Vermont Main Branch
The Gaia School of Healing has been rooted in New England for 24 years!
Our school’s home is settled on 10 beautiful acres of land and gardens in Southern Vermont, ancestral homelands and territory of the Abenaki peoples. Classes run in our herb and food gardens year round, with students traveling from all across New England to attend classes. We are joined by large communities of nettles, motherwort, violets, burdock, mugwort, and many other plants that cover the land.
Check out what we are currently offering, and come join us in the gardens!
Our Sacred Plant Medicine Apprenticeships focus on working with plants as medicine for the body and spirit, weaving scientific research with ancient traditions of folk plant medicine. In our courses we partner with plants as conscious beings, learning through direct hands on experience with them. We recognize that many of us are relearning traditions of herbal medicine that have been kept alive by our families, ancestors, and communities around the world.
We focus mainly on local Northeastern American plants, and some that have long traditions of use medicinally and spiritually in other parts of the world. Plant harvesting will mostly center around local natives and naturalized plants of New England, though plants of Europe, Africa, Central and South America, Polynesia, and Asia are also brought in throughout the course. Students are able to harvest an abundance of medicinal plants, herb seeds, and wild foods from the Gaia School gardens for their own personal use and learning at home.
Certification for each course in sacred plant medicine and holistic healing will be given upon completion of each apprenticeship. Students combine herbal medicine with many other healing modalities and often go on to incorporate plant medicine into their careers in many different ways - growing plants, medicine making, teaching, opening a healing practice, working with friends and family, and using plant medicine to benefit social, environmental, and collective change.
Make abundant medicine with us in our gardens!
“Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; they’re bringing you something you need to learn...
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”
