Herb and Health News
Herb & Health News ASTRAGALUS COMBINES WELL WITH CHEMOTHERAPY The combination of Huang Qi (Astragali Radix)-based Chinese herbal medicine and platinum-based chemotherapy is more effective in the trea …
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Michael’s Biography
Dr. Michael Tierra L.AC. OMD, AHG is one of the forerunners of the North American Natural Health movement and was amongst one of the first groups of acupuncturists to be licensed in the country. He be …
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Interview with Michael
Michael Tierra and the Roots of Planetary Herb Products Kirsten Anderson Dec. 14, 2005 Categories of time and place don’t seem to apply to Dr. Michael Tierra, the renowned herbalist, clinician, educ …
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The East West School of Planetary Herbology is committed to providing the best possible training for home herbalists, health professionals and clinical herbal practitioners so that they may serve the …
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Jodi Snyder, January 2009
… Welcome to 2009 and our Student of the Month for January: Jodi Snyder Jodi Snyder is a family generational herbalist. In her family, this art is passed from grandmother to granddaughter. In 198 …
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Ashley Moore, February 2009
… Our Student of the Month for February 2009 is: Ashley Moore After completing two years at the University of Iowa studying philosophy, Ashley Moore became interested in herbs through her work at …
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Anne Salazar-Dunbar, March 2009
… Our Student of the Month for March 2009 is: Anne Salazar-Dunbar A second generation native San Diegan, Anne Salazar-Dunbar has nurtured an intuitive relationship with healing plants since she w …
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Sidney Barthell, April 2009
… Our Student of the Month for April 2009 is:… … Sidney Barthell … Sidney Barthell loves learning. Her strong suits are researching, writing, reading, interpreting, music, and ar …
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Pamela Gould and Linda Vaughan, May 2009
… For the month of May, we are honoring two students of the month: Pamela Gould and Linda Vaughan!… Pamela Gould Pam first became interested in alternative ways of maintaining good health w …
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Mara Ribbin and Holly Nielsen, June 2009
… Please enjoy the bios of our June students of the month: Mara Ribbin and Holly Nielsen!… Mara Ribbin My early love of the natural world was encouraged by my grandmother. She was so at hom …
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Kevin Pennell, July 2009
… Congratulations to our student of the month for July: Kevin Pennell!… Kevin Pennell Saying Kevin has a varied background is an understatement! Having started a career in broadcasting at a …
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Karen Kimrey, August 2009
Congratulations to our student of the month for August: Karen Kimrey!… … Karen was born under a Cancer sky in mid-20th century America, the first child of nomadic parents, who finally found …
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Meret Giacomini, September 2009
… Meet our September student of the month: Meret Giacomini!… I spent most of my childhood in a mimosa tree day dreaming and imagining that the pink fiber optic tutu-like flowers were twirli …
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Mojohito Richerson von Tchudi, October 2009
Congratulations to Mojohito Richerson von Tchudi, our October student of the month!… … A partially homogenous life as the son of progressive academic education philosophers, with its customa …
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Melissa Fritts, November 2009
Meet our November student of the month, Melissa Fritts! As a child I spent my time in the woods and fields – ever exploring the natural world. I quickly also became fascinated with the inner worlds an …
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Jenn Atkins, December 2009
Congratulations to our December student of the month, Jenn Atkins, CNC, LMT! My career as a holistic health practitioner formally began through my family business, Brazos Natural Foods, which opened …
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Emily Snelling, January 2010
Herbs have always been a part of my life. As a kid, I idolized our family herbalist and would transcribe herbals word-for-word, trying to remember every morsel of information. I dreamed of one day bei …
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Rosalee de la Forêt, March 2010
I began my plant kingdom journey seven years ago when I started studying primitive living skills with Earthwalk Northwest. Through the experience of exploring my relationship to the natural world arou …
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Ryan Carnahan, April 2010
I have held a deep interest in natural healing for as long as I can recall. My grandfather was a chiropractor, and I remember receiving an adjustment from him at age 5. Perhaps that spurred the initia …
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Pat Ehlers, May 2010
