Deb Soule
Discover medicinal plants and tonic herbs most valued for women’s health — to heal and thrive during your specific cycle of life.
Do you have a favorite plant or tree whose leaves or fruit you anxiously await each year — to craft a tea, tonic, or tincture?
The enjoyment and healing derived from our relationship with the plant medicines we grow starts long before we apply or ingest them...
Herbs and other plant medicines offer us hope, beauty, and the opportunity to create an intimate relationship with the Earth — one based on mutual respect and care.
The daily use of herbal remedies empowers us to care for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
And our herbal wisdom connects us to herbalists and healers throughout the ages who have called upon the healing power of plants.
Your Intimate Relationship With Medicinal Plants
Connecting deeply with these living, growing “beings,” including the soil, offers you an opportunity to not only better know a plant’s healing qualities and growing requirements, it can nurture your mind, body, soul, and Mother Earth.
When you’re attuned to a plant’s essence or “spirit,” you’re awakened to how its energies and life cycles synergize with yours.
For example, when you place seeds in moist soil they undergo an awakening process, and when you add them to your teas, tinctures, and foods they offer you a similar awakening energy.
And using seeds as medicine and saving them from your garden, as well as growing and eating food that your ancestors ate connects you with your roots and the Earth — honoring both the plant’s life cycle and your own.
These simple acts can help you to heal the places inside you that have been wounded, and to celebrate and continue the lineage of both your people and plants.
When you pay attention to the beauty, scents, and expansive nature of flowers, you can find inspiration on physical and spiritual levels, as they move you from feeling separate and isolated to being present, awake, and embodied.
When we work with the soil to grow our healing plants, we can experience a deep spiritual grounding, and we have the opportunity to bring reciprocity into this relationship, through the use of organic, biodynamic gardening practices that are good for the Earth.
We can also offer blessings as we sow seeds and gather harvests to energetically share our positive intentions and gratitude for the plants that can heal us.
And we can look to the rhythms of the season and solar and lunar cycles to discover when it’s best to plant and harvest. Our ancestors have looked to the moon’s phases for centuries to raise vital crops.
Discovering a Plant’s Spirit Expands Your Knowledge of Herbalism
Herbs replenish and restore your body’s health and vitality by supporting its inherent metabolic processes of strengthening, toning, and rebuilding.
Leaves, flowers, seeds, roots, and berries offer you healing medicines to address different health issues, yet you can gain a better understanding of their healing powers — beyond the physical — when you look deeper, into a plant’s “spirit” or inherent essence.
For example, medicinal roots — the foundation of a plant — help to strengthen your inner core, cultivate confidence, and feel present and rooted.
Liver-supporting herbs, that also support adrenal function, are especially vital for women, because they help balance shifting hormones and mood swings and promote emotional resilience.
Flower essences nourish your self-esteem, dignity, inner harmony, and capacity to heal.
There are also specific flowers that support breast health, liver, lymph, nerves, and skin.
For women, these include herbal breast massage oil, herbs and dietary regimens for supporting vaginal health, and baths that can uplift the spirit and enhance inner peace.
Discover the Feminine Way of Plant Medicine With a Respected Expert
In The Feminine Way of Plant Medicine, herbalist, gardener, teacher, and author Deb Soule invites you to bring plants “to life,” not only by growing and creating natural medicines with them, but by looking beyond their physical qualities and into their spiritual essences.
She’ll also share the feminine approach to raising medicinals — through biodynamic gardening, looking to seasonal, solar, and lunar cycles for planting and harvesting wisdom, and offering blessings and intentions as you sow and gather your crops.
And she’ll share practical wisdom she’s cultivated over decades of growing and crafting plant medicines...
... including how to determine the vitality and therapeutic quality of herbs by how they’re grown, gathered, prepared, and stored, herbal dosage and safety considerations, and how to prepare and use herbal infusions, decoctions, tinctures, elixirs, foot baths, and spiritual healing baths from fresh and dried herbs.
