ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism

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ArborVitae School of Traditional Herbalism

Rooted in the holistic practice of herbal medicine, offering a 3 year professional herbal program.
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11/24/2025

Join us for our final free student clinic of the year — offered in collaboration with Elting Memorial Library in New Paltz!

As we wrap up the year, our third-year ArborVitae students, guided by an experienced faculty mentor, are offering warm, thoughtful herbal consultations to the community. Each 90-minute session provides space to talk about your health history, daily rhythms, and wellness intentions in a supportive, unhurried setting.

After your consultation, you’ll receive a personalized herbal protocol created to support balance, nourishment, and overall well-being.

This end-of-year clinic will take place in person in New Paltz at: 📍 ArborVitae: School of Traditional Herbalism 📍 New Paltz Youth Center 📍 Elting Memorial Library (in collaboration with their team)

Available times on December 7th: 🍃 9:15 AM 🍃 11:00 AM 🍃 1:30 PM

Spots are limited for this final clinic of the year.
 To reserve your session, email clinic@arborvitaeny.com.

11/21/2025

As the days grow shorter and the air turns crisp…

Nature invites us to slow down, root deeply, and gather what we need for the darker months ahead.
In herbalism, late fall is the season of warmth, nourishment, and energy conservation — a time to:

✨ Harvest grounding roots like burdock, dandelion & astragalus
🔥 Build inner warmth with ginger, cinnamon & other spicy allies
🥣 Nourish your core with broths, stews & mineral-rich teas
🌰 Gather energy through rest, reflection & small, steady rituals

And as the holiday season begins to creep in, with its bright lights and heightened pace, remember that this is also the earth’s natural time of turning inward. To stay grounded amidst the buzz:

🌿 Keep a warm cup of tea nearby
🌿 Protect your quiet moments
🌿 Lean into herbs and practices that help you settle, center, and soften

Let this season remind you to tend your own inner hearth—slowly, intentionally, and with deep roots.

🍁 From our herbal hearth to yours — stay warm, stay steady, stay rooted

11/19/2025

🌿 If you’ve just wandered in… welcome.
 You’ve found a small doorway into the world of traditional herbalism—where plant wisdom, community learning, and ecological awareness guide everything we do.

At ArborVitae: School of Traditional Herbalism, we’re dedicated to teaching herbal medicine in a way that’s rooted, holistic, and inclusive. Our programs support future practitioners, community herbalists, and anyone called to deepen their relationship with the healing plants around them.

Based in New Paltz in the Hudson Valley, we’re both a school and a gathering place—offering a diverse curriculum that spans plant identification, medicine making, holistic anatomy, flower essences, Traditional Chinese diagnostics, tissue states, Vitalism, and more. All taught through a lens of sustainability and deep respect for our local bioregion.

We honor the legacy of herbalist William LeSassier, whose wisdom continues to shape our teachings and our mission.

If you’re seeking a place where tradition, nature, and community meet—you’re in the right place.
 Welcome to ArborVitae. 🌱✨

11/11/2025

Before it all goes underground
by Dana Perry — our teaching mentor, blog manager + proud alum

—
“Even AI-generated drivel will admit that the veil between the living world and the underworld is at its thinnest in the autumn. A mishmash of the wiki-edited history of Samhain, social media posts with cozy fall sweaters and pumpkin spice captions, and sprinkled with Reddit’s r/Psychic-infused details, it spits back out at us all of the things it has been fed, complete with bullet points. And it does it all for the diminutive cost of 12 ounces of rapidly-disappearing potable water and a slice of human integrity.

Flesh and blood humans have embodied this in various ways our whole lives: the spookiness and gore of halloween, the glowing carved-face pumpkins, the ghosts cut from sheets and shadows. In this time when the wind shifts to cold, we bring in our final winter crops for storage and we prepare for the darkness of winter. Green leaves shift to glorious yellows, oranges, and even browns and drop to the ground. We often perceive leaf drop as some sort of death as well, but in honoring that the cycle of life is really that — a never ending cycle — it is, in essence, just energy transfer. As trees prepare for the winter, they shift most of their energy underground into the root system. With any luck the leaves will remain uncleared, providing important habitat space for beneficial insects to stay cozy over the winter; slowly decaying, restoring the soil with vital nutrients for the new batch of plants, fungi, insects, and animals (humans included) to uptake the following year.

We humans have a penchant for disrupting the cycle…

…As the film between the living and dead begins to thin this year, I’m especially drawn to roses (Rosa spp.)… Rose holds space for all of this; for the never-ending circle of round and round, for both life and death, for this world and the other one. Hoping to transmute our grief to hope, we throw roses on the caskets of our beloved. They hold remarkable beauty when fresh and somehow almost as much beauty when dried, their drooping heads propping up the edges of the shroud.”

—
Read Dana’s full piece on our blog // link in bio ⛓️‍💥

11/03/2025

Don’t miss your chance to experience our free Student Herb Clinic in New Paltz on Sunday, November 16, before the Thanksgiving break. This will be our only clinic in November, so be sure to reserve your spot early. 🍁🤎

Our dedicated third-year ArborVitae students, guided by an experienced faculty mentor, will offer personalized herbal care tailored to your individual needs. Each 90-minute consultation provides time to discuss your health history, lifestyle, and wellness goals in a supportive, relaxed setting.

