has been in the top 3 best-selling books for Storey Publishing for the past 3 years.
Suchil Coffman, RN
Director, Instructor
Suchil is the Director for The Human Path and Herbal Medics Academy. With a passion for wilderness medicine, she developed the Female Medic program, completed EMT-B and WEMT trainings before moving on to secure a dual nursing degree license. Suchil has completed Swift Water Training Level 1, PADI Advanced Open Water and Rescue Diver Certification and also holds a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree as an RN.
Suchil teaches Wilderness First Aid certifications for the school, as well as sustainability and clinical set-up for both field teams, apothecary set-up, and end-of-life geriatric care. She has also developed The Apothecarist program, an intermediate medicine making course that she helps to instruct. In 2019, she released the Female Medic program for specialized health care in the field environment.
Ana Coffman
Co-Director
Since 2017, Ana has played an invaluable and intricate role in the vision and management of Herbal Medics Academy. As Co-Director, Ana oversees all aspects of the school’s infrastructure – from curriculum development, student and staff liasion, as well as managing logistics.
Ana is frequently the first voice new students hear when enrolling in their first class, or trying to balance a heavy course-load.
As an equestrian with extensive background in competitive show jumping and as a mother, Ana has quite a bit of management and logistical training that helps our students feel right at home.
Kyla Helm, M.D.
Instructor
Dr. Helm-Swanson received her Medical Doctorate from the Academy of South Dakota School of Medicine in 1993 and is triple Board Certified in Family Medicine, Pain Medicine and Anti-Aging, Functional and Regenerative Medicine. Dr. Helm completed a Family Practice Residency at Ft. Benning, GA in 1999 and served in the US Army until 2001.
Given her passion to find and treat the root cause of illnesses, Dr. Helm obtained training in integrative and complementary interventions to augment her traditional medical education. She used these techniques to manage complex medical conditions such as chronic pain and fibromyalgia, and obtained her Board Certification in Pain Medicine in 2004.
Dr. Helm became Board Certified in Functional and Restorative Medicine in 2011 and completed her Advanced Fellowship in Restorative Medicine the same year. Dr. Helm uses an integrative functional medicine approach to provide comprehensive, individualized healthcare to her patients. She has provided these services to adults and children with great success.
Dr. Helm has traveled extensively with her husband who is a career US Army officer. She and her family recently moved from the Texas Hill Country to South Dakota.
Steve Pehrson, M.D.
Wilderness Medicine Team, Instructor
Dr. Steve Pehrson’s career in medicine began in 1977 as he entered and completed the U.S. Army Special Forces Qualification Course as a Special Forces Medic (18D). Following his residency he returned to Utah transferring back into the 19th Special Forces Group and was assigned as the Battalion Surgeon for the 1st Battalion of the 19th SFGA.
Dr. Pehrson has been a licensed practicing physician since 1986. He attended a family medicine residency in Wisconsin. Steve is also board eligible in emergency medicine and spent much of his early career in that field. He was awarded the State of Utah EMS Physician of the year award in 1994, and the State of Utah Emergency Physician of the Year award in 1995.
Dr. Pehrson is active in instructing wilderness and prolonged pre-hospital care. He developed a 350-hour curriculum for prolonged pre-hospital care which was approved and adopted by the State of Utah for advanced EMT’s and paramedics.
He retired from the Indian Health Service in 2013 as a GS-15 with his last assignment being the Clinical Director for the Ft. Duchesne Indian Health Center on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, a position he held for seven years.
Rebecca Lyons received her Ph.D. in environmental chemistry in 2010 from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Chemistry. She has an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Washington. In 2017, she took her first herbal wilderness medicine course with Sam and never looked back. She is currently a full professor at the University of Redlands where she studies changes in the biochemistry of herbs resulting from environmental changes, and she cannot stop tinkering with formula-making and extraction techniques. Her most recent publication on the use of herbs in metabolic disease has been published in the Journal of Herbal Medicine (Jan 2024).
She has taught several classes on herbal medicine, “Plant Medicine” and “Herbal Allies for Women’s Health” to name a few. She also enjoys a burgeoning clinical practice that builds on a functional medicine model, personalizing medicine to fit the individual and looking for root causes of dis-ease.
When she is not in the lab or the classroom, Rebecca can be found out climbing rocks in Joshua Tree and the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California. She was formerly a rock climbing instructor and
W-EMT.
Rebecca Lyons, PhD
Phytochemistry Instructor
Most of Kat’s work is as a teacher and a clinician, and she approaches both of those things from a Vitalist perspective. This is a belief that we all have a fundamentally intelligent life force that drives us, and that this is in fact what are constantly in communication with and in service of.
Kat is a certified clinical herbalist and nutritionist through the North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, where she studied with Paul Bergner in the Vitalist tradition. Kat holds intensives on wild foods, medicine making, and botany, and teaches at various other schools, conferences, and apothecaries, in addition to her clinical practice through her business Meet the Green.
She is also a Registered Herbalist through the American Herbalists Guild. She spent 12 years working for the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism in Lafayette, CO in the capacity of Clinical Program Director, as well as primary faculty for the Fundamentals, Advanced, and Botany programs.
Kat MacKinnon
Clinical & Botany Instructor
Rick Murphy, DC
Chiropractor, Wilderness Medicine Team
Rick Murphy has nine years of experience as an active duty naval officer in both nuclear engineering and signals intelligence. He is a graduate of the United States Naval Academy and earned a B.S. in Chemistry with a Japanese minor.