She’ll also introduce herbal teas and tonics for menstruating years, menopause, and elderhood, including medicinal leaves for supporting your heart health, liver, digestion, memory, and meditation.
Deb has over 30 years experience growing, preparing, and using medicinal herbs and her approach to herbalism is intimately tied to her view of the Earth as a living being.
In this 7-module journey into the feminine way of plant medicine, you’ll:
And much more...
Throughout the ages, women have called upon medicinal plants to nurture their relationship with the Earth, the cosmos, their spirituality, and their bodies. In The Feminine Way of Plant Medicine, Deb will help you to deepen your relationship with these healing plants, yourself, your community, and the Earth.
And you’ll discover the feminine way of plant medicine as a spiritual path that nourishes body, mind, and soul, and the lives of the growing “beings” that aid in our healing, the land, and the Earth.
What You’ll Discover in These 7 Modules
In this 7-module transformational intensive, Deb will guide you through the fundamental spiritual skills and competencies you’ll need to successfully practice the daily use of herbal remedies to empower you to care for yourself, your family, and your community.
Each contemplation and training session will build harmoniously upon the previous ones so you’ll develop a complete holistic understanding of the practices, tools, and principles you’ll need to look beyond the physical qualities of plants and into their spiritual essences as well as to grow and create natural medicines with them.
Module 1: Remembering Our Roots as Herbalists & Healers (April 25)
Herbal wisdom connects us to herbalists and healers throughout the ages who have called upon the healing power of plants.
And using herbal teas, tinctures, baths, and flower essences enhances our physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing beyond their prescribed uses when we look to their “spirits” — those qualities that make them nutritive to the soul, as well as the mind and body.
We can also start our healing and help heal the Earth with how we work in our gardens, offering blessings and other reciprocity practices — many used by our ancestors — to energetically connect with the land.
The daily use of herbal remedies empowers us to care for ourselves, our families, and our communities.
In this module, you’ll learn how to:
- Cultivate a daily meditation practice that will help you deepen your relationship with plants and your connection with Mother Earth
- Live in harmony with seasonal, solar, and lunar rhythms
- Create a reciprocity practice to use when gathering and preparing plant medicines
- Determine the quality of herbs — how they’re grown, gathered, prepared, and stored affects their vitality and therapeutic benefits
- Prepare and use herbal infusions, decoctions, tinctures, elixirs, foot baths, and spiritual healing baths from fresh and dried herbs
- Understand herbal dosages and safety considerations
- Work with flower essences for nourishing our self-esteem, dignity, inner harmony, and capacity to heal
Module 2: Herbal Teas & Tonics for Menstruating Years, Menopause & Elderhood (May 2)
Herbs replenish and restore the health and vitality of the body by supporting the body’s inherent metabolic processes of strengthening, toning, and rebuilding. Herbs that support liver and adrenal function are especially vital for women as these herbs balance shifting hormones and mood swings and increase the emotional capacity to be less reactive and more resilient.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- Nourishing herbal teas to regularly keep in your cupboard
- The role of the liver in hormone imbalances
- Herbs for supporting liver function
- Herbs for reducing stress and supporting adrenal function and vitality
- Herbs and lifestyle suggestions for enhancing memory, mental clarity, and inner harmony
Module 3: Medicinal Roots
Digging Down Deep (May 9)
Medicinal roots strengthen our inner core, help us cultivate confidence and feel present and rooted throughout life’s varied journeys. Infinite possibilities emerge from strong roots. Digging roots in the garden or ingesting root medicines grounds and reconnects us with the Earth. Root medicines, when taken over a period of time, offer long-lasting health benefits.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- Diets and herbs for maintaining healthy bones and flexibility
- Roots that support detoxification, digestion, balance, and immunity
- Lifestyle and herbal support for low libido
- Meditation for meeting the spirit of a plant whose roots are used for medicine
