Uncover your Herbal Ancestry
Everyone has sacred and healing plants in their lineage. Your family used plants for healing and survival for time immemorial.
This guided course will help you find the plants specific to your lineage, helping create a sense of understanding and belonging.
Using ethnobotanical research, archeology, folklore, guided meditation, and botanical traditional knowledge, you will be supported to create remedies from your own family’s history.
Created to thread the connection to your deeper wisdom
It is common in our modern society (especially in the United States) to have cultural amnesia.
Many of us have very little connection to our ancestral healing practices, which can increase the strain of finding a spiritual path beyond religion. All of us had Indigenous ancestors who belonged to a land and survived with them for food, shelter, medicine, and sacred ceremony.
So many people are seeking out plants from other cultures to find purpose, sacred use, and connection to Spirit and/or their ancestors. You can find your own sacred plants and uses - they exist.
Through diving into your ancestry, we first discover which lineage you would like to research (you can do multiple lineages if you choose). This can be by asking your family, participating in ancestral DNA test, and/or relying on stories you were told as a child.
Once you have defined where you would like to research, you will be guided on the resources to do so; ethnobotanical research, archeology, folklore, botanical books, and traditional knowledge.
To complete this course you will compile the information gathered, create a recipe that defines your family and yourself - how you will use it today and why - and share it with your cohort.
Some people will come across many barriers to finding their family of origin: adoption, enslaved ancestors, lack of genealogy, etc. We are all holding space for challenging history to arrive in this space. We all have ancestors who are good - no matter what the background is - we call upon them in these times of reclamation.
This is a 6-week course that will aid your own curiosity in this subject. Everyone’s experience will be unique.
Your family relied on plants for healing.
If you are seeking a space for belonging, you’re in the right place.
Herbal Ancestry Guided Course
This course is for those seeking a gentle entry into herbalism. Through six online circles, you’ll learn how to research your own lineage while exploring the medicines of your own ancestry.
Group Ancestral Discovery Modules
Finding your Ancestors
Defining sacred and healing plants
Research methods for seeking out your own ancestral plants
Understanding barriers
Intuition + Meditation to ancestors
Create a remedy from your own ancestry
1:1 Discovery Sessions
You will have the opportunity to meet with Laura Ash for two discovery sessions, helping you find your ancestors, their wisdom, and research your own plant knowledge.
The Ancestral Project (Final Assignment):
Choose a plant or recipe from your ancestry
Research its ethnobotany, mythology, rituals, story, and modern medicinal uses.
Create a recipe with this plant for self-care (ex. herbal bath salt for relaxation, herbal tea for helping digestion, body oil to support skin health, etc.)
Share your project with likeminded folks
What the Herbal Ancestral Journey means …
FAQs
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Many students have gone through this course that are adopted and have very little information about their birth parents, therefore their lineage.
Most of these students chose to get a DNA test through Ancestry or 23&Me to explore their lineage of birth.
Although few, some folks decided to research their adopted family to dive deeper into the family they were raised in.
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Absolutely not. Having your DNA tested is 100% your choice. Although a DNA test can make research much more compelling, it is understandable if you do not feel comfortable with a DNA test.
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We have seen students from all over the world participating in the herbal ancestral reclamation project.
Some students come from over 5 lineages, others from 2, rarely from 1.
The research for finding ancestral plants is universal.
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Since walking students through this ancestral herbal journey starting in 2018, we have not seen any student who could not find a plant or herb that their ancestors used, no matter how hard it was to access their history.
It is there, and we are honored to share the space to support you on your journey.
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Some students have gone on to seek more information about their herbal lineage by traveling to the country of their ancestors. Others have integrated these plants into their daily lives, bringing meaning and belonging to something Greater.
Your journey is your own, and we support it fully.
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In our experience, the more someone dives into their own ancestral traditional knowledge, the more respect they have of others’ sacred use. We hold the space as a community to encourage people to share as a learning experience, but not to take or use for our own sake, unless it’s our lineage also.
The rule we have when there’s a question of what herbs to use: go to your own lineage first.
I am on this path with you
Laura Ash is a clinical herbalist, educator, and lifelong student of ancestral healing traditions. For over two decades, she has walked the path of herbal medicine, studying plants as healers, storytellers, and bridges between worlds. Her work has taken her across continents, from the apothecaries of Western herbalism to documentation of traditional knowledge with the Maasai in Tanzania, where she witnessed how culture and healing are inseparable from the land.
Raised in Northern California, Laura grew up with little awareness of her own traditional ancestral culture. Her early herbal education focused on the plants and practices of her British ancestry, yet she craved a deeper reconnection to more.
After her time in Tanzania, this question of lineage grew stronger, leading her to research her Swedish heritage through plants, folklore, and spiritual ecology. Finding very little written about Swedish herbal traditions, she began her own research and writing, which evolved into her Swedish herbal project to reconnection to Scandinavian traditional knowledge.
Through her teaching at Land of Verse, and work with the Beneficial Plant Research Association, Laura invites students to embark on this same journey of remembrance, to explore the plants of their own lineage, research with reverence, and create medicines that honor both ancestry and place.
Her work offers a space for belonging, where herbalism becomes not just a study of plants, but a return home to self and story.
What’s Included in the Herbal Ancestral Guided Course
Two 1:1 Sessions with Laura ($350 value)
6 Live Sessions ($600 value)
Access to Community (priceless)
Tuition: $497 for the 6-week course
Please email here if you are interested in the next cohort Fall 2026