Advanced Sleep and Dream Therapeutics for Herbal Practitioners
with Sky Richarde, March 23-24, 2024
Workshop Information
Though sleep is physiologically more important than food and water, we know comparatively little about it, and certainly don’t give it the attention it deserves.
Conventional North American medicine and complementary medicine have a poor understanding on how to support people with different sleep conditions, from general insomnia to sleep walking, to narcolepsy. Holistic management can be hard to find and leave many of our clients without the rest they need to heal.
This course is designed to give you a deeper understanding of the spectrum of sleep disorders that a client may come to you with, bridging gaps in knowledge, and fostering confidence to work with clients and their primary healthcare provider to bring them to a state of rest and well -being.
Though this course leans more heavily on herbal support, all people working in the complementary healthcare field will benefit from the information it offers.
You will learn why not all sleep related herbs are helpful, and how not all sleep disorders can be approached the same way.
You will gain an understanding of the conventional medical approaches to treating sleep disorders, so that you can work with your client and their doctors to facilitate healing on multiple levels. This will also help you learn when to refer a client, and who to refer them to.
You will gain a new repertoire of herbs and tools to use to support your client with their sleep and dream needs. These include herbs for the nervous system, adrenals, brain health, hormonal health, dreams, and more.
Topics covered in this course include:
- Sleep architecture and what this means for a healthy body.
- Pathophysiology of sleep, and sleep disorders (both common and uncommon).
- The genetic markers of sleep and how to work with them rather than against them.
- Circadian rhythms and Chronotypes, and how to apply this knowledge in practice.
- Current western pharmacological and psychological approaches to common sleep disorders, and how we can work with doctors to help our clients.
- Critically review commonly used “sleep herbs” from the western herbal tradition, when to use them and when to avoid them.
- Herbal support for common sleep disorders, including uncomplicated insomnia, complicated insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and sleep walking.
- How dreams can be used as a tool for healing.
- Lucid dreaming practices to support sleep disorders and expand the definition of wellbeing.
Workshop Instructor
Sky Richarde, RH (AHG), has been studying plant medicine for over 10 years, and practicing as a clinical herbalist and herbal instructor for the past 5 years. As a new faculty member of Pacific Rim College, teaching Herbal Energetics for the Community Herbalist Program, Sky is looking forward to sharing more knowledge in her areas of interest.
As a clinical herbalist Sky focuses mainly on disrupted sleep patterns and dreaming techniques for nightmare management and personal growth.
Outside of the clinical setting, you will often find Sky in the forest teaching about the local flora, fauna, and fungi of Vancouver Island, working with honeybees and apitherapy, or swimming in the ocean among other things.