I was raised in the San Francisco bay area and currently live in Grass Valley, Calif., north of Sacramento. My father was a hunter and fisherman. During my childhood, he inspired my love of animals. …
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Rich Kamasinski-Sol, June 2010
Growing up, I remember my parents frequently using herbs and traditional, European folk remedies. When I was about 5 years old, my mother had severe pneumonia and stayed in bed for a number of days. D …
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Mo Horner, July 2010
I’m a city girl who was raised by a ‘health conscious’ mother and that was extent of my familiarity with alternative health care until 2003. A brush with breast cancer and some very impressive complim …
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Karen Darnell, August 2010
I was born Arvella Louise Harris in Richmond, Virginia, but was renamed after adoption. I live in Hubbard, Oregon, population 2800, halfway between Salem and Portland. I’ve been married to my husband, …
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Sallie Dixon, September 2010
For my first nine years, I lived just outside Xenia, a small town in southwestern Ohio where my brother and I roamed freely through yards, pastures and weed fields with only our imaginations to entert …
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Asante LeBlanc, October 2010
Cuban by birth, Guyanese by descent, living in Trinidad and Tobago, I am a simple, down to earth person who loves life. My hobbies include travelling, cooking, reading, listening to music and dancing. …
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Terrie Schultz, November 2010
I grew up in Sacramento, California. I’ve always loved nature, and spent most of my childhood outside, sitting in trees and reading. I lived for many years in the Bay Area, and now live with my husba …
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Rachel Hull, December 2010
I grew up in Perth in Western Australia, where the countryside is very dry. As a child I did not feel connected to the earth there as I didn’t relate to it and it seemed very harsh. When I moved to th …
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Suzanne Robertson, February 2011
I was born in Winnemucca, Nevada, to young parents. For many years I lived with my grandparents in a wonderful country home. My grandmother was a farm girl so she baked, canned, sewed, embroidered and …
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Jerry and Nancy Angelini, March 2011
Jerry and Nancy Angelini are brother and sister students of the East West Herb Course. Jerry just became our new office manager at the East West Acupuncture Clinic, while his sister Nancy is the East …
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Mark Dieve, April 2011
My path towards herbalism began via a long and winding road as a small child in 1970s Ann Arbor, Michigan. This international-college-town microcosm of diversity, hope and idealism would form the root …
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David O’Daniel, May 2011
Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, I grew up coast to coast and in between. Those experiences fed my wanderlust and set the stage for life on the move. In many ways it was fragmented, but, in retrosp …
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Karla Gervais, June 2011
I was born in Newport, Rhode Island. At age six, my family moved to the suburbs near Chicago where I resided until 1974. There, I met new friends who taught that healthy eating habits and taking care …
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Kristi Shapla, July 2011
I grew up exploring the inlets of South Florida. Swimming with river otters and manatee, diving for starfish, and trying to replant the mangroves kept me grounded in the natural world. This bond carri …
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Nicole MacDonald, August 2011
My connection to plants began early in life when I started work in a flower shop. I learned floral design and managed different flower shops through high school and college. I was always excited for o …
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Kevin McNeeley, September 2011
I’m a home dad in Japan, but I grew up in northeast Ohio before the Internet age. I was the little kid who tried to revive baby birds that fell from their nests. It never worked, but I tried anyway. I …
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Meredith Flynn, October 2011
My path with plants began in York, PA, where as a child, I had the good fortune of being encouraged to, “go out and play” in the woods surrounding my house. I learned to love nature and had the opport …
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W. Lloyd Williams, November 2011
In 1974 I bought a copy of the Barefoot Doctor’s Manual and it changed my life. After graduating I built an Investment Consulting Practice in Atlanta and the TCM diagnostic process became the foundati …
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Holly Hutton, February 2012
The Herbal Tarot Deck was my gateway into the East West Course. I am an artist and am working on a tarot deck. I pulled out my Herbal Tarot Deck as an inspiration and started wondering who the creator …
