Medicines from the Earth Herb Symposium
May 16 – 18, 2025
Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat Center – Lake Junaluska, NC
Location Change for 2025: We welcome the New Year and the opportunity to gather once again in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina to celebrate the power of botanical medicine! Since Blue Ridge Assembly is still recovering from the effects of Helene, we are moving the symposium to Lake Junaluska Conference Center, about 40 minutes west of Asheville. It is a beautiful facility on the lake with mountain views from the lodging and meeting spaces, lakeside walking paths lined with flowers, and locally sourced food in the dining hall. We look forward to seeing you there! As we finalize the program let’s envision a healing weekend filled with knowledge, laughter and connection. It’s more important than ever right now!
Page Directory
Dates: May 16 – 18, 2025
Symposium Highlights:
Over 30 presentations to choose from including:
- Herb walks
- Clinical lectures
- Medicine-making demonstrations
- Pre-symposium Intensive with Wendy Warner, MD, ABIHM, IFMCP
- Friday Field Study with David Winston, RH (AHG)
- Keynote Address with Kiva Rose, Herbalist and Author
- Plus a dynamic exhibit hall with education, herbal products, books and more!
See speakers and topics below.
Those who attend the symposium in person receive:
- Attendance at live lectures May 16 – 18 (Intensives, CE, and meals/lodging are extra)
- Streaming of all videos made at the symposium for 6 months (except outdoor workshops and walks, which won’t be recorded)
- Full set of audio recordings to own
- Digital lecture notes to own
Registration: $429 by February 27; $509 by April 2; $559 after that date. Includes all lectures May 16 – 18. Extra fees for intensives, CE, meals, and lodging.
Student Discounts: Students receive $120 off. Please contact us for the discount code.
Cancellations: By May 1, registration fees will be refunded minus $50 processing per registrant. No refunds can be given after 5/1/25. Refund requests should be emailed to the Registration Office.
Lodging and Meals
Lake Junaluska Conference & Retreat Center
91 N Lakeshore Drive
Lake Junaluska, North Carolina 28785
With stunning mountain views, walking trails, and a historic lakefront, Lake Junaluska provides the perfect setting for renewal, community and connection. Attendees will find inspiration in its natural beauty and welcoming atmosphere.
Lodging packages with 6 meals included start at $235/night. There are various lodging options to meet your needs.
Note: If the Lake Junaluska reservation system states that they are full, please contact us to let us know, so we can reserve more rooms!
Register for lodging and meals online.
Keynote Address with Kiva Rose, Herbalist and Author
Title: Entering The Mysterium: Healing Through Wonder and the Living World
Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Time: 8:00 – 9:30 PM
Open to all attendees.
In this transformative keynote, Kiva Rose explores the profound interplay between the natural world and human healing. Drawing on decades of herbal practice and ecological immersion, she delves into the numinous beauty of plants—not merely as tools but as partners in an intricate dance of connection and wonder.
Kiva invites attendees to move beyond reductionist views of the materia medica, embracing plants as agents of enchantment and transformation. With vivid stories from her wilderness apothecary and personal reflections from her practice, she reveals how the sensory and spiritual dimensions of plant work bridge the mundane and the sacred. This talk reawakens our intrinsic bond to the more-than-human world, offering a path toward ecological harmony, personal wellness, and the healing truths of mystery itself. Attendees will leave inspired to rediscover the awe and interconnectedness at the heart of the green world, emboldened to carry its healing gifts into their lives and practices.
Friday Pre-Symposium Intensive with Wendy Warner, MD, ABIHM, IFMCP
Title: Menopause as a Neuroinflammatory and Hormonal Event
Date: Friday, May 16, 2025
Time: 1:00 – 5:15 PM
Place: Lake Junaluska Conference Center
Cost: $89
Open only to registered conference participants.
Continuing Education: Applications to be submitted to OBNM, NCCAOM and AAFP for 4 hours
Description: For a very long time, the focus around menopause has been hormone balancing. This is important, but it misses so much! Menopausal changes are instigated by hormone shifts, yes, but not confined to them. Our brains re-wire themselves and our immune function goes into hyperdrive. Both of these responses are driven by inflammation. In our time together during this workshop, we’ll review the current science of menopausal changes, from brain chemistry (including our understanding of the genesis of hot flashes) to shifts in immune drivers and how to modulate all of it. We’ll review the beauty of traditional forms of herbal therapies for the change and how they, without realizing it, often “covered” areas we now find as vital to women traversing this time. We’ll also focus on additional avenues of balancing that will help women feel more themselves and avoid long term health outcomes.
