Do No Harm: Practical Training in
Safer Herbalism

Build the confidence to serve your community with plant medicines.

Does practising herbalism sometimes feel overwhelming?

You’re not alone. Many herbalists - grassroots, clinical, or community-based - practice deep care and responsibility, but also feel:

  • Fear of causing harm 
  • Imposter syndrome and self-doubt
  • Overwhelmed when navigating contraindications and clinical red flags
  • Uncertainty around ethical and anti-oppressive practice

You deserve to feel confident, capable, and grounded in your herbal work.

Do No Harm is a comprehensive, practical training designed to help you build a safer, more confident herbal practice rooted in collective care.

Whether you’re working in a clinic, supporting comrades through mutual aid, running a grassroots project, or blending remedies at your kitchen table - or aspiring to - this course was created to support you. 

How would it feel to have…

  • A solid foundation in herbal safety, from plant chemistry to clinical red flags
  • Confidence to make informed decisions about herbal use and when to refer 
  • Skills to navigate pharmaceutical interactions, contraindications, and side effects
  • A working framework for anti-oppressive herbalism
  • Practical tools for safety in community herbal projects
  • A supportive, reflective learning environment with exercises, case studies, and practical planning

Who this course is for

Do No Harm is for herbalists of many kinds - grassroots, clinical, or community-based (and more). You don’t need to be a clinical practitioner to benefit.

This course was created for people working with herbs in community, care, and solidarity.

This course will be helpful if:

  • You’re a grassroots herbalist supporting friends, family, or your local networks with plant medicine
  • You’re part of a free clinic, mobile clinic, or mutual aid project and want to increase safety in your work
  • You make and share herbal remedies collectively in kitchens, apothecaries, or medicine-making spaces
  • You’re a clinical herbalist seeking deeper tools for navigating red flags, pharmaceuticals, and ethical care
  • You’re committed to anti-oppressive, accessible herbalism and want to practise in alignment with your values
  • You’ve felt overwhelmed, under-trained, or unsure about how to practise safely and you’re ready to build confidence
  • You have a dream of doing any of the above but feel stuck for fear of 'doing it wrong' and harming someone 

Course Format

Self-Paced Learning

Complete at your own pace for as long as you need. You can access content in any order and at your own pace

Quarterly Live Calls

Deepen your understanding in the Anti-Oppressive Herbal Practice module with experienced facilitators

Practical Tools & Activities

Engage with real-life scenarios, reflection exercises, and planning tools



Modules

Module 1: Foundations of Safer Herbalism

Build a strong foundation in herbal safety, rooted in both practical knowledge and political care. Explore your scope of practice, learn to navigate the medical industrial complex, and map out your support systems, referral networks, and trusted information sources. This module also introduces legalistic and liberatory frameworks to help you practise in alignment with your values.

Module 2: Clinical Red Flags

Understand the red flags across body systems that indicate when herbalists should potentially seek supervision, or refer to a different practitioner or emergency care setting. From cardiovascular and respiratory concerns to musculoskeletal warnings, this module helps you identify risk and take appropriate action. We will also cover notifiable diseases and red flags in infants and children.

Module 3: Plant Chemistry Safety

Learn the essentials of plant chemistry, toxicology, and how constituents affect the body. We will explore poisonous plants, foraging safety, risks of essential oils, and quality control in medicine making. Exercises guide you to identify local, potentially poisonous plants and set your own medicine-making safety standards.

Module 4: Contraindications, Side Effects & Adverse Events

Dive into the nuances of herb safety with a focus on herb-herb interactions, side effects, allergic reactions, and contraindications. You’ll examine herbal energetics, dosage, and what to do when herbs don’t work as expected or even cause harm. This module introduces practical tools to support you to make decisions in real-world scenarios.

Module 5: Navigating Pharmaceuticals

Gain a working understanding of herb-drug interactions and how to safely support people taking medications. You’ll learn about the most commonly prescribed pharmaceuticals, polypharmacy challenges (when someone takes more than one medication), and how to develop a quick-reference “cheat sheet” to use in practice.

Module 6: Community Needs

Explore herbal safety considerations for specific groups, including pregnant people, infants, elders, and unsheltered people. This module supports herbalists to be responsive and grounded in care when working with complex health needs, chronic illness, or compromised immunity.

Module 7: Anti-Oppressive Herbal Practice

Learn how to prevent harm by recognising and challenging the ways oppression shows up in herbal spaces. Through suggested readings and live calls with experienced facilitators, you’ll explore anti-racist herbalism, accessibility, making clinics safer for queer and trans communities, trauma awareness, neurodiversity and more. You’ll end with a plan for embedding anti-oppressive practice into your work.

