Food is a big part of herbal practice

Herbs alone are almost never the best way to approach health issues for our clients - you'll get better results if you also work with clients to build dietary habits that support the work they want to do.

This course will help you to do it! You'll learn:

🍎 How to work with your clients to assess the impact of their current diet on their health issues

🍎 How to build nutritional suggestions that your clients will like & be able to succeed with

🍎 How to motivate & educate clients so that they can stick with changes and see success

🍎 How to find improvements even for clients who don't want to change

🍎 How to build strategies that will fit into your clients' budget and resources

🍎 How to navigate legal issues so that you stay within your scope and the legal requirements for your state/region

This course includes a review of lots of trendy and popular diets that your clients will want to talk about - what's good, what's not so good, and how to help them build something that really works for them.


This course is for everyone!

You don't have to be enrolled in the Clinical Herbalist Program to take this course!

But, if you take this course and at some future date decide to enroll in the whole Clinical Herbalist Program, make sure to email us first so that we can make you a special coupon code to deduct the cost of this course from the bundle! :-)

Course curriculum

    1. Welcome!

    2. A Special Live Q&A Time for Clinical students!

    3. Accessing the Live CLINICAL Q&A sessions

    4. Some excellent folks you'll meet here at CommonWealth

    5. Chatting in the Community Space

    6. Interactive Learning

    7. How to use the Discussions feature

    8. Every Body is Different

    9. Use of Course Material (Intellectual Property)

    10. ✅ The Clinical Herbalist Courses are being updated!

    1. Introduction

    2. Introduction [audio]

    3. Pre-requisite review

    4. Pre-requisite Review [audio]

    5. Pre-requisite Worksheet

    6. Experience is the Key

    7. Experience is Key [audio]

    8. Try it before you recommend it!

    9. We're not Registered Dietitians, and that's ok

    1. Excess & Deficiency: Quantity & Quality

    2. Excess & Deficiency: Quantity & Quality [audio]

    3. Practice some general excess/deficiency strategies

    4. Excess & Deficiency: Protein

    5. Excess & Deficiency: Protein [audio]

    6. "Optimal Protein Intake Guide" from Examine.com

    7. Protein Powders & Lead Contamination

    8. Protein Powders & Shakes Contain High Levels of Lead - Consumer Reports Article

    9. Which Protein Powders are Safe?

    10. Excess & Deficiency: Fats

    11. Excess & Deficiency: Fats [audio]

    12. Excess & Deficiency - Carbohydrates part 1

    13. Excess & Deficiency: Carbohydrates 1 [audio]

    14. Sugar Gives You Energy: Marketing in the 50s & 60s

    15. Excess & Deficiency: Carbohydrates part 2

    16. Excess & Deficiency: Carbohydrates 2 [audio]

    17. Excess & Deficiency: Vitamins & Minerals

    18. Excess & Deficiency: Vitamins & Minerals [audio]

    1. Diets in General

    2. Therapeutic vs. Sustaining Diets

    1. Dogmatic Diets

    2. Dogmatic Diets [audio]

    3. The Paleo Diet(s)

    4. Paleo [audio]

    5. Whole30

    6. Whole30 [audio]

    7. Whole30 Original Rules

    8. AIP

    9. AIP [audio]

    10. AIP overview from Science(tm)

    11. Navigating AIP websites

    12. Cassava...

    13. Keto

    14. Keto [audio]

    15. Keto Worksheet

    16. The Keto Slides as a PDF

    17. What is "Restrictive"?

    18. What is "Normal" for Carbs?

    19. Atkins

    20. Atkins [audio]

    21. Carnivore Diet

    22. Carnivore [audio]

    23. "Rabbit Starvation"

    24. Weston A. Price Foundation

    25. Weston A. Price Foundation [audio]

    26. The Archaeological Study on Herder/Gardeners vs. Agriculturalists

    27. Is Sourdough Gluten Free?

    28. GAPS Diet

    29. GAPS [audio]

    30. GAPS Stages & Rules

    31. The Blood Type Diet

    32. Blood Type [audio]

    33. The Acid/Alkaline Diet

    34. Acid/Alkaline [audio]

    35. The Candida Diet

    36. Candida [audio]

    37. Timeline of Microbiome Research

    38. Macrobiotic

    39. Macrobiotic [audio]

    40. Food Combining

    41. Food Combining [audio]

    42. Raw Food Diets

    43. Raw Food [audio]

    44. Registered Dieticians & Licensed Nutritionists

    45. Registered Dieticians & Licensed Nutritionists [audio]

    46. Governmental Nutritional Guidelines

    47. Governmental Nutritional Guidelines [audio]

    48. "Conventional Wisdom"

