Traditional Apprenticeships of Medicine Program
Available in 3 month Blocks
may-november
Limitless experiential learning designed directly by you and your teachers to support the development of your own relationship with healing, wellness and the medicine itself
Herbalism
Energetic bodywork
Learning & Working w/ Elders
Energetic cleansing
Ancestral & Inter-generational Healing
The Apprenticeship:
During this time, students will have the opportunity to work closely with a teacher in small groups of 1 to 4 apprentices. Each apprenticeship will develop organically, focusing on the student’s unique gifts, passions, and areas of interest related to medicine.
Apprentices will engage deeply with their studies throughout the program, and teachers will guide this journey. Students will have various homework assignments, which may include meditations, self-healing practices, community healing activities, herbal preparations, community service, and immersive experiences with elements or plants. Additionally, homework will involve research, reflection time, and an in-depth exploration of their ancestral lineages.
Apprentices will engage deeply with their studies throughout the program, and teachers will guide this journey. Students will have various homework assignments, which may include meditations, self-healing practices, community healing activities, herbal preparations, community service, and immersive experiences with elements or plants. Students will practice reciprocity and relationship with teachers by also doing work exchange in gardens with teachers or processing and harvesting foods and medicines.
Students will have the opportunity to work in the following fields of interest:
Herbalism & Farming
1. Work in medicine and food gardens, wild harvest and or harvest from gardens medicinal plants
2. Plant Identification and medicinal uses
3. Habitats of plants
4. Energetics of Plants, Plant meditations and plant ancestors
5. Intuitive learning with plants
2. Harvesting sustainability and ethics, times and seasons, moon cycles and asking permission
3. Preserving, drying and making medicines with herbs
4. Medicine Making: Making Tinctures, Flower Essences, Topical Oils, Salves and Hair Oil
5. Matching Plants with people
6. Herbal Formulations the folk methods and clinical methods
7. Shadowing and assisting during private practice of herbal consults
8. Assisting with running an herbal business or product line to learn business ins and outs
Energy Work
1. Energetic Protection adn cleansing
2. Grounding
3. Living a spirit-driven life
4. Resonance
5. Learning to Listen to the body
6. Shifting energetic imbalances in the body, mind and spirit including:
emotional, inherited, ancestral, and childhood old patterns, traumas, outdated belief systems
7. Elemental medicine traditions
8. Celtic Moon Phases and practices that align
9. Energy testing and matching plants with people
10. Sacred Listening
11. Ancestral Healing
LEARN ABOUT
Our Teachers and Program Contributions
Our school features medicine workers and elders working across a spectrum of the healing arts. Students have an opportunity to study medicine in the context it is relevant to and classes are often taught in a nonacademic way. While several of the teachers have written books and may have a Master’s or PhD, our teachers value traditional and experiential learning by building relationship with medicine tools, integration, and Indigenous science. Our teachers actively participate in community service, non-profit work, community advocacy, and their private practice in wellness.
Read about each teacher’s bio and program contribution below:
Malia Roe
BIO
Malia Roe is a practicing indigenous pagan who walks the six-fold path. As a practitioner, she draws deeply from her lifelong experiences with the invisible world (spirits, ancestors, energy) that began in her childhood and were nurtured through a long line of engagements and teachings with seers, wise women, cunning folk, herbalists, and medicine people from a diverse set of cultural and ancestral traditions. She has been called to share those teachings and experiences with others in ways that support their own journeys of self-awareness and empowerment. In addition to thirty years as a practicing intuitive advisor and life counselor, Malia is a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids (OBOD) as well as the Ancient Order of Druids in America and the Sisterhood of Avalon. She is a certified Life & Mindfulness Coach, a certified Master Herbalist, an OBOD-trained Celebrant and legal ceremonial officiant, and a member of the Native Roots Medicine Collective. She is also an active member of the Taos Healing & Reconciliation Project and a trained HRI facilitator.
