Herbalists and natural healers are prohibited by law from diagnosing disease conditions and prescribing treatments for them. So, how can you legally recommend the products people need to improve their health?
The answer is simple; you can use traditional methods of assessing health that don’t involve diagnosing diseases. These methods do not diagnose health problems. They teach you to see imbalances in the body and the underlying causes of poor health so you can recommend herbs, diet and lifestyle changes, and other natural methods to restore balance to the body and aid self-healing.
I'm Steven Horne, the author of this course, and I call this process “Health Assessment,” and not only is it a safer way to work as an herbalist and natural healer within the law, it’s also a more effective way. That’s because Western medical diagnosis is designed to go hand in hand with Western medical treatments, whereas traditional methods of health assessment are designed to go hand in hand with herbs and other natural remedies.
In Traditional Health Assessment you’ll learn the process of assessing the various aspects of a person’s health, starting with their constitution, the root causes of illness in their life, their biological terrain, and their body systems that are weak. It provides you with the tools you need to analyze all the aspects of a person’s health.
Course Outline
Traditional Health Assessment will be taught via webinar and online instruction. The eight sessons of this class cover:
Lesson 1. Overview of Health Assessment Techniques
In our first lesson, we'll overview a variety of assessment techniques that can be used by herbalists and natural health consultants. We'll use the Disease Tree to look at what aspect of the health model the assessment tool provides information about. We'll discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the various assessement tools as well.
Lesson 2. TCM and Ayurvedic Energetic Systems
In this lesson we'll look at Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Ayurvedic principles of assessment. We'll discuss chi, yin, yang, the five elements and other aspects of the TCM diagnostic system. We'll compare this to the tridoshas and five elements of the Ayurvedic system. This lesson will also discuss the traditional Western four elements and review the six tissue terrain model of assessment.
Lesson 3. Western Energetic Systems
In this session we'll talk about the seven glandular body types, which is a system of assessment using a person's body build and personality. We'll relate this to the Ayurvedic tridosha system of constitutional typing.
Lesson 4. Introduction to Tongue Assesment
In this lesson we'll discuss the principles of using the tongue as an tool for health assessment. We'll talk about color, coatings, the tongue map and other features one can observe on the tongue and what they mean. We'll also introduce the basic principles of taking the pulse. We'll talk about how the various types of pulses and tongues relate to the traditional Oriental and Western energetic systems.
Lesson 5. Introduction to Pulse Assessment
We'll explain muscle testing in this lesson and discuss various ways of using this intuitive tool in health assessment. I'll provide some video clips demonstrating muscle testing techniques.
Lesson 6. Glandular Body Typing
In this session we'll go through the systems of the body and discuss various signs on a persons face, hands or body that indicate that a body system might need support. This session will help you to learn to observe the client carefully when doing a consult.Lesson 7. Muscle Response Testing
We'll explain muscle testing in this lesson and discuss various ways of using this intuitive tool in health assessment. This will lay some groundwork for learning and practicing muscle testing in the Health Assesment Workshop.
Lesson 7-8. Medical Testing and Lab Results
In these two sessions we'll talk about the meaning of various blood, urine and other lab tests and offer some suggestions on how to examine these tests to correlate the results with body systems and health assessment. In the final session we'll also talk briefly about looking at patterns and the practical aspects of the consulting business.
About this Course
Required For: Certified Herbal Consultant program. Can be purchased separately or as part of the CHC program. Prior completion of the Practical Tools for Health Assessment correspondence course meets this requirement.
Course Hours: Eight 2-hour webinars with about 24 hours of online activities and homework for a total of about 40 hours of study.
Course Fee: $247, $50 discount for herbiverse members.