- Energetic qualities of the earth elements
- Digging roots based on the Biodynamic planting calendar
Module 4: Medicinal Leaves
Breathing in Vitality & Wholeness (May 16)
The shapes, colors, textures, and fragrances of leaves have many stories to tell. The water contained within leaves and the early morning dew covering leaves are reminders of the magical and transformative power of water and herbs.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- Specific leaves that support heart health, liver, digestion, memory, and meditation
- Herbs for relaxing the nervous system and promoting sleep
- A seed-planting prayer
- How to plant your own holy basil plants from seed
- A meditation for meeting the spirit of a plant whose leaves are used for medicine
- Energetic qualities of the water element
Module 5: Medicinal Flowers
Enhancing Inner Beauty & Light (May 23)
The beauty, aroma, and expansive nature of flowers inspires healing on physical and spiritual levels. They move us from feeling separate and isolated into being present, awake, and embodied. The subtle and vibrant colors of flowers can be easily incorporated into teas, massage oils, baths, and foods for nourishing and healing body and soul.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- Specific flowers that support breast health, liver, lymph, nerves, and skin
- How to create your own herbal breast massage oil
- Diet and herbs for supporting healthy vaginal tissue
- Flower baths for uplifting the spirit and enhancing inner peace
- How to integrate flower essences into daily life
- A meditation for meeting the “spirit” of a plant whose flowers are used for medicine
- Energetic qualities of the air element
Module 6: Medicinal Berries & Seeds
Carriers of Memory (May 30)
When seeds are placed in moist soil they undergo an awakening process. Adding seeds into our teas, tinctures, and foods offers us a similar awakening. Using seeds as medicine, growing and eating food that our Ancestors ate, and saving our own garden seeds connects us with our roots and with the Earth, and helps us heal the places we have been wounded.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- Specific berries and seeds that support heart health, nerves, liver, kidneys, immunity, and vaginal health
- Herbs for soothing agitation, anxiety, heart palpitations, insomnia, and grief
- Using seeds for healing intergenerational trauma
- A meditation for meeting the spirit of a plant whose fruits or seeds are used for medicine
- Energetic qualities of the fire element
Module 7: Creating Herbal Gardens for People & Pollinators (June 6)
Let’s spark an herbal revolution by encouraging more people to incorporate medicinal herbs and flowers into their window boxes, gardens, hedgerows, and farms for nourishing both people and pollinators.
All of us depend on healthy food and herbs to thrive whether we are a gardener or someone who simply enjoys the beauty of nature. More than ever, holistic systems of agriculture, such as Biodynamics, play an important role in helping heal our ecosystems and in protecting our pollinators and seeds.
In this module, you’ll discover:
- A meditation for meeting the spirit of a place or garden
- Design elements for a healing garden
- Biodynamic gardening and farming
- Specific medicinal plants for people and pollinators
- How to think about creating healing gardens for public places, including school yards, hospitals, nursing and rehabilitation centers, community vegetable gardens, farms, and more
The Feminine Way of Plant Medicine Bonus Collection
In addition to Deb’s transformative 7-module virtual course, you’ll receive these additional training materials. These bonuses complement the course and promise to take your understanding and practice to an even deeper level.
Selected Teachings From Deb’s Archives
Video Teachings From Deb Soule
Deb has selected a few of her favorite videos from her extensive library of teachings and has gathered them together for you in one special bonus. She’s carefully selected teachings that will complement what you’ll be discovering in the course.
- Gardening for the Pollinators
Without pollinators, our medicinal plants and foods would cease to exist. In this introductory video, Deb touches on several flowering plants that provide a healthy ecosystem, food source, and sanctuary for our sacred pollinators. - Schisandra at Avena Botanicals
Herbalist Deb Soule speaks about the magic of Schisandra on this misty morning in Maine. - Spilanthes Harvest
Before the first frosts of the season arrive, we join herbalist Deb Soule in the garden harvesting our beautiful Spilanthes plants.