Apprenticeship Offerings
- Celtic Spirituality, Magic, And Mysticism
- Herbal Remedies for energetic Protection and energetic Boundaries
- Grounding
- Herbal Remedies for basic body systems
- Gardening and Growing Medicinal Plants
- Medicinal Uses of plants
- Herbal Medicine Making of Oils, Tinctures, FLower Essences, Herbal Food Preperations, Salves and Jams
- How to embody the Grandmother Healer
- Navigating Spiritual Space and a spirit driven life in academic and business environments
- Moon Phases and Manifestation
- Working with the earth and elemental Medicines
- Relation to energy of self and others
Dr. Pepper Hernandez
BIO
Founder of Non-Profit Humboldt Holistic Foundation to help expand and create resources for the stability of Holistic Projects for Humboldt County and beyond. Like a woven scarf, Dr. Hernadnez's threads are made up of Apache, Navaho, and Indigenous Mexican on her father's side. Cherokee, Arapaho, and Cheyenne from her mother's side. Her great, great, great grandfather walked the trail of tears to make it to Oklahoma as their home. The place where her mother would receive her in spirit to birth. She has been a spiritual teacher for over two decades, adding to her tool bag along her journey. Mainly focused on the mental, physical and spiritual bodies, she bridges naturopathic medicine with the more spiritual aetherial worlds. With the intention that all humans spirits are energy manifested physically. Pepper is a researcher focusing on Neuroscience, Hebbs Law and bridging the gap between science and spirituality. She is fascinated by Entheogenics, Neuroplasticity, and Quantum Physics. As her values and purpose evolve, she chooses to work on a deeper level with clients as a spiritual educator. She calls this type of work Quantum Alignment Therapy® which includes working with the balance of nutrition through food and supplementation, energy alignment, and chakra balancing. mental, physical, and spiritual homeostasis.Apprenticeship Offerings
August Only
- Medicinal Foods For And Herbs For Cancer Prevention Including Cannabis Care
- Energy Movement And Hands On Healing, Quantum Healing, And Distance Healing
- Resonance and Raising Frequincy
- Nuero-Repatterning
- Nutritional Therapies
- Moving with intuition and Sacred listening
- Energy work to clear, repattern and reset
- Treatment for addiction, chronics disease
- auto-immune Diseases
- Ancestral Energy Centers And Chakras
- Breathwork
- Sacred Sexuality
- Movement inward
Morgaine Witriol
BIO
Morgaine Witriol is founder of the Native Roots School of Ancestral, Folk & Herbal Medicine in Taos, NM, a collective of 10 different teachers that teach each about their own ancestral healing modalities. Morgaine is a clinical herbalist, wild crafter, gardener, medicine maker and intuitive being in service to the plant and fungal folk. At her private practice in Taos, NM people can receive a combination of clinical, spiritual and medical intuitive treatments including bodywork, herbal consults, somatic trauma release, repatterning and reconditioning intergenerational and ancestral wounds, lymphatic drainage, abdominal massage, and sound healing. Morgaine's focus in her practice aside from trauma work is focused working with people that are diagnosed with cancer, diabetes, arthritis, depression or hard to treat chronic disease that western medicine is stumped by. At Native Roots, Morgaine teaches about reclaiming one’s own ancestral traditions as a displaced person, Jewish Folk Medicine, Southwest Materia Medica, Herbal Allies for Trauma & Grief, Ethics, Cultural Appropriation, Plant Energetics, Energywork, Clinical Herbalism, Flower Essences, Medicine Making and leads several multi-day field trips doing medicinal plant walks. Morgaine developed and ran educational programs accredited through the University of NM, has taught at the American Herbalist guild conference twice, and is now teaching at Northern University on herbalism for the nursing department. Her favorite people to teach