6 contact hours · 2 weeks · 2 hours of recorded lecture + 2-hour supplemental live session
This course covers safety fundamentals that herbalists, wellness practitioners, and family caregivers all need — no prior experience required. Come away with the knowledge and vocabulary to use herbs responsibly, at every age and life stage.
What This Course Covers
This course covers herbal safety from pregnancy through elder polypharmacy, with practical frameworks for dosing, drug interactions, and contraindications at every stage of life.
Topics include:
- Common pharma-herb reactions: anticoagulants, antidepressants, thyroid medications, immunosuppressants, and more
- How to use current, evidence-based online databases to look up interactions in real time
- Pediatric dosing: core frameworks and key safety principles
- Pregnancy and postpartum: the most critical contraindications to know
- Polypharmacy awareness for elders
- Communicating herbal safety clearly to clients, patients, and families
Who is this course for?
You belong here if you are:
- A parent, caregiver, or community member who wants to use herbs safely for your family
- A practicing herbalist looking to formalize and deepen your safety knowledge
- A health or wellness professional — nurse, doula, midwife, health coach, or similar — integrating plant medicine into your work
- A student beginning a formal herbalism program
No prerequisites required. No prior herbal or medical knowledge is assumed. If you want to expand your knowledge on working with herbs and western medicine together, you’re ready for this course.
What you will leave with
By the end of two weeks, you will be able to:
- Apply pediatric dosing frameworks with confidence, understanding the reasoning behind adjustments for age and weight
- Identify the most common and most dangerous herb-drug interactions, particularly for people who are pregnant, elderly, or managing chronic conditions
- Recognize red-flag situations that call for referral to a qualified medical provider
- Navigate leading online safety databases to look up current interaction data
- Communicate herbal safety clearly to clients, patients, or family members
- Approach every subsequent herbal study with a safety-first mindset
This course is the entry point to the Family Herbalist Program and a natural next step from the Introduction to Herbal Medicine for Beginners. No prior herbal knowledge required.
