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About the School and Instructors

About Portland School of Herbal Wisdom

Portland School of Herbal Wisdom was founded in 2016 to provide the greater herbal and healthcare communities with trainings that would meet the needs of Advanced Students looking to further their studies and clinical skills in Traditional Western Herbalism. In the first year of the program Sean Donahue and Matthew Wood came together to teach an Advanced Clinical Practitioner Training. For the 2018-2019 school year Sean Donahue will team up with 3 skilled guest instructors to bring this years Somatic Herbalist Practitioner Training. Read on for more information about this years instructors.     

About Sean Donahue

Guest Instructors

Sean Donahue
Co-Founder of PSHW and Lead Instructor

Brandt Stickley
​Guest Instructor on Classical Chinese Pulse Diagnosis for Herbalists

Sean Donahue is a member of the faculty of the School of Western Herbalism at Pacific Rim College in Victoria, BC and now co-founder, with Alicia Crockett of the Portland School of Herbal Wisdom in Portland, OR (where he also has a private practice.) He is a priest and holder of the Green Wand in the BlackHeart line of the Feri Tradition of witchcraft. He lives on the traditional territory of the Yakima Nation in Trout Lake, WA. His writing regularly appears in Plant Healer magazine and on the website Gods & Radicals among other publications. 

Sean works to integrate the insights of Traditional Western Herbalism, somatic psychology, European shamanic and magical traditions, phytochemistry, and neurobiology. The result is a clinical approach based on shifting and deepening a person’s felt sense of embodied presence and connection with the living world. He has a special passion for working with people whose experiences and worldviews are frequently misunderstood or discounted in conventional health care settings including Queer and Trans people, Pagans and animists, and his fellow Autistic adults.

Prior to becoming an herbalist, Sean worked for 15 years as an organizer in movements for peace, human rights, and economic justice, and was a freelance journalist documenting the human and ecological impacts of U.S. policies in Latin America.  

More information can be found at www.seandonahueherbalist.com 

Brandt Stickley is an Assistant Professor in the College of Classical Chinese Medicine, National University of Natural Medicine, and a Visiting Professor at Dragon Rises College of Oriental Medicine and Pacific Rim College.

As a Senior Instructor and Board member of Dragon Rises Seminars he teaches Shen-Hammer Pulse Diagnosis. Brandt is a graduate of Cornell University and the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He has worked closely with Dr. Leon Hammer for 18 years, and is considered an authority on the model of Chinese medical Psychology developed by Dr. Hammer.

In his own development of this school of thought, he has relentlessly pursued a synthesis of Classical Han and Tang Dynasty herbal medicine and acupuncture, Chinese magical medicine, philosophy and religion, with concepts of psychosomatic medicine, body-oriented psychology, neuro-phenomenology, process-oriented philosophy, imaginal, integral, and consciousness studies. He brings all of these disciplines to play in striving to intend the impossible as a clinician, teacher, writer and speaker. In theory and in practice, Brandt's work seeks to establish Classical Chinese medicine as a vital psychosomatic and physiosemiotic current in the evolution of consciousness and the alleviation of suffering. ​

More information can be found at www.brandtstickley.com

Kenneth Proefrock
Guest Instructor on The Facial System and Embodiment

Dr. Kenneth Proefrock graduated from Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1996. Prior to naturopathic medical school, he received a Bachelors of Science degree in Chemistry and Zoology from Northern Arizona University.

For the past fifteen years, he has conducted a very busy Naturopathic medical practice in Surprise, AZ. He is also owner and formulator for Vital Force Naturopathic Compounding which provides consulting services and a wide variety of unique and effective compounds for other Naturopathic Physicians and their patients.

He speaks at conferences across the country sharing his perspective on Botanical Medicine and the modern practice of Naturopathic Medicine. He is also the Vice-President for the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners and the chairperson for the biochemistry portion of the Naturopathic Physician's Licensing Exam.

Kenneth is a member of the Council of Elders and current President of the Order of WhiteOak, a Celtic Reconstructionist Druid Order. In his spare time, when such a thing rarely exists, he is in the desert with his kids, honing his skills in primitive archery, wildcrafting, gardening, and home brewing.

More information can be found at www.totalwellnessmedicalcenter.com

Rae Swersey
Guest Instructor on Queering Herbalism and Radical Self-care

Rae Swersey, CH is a clinical community herbalist with a personal practice, Take Care Herbals, in Asheville, NC. Rae’s passion lies in providing inclusive, comprehensive, and accessible health care. Their business is in healing their communities from the inside out. They believe that the healing work they do is framed in a social justice lens and linked to understanding race, class, gender, sexuality, ableism and oppression. Their practice has a strong focus on healing LGBTQQIA folks, activist and organizers, and underserved populations.

They have formally studied herbalism at The Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine, The North American Institute of Medical Herbalism, and co-founded a countrywide clinical mentorship program.  

Take Care Herbals is committed to making ethically wildcrafted/grown/small batch medicine with personalized intention, magic and care. Rae is a proud queer, transgender, invisibly disabled, radical healer.

​Take care herbals was founded in 2009, specializing in chronic pain and illness, trauma, stress management and burnout, LGBTQQIA health, transgender wellness, food intolerances and digestion. You can schedule consultations, read blogs on clinical community herbalism and radical healthcare, and purchase products at www.takecareherbals.com.