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Jane Kuntz, March 2012
I grew up in the Yorkshire Dales of England. In my late teens I developed a love of travel – not surface travel, like a tourist, but a sinking into and admiration of other cultures. I did Peace Corps, …
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K.C. “Fig” Ortega, April 2012
When I met my husband I had no concept of whole health or herbal medicine. I secretly questioned what had been presented to me as absolute truths… in medicine, politics, religion, etc…but never h …
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Johanna-Maria Wagner, June 2012
Growing up in Austria, I was surrounded by herbs and, more importantly, people who knew how to use them. We never saw a doctor except for compulsory school check-ups; instead, we were treated naturall …
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John Roddy, July 2012
I’ve always loved the magic of Nature. It all began with growing up hiking and surfing the Northern California mountains and coastline. On most nights my dog, Turk, and I would head to the hills to se …
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Darcy Golden, September 2012
I started studying herbs while in graduate school at Western Carolina University located in the North Carolina Appalachian mountains. I was fascinated by the knowledge that the locals shared on plant …
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Pamela Shaw, October 2012
I grew up in the Lower Hudson Valley of New York and spent my summers outdoors (whether I was in the Adirondacks, at the pool or beach, at day camp playing in the lake or running around in the woods). …
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Melanie St. Ours, November 2012
I never planned to become an herbalist. Though I spent much of my childhood mashing up plants in my backyard (and unknowingly smearing poke on my little sister while pretending to make medicine… an …
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Suzana Corritori, January 2013
I am native of former Yugoslavia where herbal tradition has always been strong. Herbs were always part of my life, inseparably and tightly woven into the fabric of my family, traditions and customs. M …
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Jill Barnattan, February 2013
I am a New Yorker of Mediterranean descent, convinced my herbal sorcery stems from my ancestry. I endured 2 major surgeries before the age of 8, leaving my inner spirit scarred and scared. My father t …
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Heather Baker, March 2013
I was born and raised in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada. I’ve always been grateful to live in this beautiful, diverse and unique area. I am surrounded by two Great Lakes (Erie and Ontario), the …
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Joe Eckre, April 2013
My name is Joe Eckre. My friends call me Surya. When I was in the first grade, my father took an interest in nutrition and vitamins. He had problems with his energy level and his new diet and suppleme …
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Cori Ward, May 2013
I was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. I have an amazing family –my husband, 3 children and a dog. I am lucky to be so blessed with all their love and support because without them the East West Sch …
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Jodi Horon, June 2013
I was born and raised in Olympia Washington, and lived in Seattle until 2009. I currently live in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin with my husband, his two boys and our golden retriever. I …
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Sarah Graham, July 2013
Even though I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and appreciate urban centers, I developed a deep respect for the natural world. This inspiration can be attributed mostly to spending time on m …
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Maja Kruse, August 2013
I was lucky to grow up in a beautiful area just outside Copenhagen, near the sea and close to forests and parks. It feels like my interest in herbs and natural medicine have been with me my whole life …
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Patti Shimokawa, September 2013
I spent my early years in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. When I was 5, my family settled in State College, PA. That was a magical and formative place and time for me-we had a sandbox my dad made …
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Thomas Schieffer, October 2013
I am a clinical herbalist and holistic health consultant and have been part of the Goldthread team for the past four years. I started as a student of William Siff’s and transitioned to Goldthread’s op …
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Joshua Farahnik, November 2013
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, and it was traveling abroad that really enlightened my life path and purpose. Six years ago I fulfilled a dream of traveling through India and this is where …
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Peggie Zih, December 2013