    49. "Conventional Wisdom" [audio]

    1. The Silver Bullet

    2. The Silver Bullet [audio]

    3. FODMAPs

    4. FODMAPs [audio]

    5. Histamines

    6. Histamines [audio]

    7. Oxalates

    8. Oxalates [audio]

    9. Salicylates

    10. Salicylates [audio]

    11. Thinking critically about dietary interventions

    12. Thinking critically about dietary interventions

    13. Helping people build rational experiments

    14. Helping people build rational experiments

About this course

  • $250.00
  • 114 lessons
  • 17 hours of video content

This course is still receiving its final updates, but you can start now with early bird pricing!

Currently this course is $250 and we expect it to have at least 25 hours of video when it's finished.

Enroll today

But wait, there's more! 🙂

In addition to the videos, we provide features to accommodate all the different ways people like to learn, so you can internalize the information easily!

  • Lifetime access - so you can review the content as many times as you like, forever! And: every time we make updates, you get the new material for free!

  • Weekly live Q&A sessions with Katja and Ryn - to ask your questions directly, live and in person! (They're even archived, in case you miss one!) This course has 1 year live Q&A support.

  • Ask questions anytime - we're always just a click away: you can ask any questions in the integrated discussion forum, and we're committed to personally answering your questions, usually within 24 hours.

  • Printable PDF materials - if you like to follow the videos along on paper, or keep them handy for a quick reference.

  • Downloadable MP3 files - so you can review the content while you commute, workout, garden, ... anytime!

  • Access to our Private Student Community - we run a vibrant student community with a mobile app (completely private, NOT on social media!) for our students, so that you can share with each other and support one another! Join study groups, swap herbs, chat about your practice, and more!

Certificate Information

You will receive a certificate for the successful completion of this course. 

This course has 87+ credit hours.

This course is being updated and when the rest of the materials are uploaded, the credit hour count will be revised to reflect the higher final number.

This represents the actual time of video instruction and live Q&A, as well as the time allocated for your capstone assignment, quizzes, and other assignments & activities required for completion of the course. 


It is reasonable to plan about twice that much time to complete the work: this is because most students like to watch the videos more than once, review their notes, and many students complete more than the required activities. You might also enjoy joining a study group in our Student Community, and you might choose to work on extra activities together as a group to help you internalize all that you've learned. 


Regardless of how long it takes you, there is never any pressure! You have access to this material for life, and in fact, when we add updates and new materials, you receive it all for free, automatically!


If new material is added after you have received your certificate, we are happy to send you a new updated certificate to document the additional time when you complete the new material.

Scholarships & Discounts

You can find complete information about our scholarships and discounts here.

Your Teachers

Two heads are better than one!


Katja & Ryn
Katja & Ryn

Katja & Ryn almost always teach together. They each have particular talents and areas of interest, and their perspectives on certain issues are quite different! Together, they convey a fuller picture of the realities of herbal theory & practice than either one could do alone.

Katja is an herbalist and teacher working to help people rebuild their relationships with their bodies and their own ability to heal. She’s been in practice for nearly 25 years, but it all began with a desire to make her own “fancy tea” at home instead of paying high prices for imported blends at specialty stores. She’s kept that do-it-yourself ethic close to her heart.

Ryn has been a practicing herbalist since 2010. He came to herbalism by way of martial arts, where his first experiences with herbs were focused on getting back into the game and becoming more flexible, adaptable, and resilient. Passing that experience on to others is what keeps him motivated every day.

Together, Katja and Ryn teach everyone from children to elders, as well as pharmacy students from Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Northeastern University School of Pharmacy, where they both serve as associate faculty. Ryn and Katja are the authors of Herbal Medicine for Beginners, and the creators of the weekly Holistic Herbalism Podcast.

Zero-Risk Return Policy

Teaching isn't just about conveying information - there's also an aspect of being someone's "cup of tea".

So we want you to take the first 7 days to really decide if you love it or not. If for any reason you feel like this program isn’t right for you - if we're just not your cup of tea - we’ll give you a full refund. You don't even need a reason - just please let us know within 7 days of purchase.