Sustainable Nutrition: Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food
Video Teaching From Deb Soule
What is “healthy food” and how is sustainability related to human nutrition? How can we ensure our planet can sustain its growing number of inhabitants? In this talk, Deb focuses on how food has been used as medicine throughout the ages of humankind. She touches upon food’s vital role in the Ayurvedic tradition, and how these nourishing food plants benefit the wellbeing of humans and our planet.
Herbal Tonic Immunity
Video Teaching From Deb Soule
During this evening talk, herbalist Deb Soule will introduce the medicinal uses of a few of her favorite herbs for enhancing immunity: echinacea, astragalus root, schisandra berries, and elder flowers and berries. Deb also includes information about how to grow and harvest them.
How to Move Like a Gardener
First 2 Chapters of Ebook From Deb Soule
This introduction offers the student a glimpse as to how the healing power of plants begins with the spirit of the plant. When we fully offer our gratitude to the plants we create a spiritual connection to the earth and place. This book, in its entirety, is everything you want in a book about gardening: good solid practical advice, sacred connection, and visually beautiful. Her lifetime love of the earth and plant people has created something very special for the reader.
20% Discount From Avena Botanicals
Course Participant Discount From Deb Soule’s Online Store
As part of your participation in the course, you’ll receive a 20% savings on any purchases you’d like to make from Deb’s online store, Avena Botanicals. Avena Botanicals was created with the belief that handmade herbal remedies, healing gardens, and Biodynamic practices promote health, spiritual awareness, and wholeness for individuals and communities and for Mother Earth. These vital plants along with a sacred connection to place are instrumental in healing body, mind, and spirit and encourage humans to be mindful and loving stewards of the earth.
Note: no purchase is required for the course. In addition, it’s not required to use Avena Botanicals products. You may use whatever products you’d like to use for your training.
20% Discount From Floracopeia Store
Course Participant Discount From David Crow’s Online Store
As part of your participation in the course, you’ll also receive a 20% savings on any purchases you’d like to make from our friends at the Floracopeia online store. Floracopeia was established to provide the highest-quality aromatic treasures and health education, to support ecological agriculture, and to promote traditional plant-based knowledge. You can find amazing essential oils and flower essences that will promote your health, vitality, and spiritual opening.
Note: no purchase is required for the course. In addition, it is not required to use Floracopeia products. You may use whatever products you’d like to use for your training.
What People Are Saying About Deb Soule...
“Practical instructions on how to lead a lovely life...”
[Deb’s book How to Move Like a Gardener] expresses the wisdom of experience; tangible weaves with intangible — earth smells, memories, joy — beauty as it is. Here plants and people are not separate kingdoms, classes, and species... We are nature. Here we find the practical instructions on how to lead a lovely life in a lovely garden.
— Steven Foster, Author, photographer, and consultant specializing in medicinal and aromatic plants
“Overflowing with the healing wisdom of the plant world...”
Deb Soule is overflowing with the healing wisdom of the plant world distilled through many years of study, experience, and observation. Her reverence and respect for nature and deep intuitive capacities are evident... What a gift!
— Robert Karp, Director of the Biodynamic Farming and Gardening Association
“Deb reminds us of the blessings of being called to this work!”
Weaving stories with sound advice, Deb Soule shares wisdom gleaned through years of cultivating not only soil and plants, but also her research and work with the pollinators, biodynamic practices, and tools used in growing simple herbal remedies to nourish the gardener as they heal the Earth. Honoring traditions, ancestors, and the sacredness of carrying on the work of the wise herbalists that came before us, Deb reminds us of the blessings of being called to this work!
— Kate Gilday, Herbalist, Woodland Essence
“Way beyond food, flowers, or medicine...”
Way beyond food, flowers, or medicine, gardening as the mindful rhythm in harmony with all living souls.