I was born and raised in Hong Kong. I went to college in Australia and lived there for eight years, earning my bachelor’s degree in computer science and an MBA. My career has been in I.T. thus far des …
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Jim Nymeyer, January 2014
My first exposure to herbs was soon after moving to Montana at age 12 when my mother came down with pneumonia. She took echinacea as part of her healing process, and so my young curiosity was struck. …
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Sahni Hamilton, February 2014
My love of the natural world was instilled early by growing up in the beautiful and challenging environment of outback Australia. Being surrounded by people who were keen observers of plants, animals …
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Ayeala Helbig, March 2014
It’s only fitting that every photo I’ve found of myself lately includes my daughter – my studies at East West coincided very much with my transformation into a mother. I decided when I was pregnant th …
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Becky Lerner, April 2014
I love sharing the wonders of wild edible and medicinal plants, and I am fortunate to make a living doing that. I’m the author of the book, “Dandelion Hunter: Foraging the Urban Wilderness,” which Pub …
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Kristin Henningsen, May 2014
I’ve felt a connection with plants for as long as I can remember, but it wasn’t until my first move to the Southwest that I began to integrate them into daily life. There I discovered how the native …
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Kate Sinon, June 2014
My direct experience with herbs as medicine only began a few years ago. Even so, I believe that they were always there running a parallel path with me and, like little brain synapses, connections wer …
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Michael Longfield, July 2014
As a kid, I loved to play in the woods adjoining my suburban neighborhood. It was the home of a grandmother oak tree, in which my best friend and I built a two-story tree house. We would fantasize abo …
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Jude Nicholson, August 2014
My great and late father, Paul, was a plant freak in his own right and gave to me my love of the natural and spiritual worlds. My mother tells me that I was conceived at Wind Cave National park in the …
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Amanda Hofeditz, September 2014
I’ve always had a love for natural healing. Growing up, my mom had beautiful gardens and made simple remedies at home. When I became a mother myself, I wanted to be able to do the same things for my f …
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Erin Massengale, October 2014
There are moments to me that it seems strange I ended up on the path of herbalism. I was in the construction/building industry and I was loving it. My husband and I owned a construction business and d …
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Adrian Williams, November 2014
I grew up in the wide-open spaces of rural Indiana, where my favorite early memories include gathering morel mushrooms with my family and exploring oak and hickory woodlands in timeless summer days. …
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Michelle Schurig, December 2014
I am not sure where my love of plants came from, but there is a familial connection. My mother was an avid gardener and I grew up in a home with hundreds of plants. My uncle is an amateur botanist. I …
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Jonah Ruh Roberts, January 2015
Finding myself in the place I am now, I feel so much gratitude to witness my life filling with herbs- building my apothecary, building my understanding, having a homestead to invite medicine plants to …
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Sheila Devitt, February 2015
I’ve moved from East to West over the course of my life. I was born in Boston. My parents were involved in the home birth movement, and natural food co-ops. We followed my father’s career first to Chi …
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Audra Marx, March 2015
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” There were too many answers. Now, I’m lucky enough to be able to say I’ve ‘been’ quite a few things. I’ve been a nanny, a bartender, a preschool teacher, an …
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Michael McEvoy, April 2015
I’ve been in the nutritional consulting field for the past 8 years. Prior to that I was a full time yoga instructor. I am the founder of www.MetabolicHealing.com, where I’ve authored around 300 resear …
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Beverly Jennings, May 2015 Graduate of the Month
Prior to studying herbs, my background was in graphic design, having my own business and eventually working with a major state-wide and local newspapers and full service ad agencies. I moved from the …
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Hi! My name is Morning. I have lived in various places around the U.S., as well as elsewhere in the world. I have loved and enjoyed the people I have known, < and the richness of being able to experie ...