Module 8: Community Herbal Work & Implementation

Bring it all together. This module helps you reflect on your learning, confront fears or blocks to practice, and design a safe and grounded herbal project. Through a final activity, you’ll apply course principles to a real or hypothetical community setting, ensuring you leave the course with clarity, confidence, and a plan.

From Overwhelm to Action

It's clear that herbal safety, pharmaceuticals, and community care can feel like a lot. That’s exactly why this course was created - to guide you step-by-step, without pressure.

You’ll have lifetime access to the course, so you can move through it at your own pace, revisit modules when needed, and use it as a reference library throughout your herbal journey.

The content has been designed in small, manageable lessons with practical tools and real-world examples, so you’re never left wondering how to apply what you’ve learned.

This isn’t about passing a test. It’s about building confidence, deepening your care, and making safer herbal practice accessible, not intimidating.

Why this course?

The idea for Do No Harm was born while I was working with refugees at the Mobile Herbal Clinic Calais, on the French-British border. I kept returning to the same questions: What would I need from a teammate to feel safe practising together in the field? What’s missing from clinical training that’s shaking people’s confidence? And what kind of learning could truly bridge the gap between studying and ‘doing the work’?

Through the mentorship of clinical supervisors, I came to understand that harm doesn’t always come from the herbs we give - it comes from what we miss. The danger isn’t in the herbal cough syrup, but in not asking how long someone has been coughing and overlooking the person with TB who urgently needed a referral but didn’t get one.

Likewise, the harm from many one-to-one herbal consultations comes from classism, racism or transphobia, for example, that is reproduced in the consultation. And that’s assuming we were able to access the consultations in the first place. 

Do No Harm is the result of years of study, supervision, and frontline herbal practice. I hope it becomes a meaningful offering for those passionate about plant medicines. I hope it supports you in feeling confident and grounded in your work. 

The potential for herbal care in our communities is endless and building confidence is a first step in creating the ecologically and socially-just healthcare systems we so desperately need.

About Nicole & the Solidarity Apothecary

Hi, I’m Nicole Rose. I’ve been practising herbalism for over 16 years in grassroots, collective, and abolitionist spaces. I'm an anarchist organiser and founder of the Solidarity Apothecary.

The mission of the Solidarity Apothecary is to materially support revolutionary struggles and communities with plant medicines to strengthen collective autonomy, self-defence and resilience to climate change, capitalism and state violence.  

This includes distributing herbal medicines to people experiencing state violence and repression such as prisoners, ex-prisoners, refugees, and organisers. The project also offers one-to-one herbal support, runs courses and workshops, and collaborates on mobile clinics at sites of resistance and border violence.

I try to create offerings from a deep commitment to anti-oppression - and care - from supporting people impacted by imprisonment, to coordinating mobile clinics, to helping communities make their own medicine.

Programme Accessibility

Pre-recorded content: Videos include closed captions. There are downloadable audio files and slides, as well as transcripts. You are welcome to work through the materials at completely your own pace. 

Group calls: These will be hosted on Zoom or similar software. Replays will be available for people unable to participate live. 

Next Steps

The course is launching in autumn/winter 2025. Be the first to know when enrollment opens and receive other important updates by joining the waiting list.

Commonly Asked Questions

Do I need to be a clinical herbalist to take this course?No - this course is designed for many kinds of herbalists. Whether you're clinical, grassroots, or community-based (or all of these), you'll gain tools and frameworks to make your practice safer and more confident.
What if I don’t have a formal herbalism education?That’s absolutely okay. You don’t need certificates or formal training to join, just a basic foundation in herbalism and a desire to practise with care and responsibility.
Is this course relevant outside the UK?Yes. While some legal and pharmaceutical references may be UK-based, the core content from herbal safety to anti-oppressive practice is applicable globally. Herbalists in other countries will still find the material valuable.
How long will the course take to complete?The course is self-paced with lifetime access, so you can take your time. Most modules can be completed in 1–3 hours each, plus time for exercises and reflection.
What kind of support is included?You’ll have access to quarterly live calls as part of the Anti-Oppressive Herbal Practice module, where you can connect with facilitators and peers. Exercises and case studies throughout the course also help apply what you’ve learned.
Can I use this in my community herbal project?Absolutely! The course is specifically designed to support herbalists working in free clinics, mutual aid spaces, mobile clinics, and community medicine-making projects.
I feel overwhelmed by the content. What if it’s too much?You're not alone and you're not expected to know everything at once. The course is broken down into manageable lessons and includes tools to help you stay grounded. It's a resource to return to over time, not a test you have to pass.
How can I get in touch?If you’re unsure whether the course is right for you or have any other questions, feel free to reach out directly to info@solidarityapothecary.org