His desire to help others took him to Korea for two years as a Korean-speaking missionary and ordained minister for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That same desire recently inspired him to pursue the Doctor of Chiropractic program at Parker University in Dallas, TX in addition to the Apothecary program.
Rick grew up primitive camping in the Sonoran Desert with his family and lived off-grid with his grandparents in south-east Idaho during high school. He brings that background, professional intelligence training, and over a decade of studying Ninjutsu and other martial disciplines to the Scout curriculum.
Mel Bailey, RN
Midwife, Doula, Instructor
Mel Bailey is a Midwife, Nurse, Certified Health Coach, Family Herbalist, and Yoga instructor. She is also an Evidence Based Birth Instructor and Evidence Based Childbirth Educator. Mel has been involved in women’s health care for over 20 years, attending her first birth in 1997. She is the Assistant Director of EarthWise Midwives & Doulas, and an instructor and evaluator at Academia Tierra Sabia in Cuatemoc, Mexico.
Mel facilitates trainings both state-side and internationally for birth workers, as well as disaster relief workers and others in need of emergency birth skills. Mel is also the founder of Wellness Within, providing personalized wellness guidance to individuals during pregnancy and birth, and nurturing new families.
Carol Jones
Clinical Instructor
Carol is an herbalist, naturalist and environmental engineer. A free-roaming child of the hills & forests of Western Pennsylvania, she has foraged and taught others about the natural world from a young age. For the last 15 years she has lived on a small homestead in Central Florida, growing subtropical medicinals in her food forest and getting to know a bioregion vastly different from her beloved Appalachia.
Carol believes in promoting self-sufficiency and fostering people’s connection with the natural world through teaching others how to use locally abundant plants for food and medicine.
Carol began studying with The Human Path in 2011 to improve her skills as an herbal clinician in daily and post-disaster scenarios. She assists and teaches courses for the Herbal Clinician Program, and mentors student clinicians participating in the Tele-Clinic Program.
Thomas Bryant
Wilderness Medicine Team, Instructor
Thomas Bryant is a lifelong gardener who was taught about permaculture and integrated agriculture from his parents long before the term was used in common language. He grew up in the mountains of Idaho where he was taught to forage the mushrooms and berries from the forest, but to always leave some behind to propagate the next season’s harvest.
Thomas has built numerous aquaponics systems, operated a small scale commercial landscape nursery, spent years remediating the pastures at his property and has run a working farm producing both animal and plant products for two decades.
He has studied herbs with the Human Path for years and has completed the Family Health, Emergent Responder, Apothecarist, and is in the final stages of the Clinical program. Thomas has also taught numerous classes with the Human Path and is the Off-grid and Emergency communications instructor.
Jen-Osha Buysse, EMT-B
Outdoors Instructor
Jen-Osha has over 20 years of experience as outdoor educator and activist, living in the mountains of West Virginia. She is the Director and Co-founder of the Mountain Stewardship and Outdoor Leadership School, a sister school of the Human Path.
At Mtn SOL, she is the lead instructor for the Medic path and co-instructor for the Scout and Herbalist Programs. She is certified as a Wilderness Herbal First Responder, instructor for Wilderness First Aid and helps lead the West Virginia Chapter of Herbal Medics.
She gratefully learned her woods skills from the wise women of Appalachia and her homesteading experience as a mother in West Virginia.
Lisa Ganora
Instructor
Lisa Ganora began studying traditional Western herbalism in the ‘80s. Later, she lived and wildcrafted in the Appalachians where she studied with folk healers and created herbal products to sell as she travelled the festival circuit with her herb booth. After practicing as a community herbalist for a decade, Lisa retuned to college and graduated from UNCA summa cum laude with multiple awards in biology and chemistry. After graduation she focused on studying pharmacognosy and phytochemistry.
In addition to directing the Colorado School of Clinical Herbalism since 2012 and managing Elderberry’s (a Rocky Mountain herb farm and education center in Paonia, CO), Lisa has also served as Adjunct Professor of Pharmacognosy at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and has lectured and taught classes at numerous schools and conferences around the U.S. She is the author of Herbal Constituents, a popular textbook on herbal phytochemistry for natural health practitioners, which is used by schools and universities worldwide.
Lisa is available for consulting in medicinal plant chemistry, synergy, and formulation for the herbal and natural products industries.
James Brock
Instructor
Following an interest in traditional Scandinavian knifemaking, James began making knives by stock removal in early 2001. In 2009, prompted by the desire to make damascus steel, he acquired a small gas furnace and began making hand-forged blades, eventually learning to make damascus from ABS Master Smith Harvey Dean in February 2011. James’ passion as a bladesmith centers around salvaging old, worn, or otherwise discarded pieces of high carbon steel (i.e. automobile leaf and coil springs, bearing races, worn out saw blades and files, broken plowshares, etc…) and giving them new life on the anvil. He specializes in Scandinavian-style bushcraft knives, EDC’s, and hunters.
James has also led our team of off-grid blacksmiths to the jungles of Nicaragua to teach the Rama tribe forging skills for making their own spears, arrows and tools. He teaches a series of blacksmithing and blade-making courses for The Human Path that center around using reclaimed, recycled and found materials, with an emphasis on off grid techniques.