After your session, you’ll receive a custom herbal protocol designed to nurture your mind, body, and spirit, helping you feel balanced and refreshed.

We’ll be offering in-person consultations at two convenient locations in New Paltz: 📍 our home, ArborVitae: School of Traditional Herbalism  📍 New Paltz Youth Center

You can choose a time that works best for you: 🌾 9:15 AM 🌾 11:00 AM 🌾 1:30 PM

Spots are limited, so if you’d like to participate, email clinic@arborvitaeny.com

10/31/2025

✨🌿 Blessed Samhain, dear plant friends 🌿✨

Today, the veil grows thin, and we stand between worlds — the living and the spirit, the harvest and the quiet of winter. Samhain marks the final harvest, a sacred turning point when we honor our ancestors, guides, and the cycles of life, death, and rebirth that flow through all things — including the plants we tend.

As herbalists and earthkeepers, this is a time to: 🕯️ Light candles for loved ones who have passed 🌾 Offer herbs like mugwort, rosemary, and yarrow to honor the spirits 🔥 Gather around a fire to share stories and warmth 🌙 Give thanks for the abundance of the harvest and the wisdom of the dark

Whether you celebrate Samhain, Halloween, or Día de los Mu***os, may your rituals be filled with remembrance, gratitude, and the grounding presence of the plants who connect us to all realms.

Happy Samhain 🌑🍃 May your roots go deep and your spirit be light.

10/21/2025

🌸 Free Flower Essence Consultation – Oct. 28th 🌸
 We’re offering a unique opportunity for one individual to receive a free online flower essence consultation with our Co-Founder + Flower Essence Practitioner, Claudia Keel.

This session focuses on emotional wellness, using gentle, plant-based support to bring balance to the mind, body, and spirit through the energetic lens of flower essences. 🌿

If you’re curious about flower essence therapy or feeling called to explore emotional healing in a new way, this is a beautiful chance to connect.

🗓️ Tuesday, October 28th 💻 Online | Free 🕰️ Time is flexible

DM // email us if you’re interested or tag someone who might be 💗 📧 clinic@arborvitaeny.com

10/15/2025

Choosing the sun by Rosey Puloka
— a therapist, farmer and second year student at AV

“…In Claudia’s class about herbs in the cycle of life, we met the usual suspects: ginger for warmth, sage for the mind, rosemary for the brain. It was equal parts didactic and participatory. In between broad categories of nootropics and carminatives were smaller, sweeter, anecdotal stories about older adults and elders and our relationships to them. There was a softness to the conversation that made sense given both Claudia and the kinds of people who generally go into herbal medicine. In a country that is pathologically obsessed with youth and reversing the signs of aging, it’s always a comforting relief to visit these more honest and compassionate spaces. Here, wrinkles from the sun are usually more revered. Hair turning white is a sign of witchiness rather than catastrophe and negligence. And death at least as a concept is more accepted as an inevitable part of life.

So why in this honest, compassionate, and forgiving space that welcomed and celebrated aging was I thinking about death before dying? Was I having a crisis of imagination? Claudia was in a sense asking us to imagine a world where aging is less painful...

…So is it all grief then? Do I not want to live a long life because of how much I’ll lose along the way? Maybe. And maybe longevity just isn’t my priority. To be clear, I want to leave this life absolutely tattered. When you look at my skin I want you to know I chose the sun. When you hear my voice you’ll know my soulmate is to***co and whatever it is, I’ll probably have one more before the night is done. With all due respect to herbalist and longest lived person, Li Ching Yuen, I have a very different ethos. Yuen said, “Keep a quiet heart, sit like a tortoise. Walk sprightly like a pigeon, sleep like a dog.” I have no doubt the vibes around Yuen must have been immaculate. For me, I can confidently say there’s nothing quiet about my heart or spry about my walk. You’ll hear me coming. On this side and the other.”

Read her full reflection on our blog. 🍃

10/03/2025

Sweet moments + sweeter faces coming back together over our first in-person school weekend 🧺💛🌾

10/01/2025

October Herbal Clinics at ArborVitae 🍁
 Looking for supportive, holistic care this fall? Our student-run clinics offer personalized herbal guidance in a safe, welcoming space — online or in person.

🏡 In-Person Clinic – New Paltz 〰 Sunday, October 19th 〰 90-minute private sessions 〰 Herbal, lifestyle & nutrition support 〰 Sliding scale donations welcome

💻 Virtual Clinic – Online 〰 Tuesdays, October 7th & 28th 〰 Same care, from the comfort of home 〰 Perfect for those outside the Hudson Valley

Both clinics are by appointment only and tend to fill quickly — we’d love to see you this October!

🔗 Book now: arborvitaeny.com/herbalclinic
📩 Questions? clinic@arborvitaeny.com

09/30/2025

A magical day in nature for kids! Plant stories, wild games, foraging & herbal potion-making await 🌿✨  Led by outdoor educator Shawn DeRyder & herbalist Sam Perry — a core teacher at Arbor Vitae’s Clinical Herbalism Program

All the details —
📅 Sat, Oct 11 | ⏰ 9am–3pm 📍 181 Huguenot St, New Paltz 👧 Ages 9–11 | 💵 $50 🌧️ Rain date: Oct 12 📩 Register: sweepingfeather@gmail.com

Address

181 Huguenot Street
New Paltz, NY
12561

Telephone

+16467215998

Website

http://arborvitaeny.com/

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