Friday Field Study with David Winston, RH (AHG)
Title: Ethnobotanical and Native Plant Field Study
Date: Friday, May 16, 2024
Time: 10 AM – 3 PM
Cost: $79
Location: Lake Junaluska Conference Center
Open only to registered symposium participants. 35 person limit.
Continuing Education: Application to be submitted to NCCAOM for 5 hours. Sorry, OBNM and AAFP do not provide credit for herb walks.
Description: Join this perennial outdoor favorite for a day with David Winston. Examine the unique flora of the southeastern mountains and hear stories of creation and the origin of medicine. Discover how the medicine, food and useful materials provided by the plants have nurtured the Native peoples and Appalachian settlers for millennia. Explore the healing power of the herbs, the water, the earth, the trees, and how you can make them a part of your life. This event fills every year, so please register early! Limit 35 participants.
Continuing Education Information
- Please sign up for CE when you submit your registration form ($29 additional fee for all CE).
- We offer CE, CME, CNE, PDA and CEUs through these approvals
- Credits issued for full or partial attendance
- Totals below will include attendance at pre-symposium intensive and/or field study
NATUROPATHIC PHYSICIANS:
- Application to be submitted to OBNM and AAFP
NURSING PROFESSIONALS, MEDICAL DOCTORS, OSTEOPATHIC PHYSICIANS, ETC.:
- Application to be submitted to AAFP
ACUPUNCTURISTS:
- Application to be submitted to NCCAOM
A general certificate of attendance is available to any participant who requests it.
Questions on CE? Contact us.
Scholarships:
At Herbal Educational Services we Cultivate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We recognize the need for increased diversity in the fields of clinical herbalism and natural medicine and are committed to creating a welcoming environment at our events that affords dignity to all.
Work Study Program
Symposium Speakers and Topics
(Subject to minor changes)
Lise Alschuler, ND, FABNO, eMBA
Lise Alschuler is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Arizona where she is the Associate Director of the Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. She received her undergraduate degree from Brown University. Dr. Alschuler completed her naturopathic medical training at Bastyr University where she also completed her residency in general naturopathic medicine. She is board certified in naturopathic oncology. She completed an executive Masters of Business in 2023. She is co-author of Definitive Guide to Cancer, now in its 3rd edition, and Definitive Guide to Thriving After Cancer. More about Lise Alschuler.
Presentations:
1. Unsung Herbal Heroes of Immunity
2. TBA
3. Saturday Panel: Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes: How to Motivate Patients to Make Meaningful and Impactful Dietary and Lifestyle Changes
Teresa Boardwine, RH (AHG)
Green Comfort School of Herbal Medicine in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, is where Teresa Boardwine offers classes, consultations, and online access to her workshops. She has been teaching her hands-on medicine-making classes for over 25 years, and just graduated her largest class of students in the fall of 2023. More about Teresa Boardwine.
Presentations:
1. Providing Mutual Herbal Aid after Helene: Formulas for Building Resilience (Demonstration)
2. Non-Alcohol Herbal Extractions: Vinegar, Honey, Glycerin and Oils
Lindsay Chimelski, ND, LAc, RH (AHG)
Dr. Lindsay Chimileski is a naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, registered herbalist, naturalist, and educator. She weaves the use of botanical fungi medicines, traditional chinese medicine, nutrition, educational empowerment, and above all, the appreciation and awe of nature into her work with patients. Dr. Chimileski is based in Connecticut at her practice Hawthorn Holistic Health. Prior to her naturopathic and TCM education, she studied Human Development and Family Studies, with an interest in psychology, mindfulness and generational dynamics. She is an experienced adjunct faculty member, teaching advanced botanical medicine and nutrition courses at UBCNM for many years. She lectures locally, aboard and offers online seminars as well. She personally recharges by spending time in nature, foraging, hiking and practicing yoga.
