In-Person Apprenticeships
SACRED PLANT MEDICINE APPRENTICESHIP: YEAR ONE 2026 - Registration Open
May 2026 - April 2027, Vermont
The Gaia School’s Year One Apprenticeship is a nine-month immersive training in foundational herbalism, sacred plant medicine, spiritual ecology, and holistic healing. The apprenticeship focuses on learning the essentials of plant medicine while cultivating deep, reciprocal relationships with our plant teachers. Through hands-on, land-based experience, students build a strong foundation in herbalism.
Students gather in person to study plant medicine through seasonal teachings, experiential learning, and guided plant journeys, developing skills in herbalism, medicine-making, and holistic healing. In addition to on-the-land training, students receive full access to our A Year of Gaia online course, which includes plant medicine journeys, herbalism lectures, guided meditations, plant profiles, holistic anatomy and physiology, medicine-making teachings, and healing rituals.
ADVANCED PLANT MEDICINE APPRENTICESHIP: YEAR TWO 2026 - COURSE FULL
April 2026 - March 2027, Vermont
The Sacred Plant Medicine Year Two Apprenticeship continues the journey begun in Year One, deepening your relationship with the plants while preparing you to bring plant medicine into your community. While Year One centers on self-healing and building relationships with plant allies, Year Two focuses on learning how to safely support others with plants.
Students move through each system of the body and the chakras, developing a deeper understanding of holistic anatomy and physiology for herbalists. The apprenticeship begins with a journey around the sacred wheel through the elements, renewing and deepening relationships with the plant teachers introduced in Year One. Throughout the year, students strengthen their knowledge of healing plants, explore advanced medicine-making, materia medica, harvesting and growing, and continue journeying with the spirits of the medicine plants.
In Person Courses
COMMUNICATING WITH PLANTS - 3-Day Immersion - Registration Open
June 12-14, 2026, Westminster, Vermont
During this three-day immersive experience, we’ll practice meditation and plant communication techniques that support learning directly from the plants themselves. Together, we’ll explore the hidden intelligence of the plant world and experience how plants can influence our well-being on physical, emotional, and energetic levels.
You’ll learn practical ways to tune into plant consciousness, exploring their responses to touch, sound, vibration, and emotion. Communicating with plants cultivates deeper, more reciprocal relationships—both in your home garden and in the wild—inviting greater trust, awareness, and connection with the living world.
TEA MEDITATION IN THE GARDEN
Dates TBA, Westminster, Vermont
Step into stillness for a weekend of reconnecting with nature through the gentle practice of tea meditation. Held in the serenity of the garden, this immersion invites you to slow down and use tea as a doorway into presence — awakening the senses, calming the mind, and opening the heart.
Blending mindful tea drinking with breath awareness and quiet reflection, we explore tea as both a plant medicine and a path to inner peace. Whether you are new to meditation or deepening your practice, Tea Meditation in the Garden offers a nurturing space to rest, restore, and realign with the rhythms of the natural world.
No prior experience is needed. Chairs, cushions, and mats will be provided.
Learn With Us Online
If joining us in Vermont isn’t possible, our online courses and apprenticeships offer a way to study plant medicine from home, rooted in seasonal rhythms and guided practice.
“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.”
— ROBIN WALL KIMMERER, BRAIDING SWEETGRASS
