Welcome!

The Taste of Herbs is a free webinar series presented by Rosalee de la Foret and hosted by Michael Tierra. 

The next webinar is on Bitter Herbal Medicine and will take place in March, 2011.


By signing up for my newsletter in the right hand column you'll be emailed occasional emails updating you on the latest dates for this webinar series. 

You can also join the Facebook page to join in discussions and explorations of the taste of herbs.

Understanding the taste of an herb is an important part of learning herbalism. However, it is rare to find books that give more than a paragraph or two explaining the tastes of herbs. Furthermore these traditional explanations can seem over simplified and too philosophical for the modern herbalist. This webinar series explains each taste in a focused way, giving practical examples of how to use these understandings in your every day life. 

Using our senses to learn how plants work is an innate human skill and one herbalists would benefit from honing. Understanding herbalism through the tastes and through taste sensations helps us to deeply understand the therapeutic qualities of a plant in a concrete way. We can (and probably should) spend hours memorizing information about plants, but once we know a plant through our sensorial experience we will never forget it.   

Before the advent of modern phytochemical research, armed with nothing except their five senses, intuition and careful observational skills, herbalists were able to identify and develop sophisticated uses for thousands of medicinal plants.

As in ancient times, herbalists would do well to continue to rely upon their trained senses and experience to properly assess the therapeutic nature of plants, and among the different faculties there is perhaps no equal to the perception of taste. Used by every system of traditional medicine, taste figures prominently in the practice of herbal medicine, providing immediate insight into the properties and uses of medicinal plants.

 -Todd Caldecott

Ayurveda Herbalist

Series Overview

Taste of Herbs

In the first webinar we had a brief look of each of the classical categories of tastes. 

Sweet Herbal Medicine

In the second webinar we looked more closely at the sweet taste. 

Pungent Herbal Medicine

This webinar we looked at the pungent taste as well as all related tastes such as spicy and acrid. 

We will be giving three more webinars in the future.

 

Bitter Herbal Medicine

March (Specific date TBA) 

Sour and Astringent Herbal Medicine

April (Specific date TBA)

Salty Herbal Medicine

Date TBA

Thanks to all those who have participated in these events so far. Wouldn't be nearly as fun without you all!