Presentations:
1. TBA
2. TBA
Sam Coffman
A former army special forces medic, Sam Coffman is the founder and director of The Human Path, where he teaches botanical medicine, western pathophysiology, physiology, integrative medicine, austere and post-disaster medicine. He has taught herbalism for over 25 years, and been a clinical herbalist for over 15 years. He is also the co-founder of Herbal Medics, which brings medicine for indigenous, local residents in remote areas. This organization has assisted with first aid and herbal first aid support at numerous gatherings and protests, as well as post-disaster medical and botanical medicine clinics along the Texas coastline and in Houston during hurricane Harvey. More about Sam Coffman.
Presentations:
1. Disaster Herbalism
2. Advanced Wound and Infection Management Concepts (Demonstration)
Doug Elliott and Todd Elliott, PhD
For many years Doug Elliott earned his living as a traveling herbalist collecting and selling herbs, teas and old-time remedies. Along with healing plants, Doug searches out old-timers and elders from various cultures. From these bearers of tradition, he has assembled an extensive body of knowledge of the botanical aspects of plants, their history, legends, and lore, their uses in various cultures, medicinal properties, food value, as well as other practical ways we can use wild plants every day. More about Doug Elliott.
Not surprisingly, Doug’s son Todd Elliott has had a passion for the natural world since childhood, which led him to co-author his first peer-reviewed scientific publication by age 14. His ongoing studies of global biodiversity and interrelationships in nature have taken him to remote corners of the world on six continents. Todd has collaborated on many publications covering this research, and his book Mushrooms of the Southeast (USA) was released in 2018. He received his PhD from the University of New England (Australia) on the role of macrofungi in vertebrate diets.
More about Todd Elliott.
Presentations:
1. Saturday Herb Walk
2. Sunday Herb Walk
Tesia Love, Clinical Ayurvedic Practitioner
Tesia Love is an Ayurvedic Practitioner from Charlotte, NC where she practices as a Clinical Ayurvedic Specialist, Clinical Herbalist, 500-hr Registered Yoga Teacher and Licensed Massage & Bodywork Therapist. She first started studying Ayurveda over 20 years ago, and has spent the past 12 years professionally helping her clients transform their health through this profound science. Tesia is a graduate of the California College of Ayurveda (CCA), Duke Integrative Medicine’s Integrative Health Coach training, and various other continuing education / mentorship programs with teachers of Ayurveda, herbalism and bodywork. More about Tesia Love.
Presentations:
1. Matters of the Heart: Herbal Support for Grief and Loss
Kat Maier, RH (AHG)
A practicing herbalist for over twenty years, Kat Maier is currently director of Sacred Plant Traditions in Charlottesville, Virginia where she offers a three-year clinical/community herbalist training program, and runs an herbal free clinic. She began studying plants in the Peace Corps in Chile. More about Kat Maier.
Presentations:
1. Cooling Remedies in Climate Change
2. Plant Walk: Establishing Plant Relations
jim mcdonald, Herbalist
In 1994, jim mcdonald drank a strange tea from a wild plant he harvested. From there, his life in the woods and meadows of southeast Michigan has been centered on the plants & ecosystems of that land, and how he might share their virtues to restore wellness with those around him. jim’s approach to herbcraft blends traditional european folk influences with 19th century Eclectic and Physiomedical vitalism, which he conveys with story, experience, humour, common sense and lore. He’s taught classes throughout North America, is one of the organizers of the Great Lakes Herb Faire, and is currently alternately writing “Foundational Herbcraft” and the “A Great Lakes Herbal”. jim is a community herbalist, a manic wildcrafter and medicine maker, and has been an ardent student of the most learned teachers of herbcraft…the
Presentations:
1. A Number of Nervines
2. An Energetic Plant Walk
Kenneth Proefrock, NMD
A naturopathic physician practicing in Sun City, Arizona, Kenneth Proefrock specializes in difficult-to-treat conditions in his clinic, Total Wellness. He is the vice-president of the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners and chair of the biochemistry portion of the naturopathic physician’s licensing exam. His lectures combine a detailed understanding of biochemistry and physiology with a passion for plant medicine. More about Kenneth Proefrock.