— C.R. Lawn, FEDCO Seeds
Here’s What You’ll Receive
Seven recorded 90-minute Class Sessions With Deb Soule
Experience a rare opportunity to be mentored and learn with renowned herbalist Deb Soule — from the comfort of your own home. Each class session guides you to learn the specific skills and abilities to awaken your spiritual potential.
Seven PDF Transcripts of Class Sessions
In addition to the high-quality MP3 audios, you’ll also receive the entire class transcription in PDF format after each session is completed. You can then review, print, and highlight the most important insights and practices you were given.
Exercises and Questions for Each Lesson
After each lesson, you’ll have the option of completing related exercises, practicing new tools, and answering questions to accelerate your learning and integrate each session.
The Feminine Way of Plant Medicine Bonus Collection
- Selected Teachings From Deb’s Archives
3 Video Teachings From Deb Soule
- Sustainable Nutrition: Food as Medicine, Medicine as Food
Video Teaching From Deb Soule
- Herbal Tonic Immunity
Video Teaching From Deb Soule
- How to Move Like a Gardener
First 2 Chapters of Ebook From Deb Soule
- 20% Discount From Avena Botanicals
Course Participant Discount From Deb Soule’s Online Store
- 20% Discount From Floracopeia Store
Course Participant Discount From David Crow’s Online Store
An Unprecedented Opportunity to Join The Feminine Way of Plant Medicine Virtual Training
We feel honored Deb Soule has chosen to partner with The Shift Network to offer this exclusive online training. This is a rare opportunity to learn from an herbalist, gardener, and author whose powerful insights and pioneering work are helping us heal and awaken ourselves and our world.
Through this powerful online format, you’ll not only save time and money on workshop costs (plus travel, accommodations, and meals — which would cost thousands of dollars), you’ll be able to benefit from Deb’s incredible teachings and exercises from the comfort of your home — and at your own pace!
If you’re serious about transforming your relationship with medicinal plants into one that heals you, others, and the land, then you owe it to yourself to take this one-of-a-kind training.
If you’re ready to take the next step in evolving yourself, click the register button below to reserve your space now.
About Deb Soule
Deb Soule is an herbalist, gardener, teacher, and author of The Woman’s Handbook of Healing Herbs and How to Move Like a Gardener. Raised in a small town in western Maine, Deb began organic gardening and studying the medicinal uses of herbs at age 16 alongside the internationally known medical herbalist Mary Bove. Deb’s faith in the healing qualities of plants includes a desire to make organic herbs easily accessible to women and families living in rural areas.
As Deb’s knowledge and faith in the efficacy of medicinal herbs grew, so did her desire to be of service to her community. In a small 8-by-10-foot room in her house, Deb began preparing various herbal remedies. In the fall of 1985, with her first mail order catalog and a small selection of herbal extracts and teas, Deb launched Avena Botanicals at the Common Ground Fair in Windsor, Maine. Five years earlier, while enrolled as a student at College of the Atlantic, Deb lived in Nepal close to three Tibetan monasteries. She was deeply influenced by the Tibetan people’s commitment to ease physical symptoms and mental and emotional upsets through plants, prayer, and other spiritual practices.
Deb’s passion for plants, gardens, and healing and her commitment to sharing herbal knowledge with others is central to her work. She is frequently a guest lecturer at various conferences as well as an instructor for botany and horticulture students, garden clubs, and medical students. In 2005, People, Places & Plants magazine named Deb as one of the 50 most influential gardeners in the Northeast.
Deb’s life closely follows the yearly agricultural rhythm. From April through October, Deb spends most days with her hands in the earth tending three acres of medicinal plants using organic and biodynamic practices. During the spring and summer months, Deb teaches a variety of herb classes and offers bimonthly herb walks in Avena Botanicals’ herb gardens. Throughout the year, Deb writes herb articles, develops herbal remedies, and consults with clients and health care providers.
Frequently Asked Questions
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