are doctors, nurses, children and teachers. She has led plant and mushroom walks for the New Mexico Association of Osteopathic Medicine, Flower Hill Institute, presented for Native Plant Society, and taught wellness through plant and mushroom medicine for Taos Municipal Schools Employees. Morgaine apprenticed with a Mayan medicine man for 1 1/2 years in Belize. She studied at Northwest School For Botanical Medicine, Dandelion Herbal Center, Blue Otter School, California School Of Herbal Medicine & Milagro Herb School. Pre pandemic Morgaine led student trips to study herbalism with a Medicine Man in Guatemala for 4 years. She also founded and ran a Folk Farm & Forest Youth Camp. In her free time she visits with elders and elements, and practices the art of joy and balance.Apprenticeship Offerings
1. Herbalism and body systems
3. Medicine Making
4. Growing and wild harvesting medicinal plants and mushrooms
5. Creating your own herbal practice and products
6. Jewish Folk Medicine
7. Bodywork, Energy Work and Trauma Release
8. Reclaiming your ancestral medicines
9. Lymphatic Drainage and Cupping
10. Epigenetic Repatterning
11. Plant energetics: communicating with the plant ancestors, dosaging for the spirit, flower essences
13. Ethics, sustainability, appropriation and moving in good relation
14. Elemental Medicines
15. Repatterning the nervous system and cellular memory
Emigdio Ballon
Classes & Topics
* Pachamama (Earth) Blessings & Offerings
* Connecting to the Elements & the 4 Directions
* Making Tinctures and herbal extracts
* Permaculture: Drought Resistant Crops, Growing During Drought Years, Identifying Obstacles & Challenges, Seed Collection & Harvest
About
Emigdio Ballon is Quechua, from Bolivia, a descendent of the Inca people. He employs traditional Quechua techniques and rituals when he works with food and herbs as medicine. He is the director of the Institute of Natural and Traditional Knowledge and the Agricultural Director of the Pueblo of Tesuque, and Board President of Four Bridges Traveling Permaculture Institute.
He earned his Bachelors degree in agriculture at Major Bolivian University of Saint Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia and his Masters degree in plant genetics in Colombia. He studied for his Doctorate at Colorado State University. As a plant geneticist he has specialized in research on quinoa and amaranth grains and has published many articles about them in both South and North America.
Emigdio has served as an organic certification inspector in the United States and has made many presentations at major conferences on agriculture. He has studied principles of bio-dynamic farming at the Josephine Porter Institute of Applied Bio-Dynamics and continues to study and make presentations at various seminars.
In his little free time, Emigdio pursues research into germination techniques for a wide variety of crops, including traditional Chinese and Ayurvedic herbs and herbs indigenous to Northern New Mexico. His other interests include seed saving and sharing, bio-dynamic and organic farming and sustainable agricultural practices. He is also involved with Native American organizations which stress the importance of seed saving and promote the revival and continuation of traditional crops, both nutritional and medicinal. He employs traditional Quechua techniques and rituals which he learned at his grandfather’s side as a boy in Bolivia.
Apprenticeship Offerings
- Permaculture
- Biodynamic Gardening
- Land Offerings and Land Blessings
- Growing, Harvesting and preserving Medicinal Plants
- Seed Preservation
- Grounding
- Energetic Cleansing and Protection
- Sustainable Agroculture
- Working with water and Sustainable gardening
- Seed Harvesting
- Quechua and bolivian traditions
Miriam Foronda
Classes & Topics
* Elements of Ceremony
* Life as Ceremony
* Guidance for working alone, and in community (through virtual and face to face ceremonies)
* Invoking the elements of the Natural World, Ancestors and Divine Energy.