Presentations:
1. Surface Eruptions: A Primer on Skin Rashes and Botanical Medicine Approaches to their Treatment
2. Swinging the Pendulum-Acid-Base Chemistry for Herbalists (Demonstration)
Kiva Rose, Herbalist and Author
Kiva Rose is an herbalist, mythologist, and author with twenty years experience working with medicinal plants in a clinical and folkloric context. Her vision for healing and a sacred connection to the numinous green was the catalyst for the creation of Plant Healer events and publications, and also expressed through her botanical perfumes. She is co-director of the Good Medicine Confluence and co-publisher of Plant Healer Publications. She writes, teaches, and consults from the wilderness of New Mexico. More about Kiva Rose.
Presentations:
1. Keynote: Entering The Mysterium: Healing Through Wonder and the Living World
CoreyPine Shane, RH (AHG)
CoreyPine Shane, founder and Director of the Blue Ridge School of Herbal Medicine near Asheville, NC, has spent over 25 years helping clients and teaching people by artfully blending Chinese and Western herbal traditions with a focus on local plants. His new book “Southeast Medicinal Plants” covers how to identify, ethically harvest, and use the wild plants of the Southeast. CoreyPine has taught across the United States and in Europe, at many national herb conferences, and is a Professional Member of the American Herbalists Guild.. More about CoreyPine Shane.
Presentations:
1. Herb Walk #1
2. Herb Walk #2
Katie Stage, ND, RH (AHG), FABNG
Katie Stage is a naturopathic physician and registered herbalist of the American Herbalists Guild. Her lectures are full of clinical information based on experience in her practice in family medicine at the Sonoran University Medical Center in Tempe, AZ, where she practices family medicine focusing on optimizing women’s/men’s health, gastrointestinal diseases, and mental health. Her lectures combine clinical information with a deep respect for indigenous healing and the ability to heal oneself through connection with nature and simple lifestyle practices. She is also a member of the Ric Scalzo Botanical Research Institute. More about Katie Stage.
Presentations:
1. TBA
2. TBA
Wendy Warner, MD, ABIHM, IFMCP
Dr. Wendy Warner is a board-certified gynecologist and expert in functional medicine and hormone health. After spending 14 years in conventional OB/GYN practice, she transitioned to a holistic, integrative approach, founding a collaborative medical practice in suburban Philadelphia. There, she worked alongside diverse healthcare practitioners to offer a wide range of therapeutic options. In 2022, she shifted exclusively to telemedicine, allowing her to provide care virtually.
In addition to her clinical work, Dr. Warner is an IFM Certified Practitioner, an herbalist, and a mesa carrier. She is a nationally recognized speaker and educator, serving on the faculty of David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies. She also contributed a chapter to the latest edition of Rakel’s Integrative Medicine textbook and previously served as president of the American Board of Integrative Holistic Medicine.
Presentations:
1. Pre-Conference Intensive: Menopause as a Neuroinflammatory and Hormonal Event
2. Natural Approaches to Fertility
3. Saturday Panel: Insulin Resistance and Type 2 Diabetes: How to Motivate Patients to Make Meaningful and Impactful Dietary and Lifestyle Changes
David Winston, RH (AHG)
David Winston is an Herbalist and Ethnobotanist with 54 years of training in Chinese, Western/Eclectic and Southeastern herbal traditions. He has been in clinical practice for 47 years and is an herbal consultant to physicians, herbalists and researchers throughout the USA, Europe and Canada. David is the founder/director of the Herbal Therapeutics Research Library and the dean of David Winston’s Center for Herbal Studies, a two-year training program in clinical herbal medicine. He is an internationally known lecturer and frequently teaches at medical schools, professional symposia and herb conferences. He is the president of Herbalist & Alchemist, Inc. a manufacturer that produces herbal products that blend the art and science of the world’s great herbal traditions. More about David Winston can be located at Herbal Studies.
Presentations:
1. Friday Ethnobotanical and Native Plant Field Study
2. Last Butt not Least – Herbal/Nutritional Proctology
Are you interested in exhibiting at the conference?
A limited number of tables for exhibiting and selling products are available. Please contact us and we will send information.
We look forward to seeing you in person at Lake Junaluska in 2025!