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Shelley Swapp, July 2015
Growing up on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, UT (yep, I’m a Mormon) my family grew and preserved much of our own food and enjoyed the great outdoors. Outside of school I studied many types of dance …
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Julia Hennig, August 2015
Growing up in northern Germany on the Baltic Sea, I have wonderful memories of time spent in the garden with my parents who harvested and preserved their own fruits and vegetables. We also kept beehiv …
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Josh Williams, September 2015
I grew up just west of Salt Lake City, Utah, and have spent my life surrounded by protective mountains and four very dramatic seasons. Since I was a child I’ve been fascinated by the natural world, an …
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October Student of the Month, Jennifer Rich
I grew up in Campbell, < Ohio with one sister and two loving, supportive parents. I was raised in a political family, and hold the elected office of precinct committee person and serve as presiding ju ...
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Ken Krantz, November 2015
I’ve lived in Tinmouth, Vermont, for the past 36 years amongst the hills, < fields, and trees. There’s such a diverse amount of plant material here that will keep me busy for a long time to come. My ...
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Michele Klassen, December 2015
In 1999, I graduated from California State University, Fresno, with a Degree of Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Magna Cum Laude; and in 1994, from Fresno City College, CA, with a Degree of Associate …
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Joshua Laurenzi, January 2016
Growing up in Memphis, Tennessee didn’t allow for much exposure to things like herbalism, just the vestiges of southern folk medicine mixed with the health food store accounts of rare radicals like my …
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Chloe Groom (Chloe Bee), February 2016
Currently, Chloe is the generator of a heart-centered hub for the alliance of ethno-botany, expressive movement, alternative art, and Earth medicine via transformational workshops and women’s Red Tent …
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Anne Roe, March 2016
Hi, my name is Anne Roe and I am 33 years old. My origin is Germany, which I left five years ago to travel the world and find the most important person in my life: me. What a ride! I initially biked a …
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Gregory Joynes, April 2016
I lived in Baltimore most of my life. I was drafted into the military and joined the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and was deported for 6 months off the coast of Vietnam. After that experienc …
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Hung Ting Ting, May 2016
My name is Hung Ting Ting from Hong Kong. I am 33 years old and I danced ballet for 14 years. After earning a Bachelor’s of Fashion Design, I became a jewelry designer for several years. A mild health …
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Nathan Shannon, June Graduate of the Month
My name is Nathan Shannon. I was born in Meeker, Colorado, which is in the northwest part of the state. I moved to central Wisconsin before I started school and lived there until I was 21 at which ti …
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Jillian Wisborg, July 2016
One of the main reasons I got into holistic health, and learning about herbal medicine, nutrition, iridology, self-empowerment, etc., is because I was upset that there has always been such a cloak of …
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Inga Bylinkina, August 2016
I was born and raised in the mountains of Caucasus in Russia. I have very early memories of my grandmother making herbal teas, remedies, and tending the garden. We used to spend summers with my dad fo …
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Megan Deely, September 2016
Hi! My name is Megan Deely. I am currently residing in the outskirts of good old Cleveland, Ohio. I’ve been here for ten years now and although I am only 24, I feel as if I have lived through quite a …
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Hesty Morley, October 2016
Hi! My name is Hesty Morley. I have always been fascinated by the human body, how it works, disease and health. My journey began in university where I studied Biochemistry and Biomedical Science. I …
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Hanni Heller-Ram, November 2016
My name is Hanni Heller-Ram I was born and raised in Israel. My mother is German and raised us on Dr. Schuessler’s bio cell salts and chamomile tea. We had a garden with over 400 species of fruit tre …
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Jenn Doucet, December 2016
I grew up in the boreal forest of northern Alberta, Canada. My love of the natural world was cultivated at a young age by numerous days of fishing,> camping, and foraging for berries and mushrooms in …
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Barbara Scavotto, January 2017
My name is Barbara Scavotto, and I’ve lived in Northern Connecticut my entire life. My mother is an avid gardener and taught me how to grow flowers from a very young age. I remember the wonder of wat …
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