About
My family ancestry is from Honduras, Central America. I was born and raised in New York City, there I received my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the City University of New York. As long as I can remember I have had the gift of healing through my hands and an acute sense of intuition. However, as a child and young these gifts were not spoken of or used. In 1984, I received a spiritual calling through a sweat lodge ceremony facilitated by Uncle Charlie Thom of the Karuk tribe in Mt. Shasta. From there my life as I knew it changed. My first visit to New Mexico was in 1987 to participate in ceremony for the Harmonic Convergence. Then in 1989 I visited Taos, New Mexico for the San Geronimo Feast day. On this day God called me to move to Taos. My new life began on August 31, 1991 when I moved to Taos. Here I raised my two younger children. When they went off to college in 2005, I too decided enter the Master’s degree program in Educational Leadership at the University of New Mexico. At that time my mentor asked me to teach the Sacred Ceremony class at UNM-Taos. My Master’s thesis evolved from this class and from my own spiritual developmental path. When I completed the Master’s degree there was an urgency to continue my education which led me to enter the doctoral program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. I opted to receive a second Master’s degree in Transformative Studies due to lack of money to complete the doctoral dissertation. Over the last three decades my spiritual path has led me to become a ceremonialist in facilitating sweat lodges, vision quests, water blessings and healing ceremonies. Through my own spiritual development I have a great interest in how other’s spiritual development leads them to their self- authorship and authenticity through ritual and ceremony. This is my passion. My commitment to be of service to others by the will of God is how I live my life.Apprenticeship Offerings
1. Life as Ceremony
3. Assitance, Volunteering and Support during ceremonial times
4. Working with Stone and Water
5. Sacred Art
6. Energetic Cleansing
7. Setting your sacred altars
8. Courage in making Spirit Driven Decisions
9. Sacred Counsel
10. Energy Testing
11. Sacrifice and Nourishment
12. Water offerings and Land Blessings
13. Mayan Healing Traditions
About you
Who this program is designed for…
The person who has felt the calling to honor their own healing process and wants to be of service to their community. This is for people who are ready to create their own unique practice of holistic health and medicine. Those who feel in their hearts and spirits and every cell of their body the call towards creating relationship within and without – with the elements, with the plant and stone people, with all of nature and life itself. The ones who want to awaken the cellular and ancestral memory, who honor reverence and humility in the presence of medicine and the medicine keepers.
We have had doctors, nurses, lawyers, homesteaders, massage therapists, journalists, clinical and beginner herbalists, therapists, travelers, wanderers, farmers, native, non-native. We’ve had students at their quarterlife, midlife and ¾ life transitory points, who feel ready to honor their true life calling. Those who have felt disempowered, ready to really do the work, shed the trauma, face the intergenerational wounds, reclaim their roots.
What form will your future take?
Comprehensive Curriculum
What students will learn and gain through this apprenticeship:
- A strong foundation in herbal materia medica,
- Self-healing, shadow work, and integration
- Uses of Medicinal Plants for physcial and emotional well-being
- Heal ancestral trauma and wounds
- Community building, with emphasis on community health
- Creating Relationship to the elements (fire, earth, water, air)
- Learning to honor our innate rhythms and cycles through prayer, ritual, and ceremony
- Bodywork and intuitive body mapping practice on self and others
Program Details
3-Months
216 hours of educational immersion with 2-4 teachers
May 15-August 2025
Schedule created directly with teachers and subject to change
Sliding Scale Cost: $4,752-6,480
REgistration
Program Pricing & Payment
We try to make classes affordable to everyone as well as economically viable for teachers.
*Our programs are offered on a sliding scale, and we ask that you pay within a spectrum of what you can afford. The lower end of the scale applies to people on the lower income tier who also: work full time, are single parents, New Mexico residents or indigenous. To qualify for this you MUST show proof of medicaid or income as a full time employee that has proof of income at poverty levels. Proof must be sent before admitting to class if you are unable to prove this or additional fees for the middle part of the scale plus tax before admiral to class. Payments made are non-refundable.
Tribally Affiliated people of NM may pay on a donation basis and a 10% NM Heritage discount is offered.
Please follow the link below and fill out the registration form.
Please reach out to in**@na****************.com if you need to set up a payment plan. All payment plans must be completed 3 weeks before the start date of class.