Clinical Residency & Roundtable

Registration for 2025-26 is open!

Last day to register is September 1, 2025

**EXPANDED PROGRAM**

see below for details

618 total hours

September 15, 2025 - August 24, 2026

Roundtable meetings

Mondays 3:00 - 4:30 pm PST

Free Clinic Appointments

One Saturday a month 10:00 am - 1:00 pm PST

This program is open to graduates of

Advanced Herbalism in the Vitalist Tradition

Course Description

All Classes and Clinic Sessions are held in real time on Zoom.

Our Clinical Residency & Roundtable Program is our third-year program that brings our students full circle in their herbal journey. All of the rigorous study our students have completed in the first-year program Footprints in Medical Herbalism and our second-year program Advanced Herbalism in the Vitalist Tradition have brought them to the precipice of becoming a fully trained Clinical Herbalist.

Our program is based on the Roundtable clinical format. Students will attend the ACORN School’s Online Clinic as interns to run complete private intake and follow up sessions with actual clients. Interns will write up each case and submit it to the faculty and student body for review and collaborative feedback. Each clinician will gain the experience and insight of every case that comes through our clinic.

Consecutively, interns will attend one roundtable meeting each week for teachings and discussion of topics that arise in clinical practice. Roundtable meetings create a sacred space to share the challenges, insights, and moments of celebration of working in a clinic setting. Come to these ready to be your most authentic self.

**EXPANDED PROGRAM**

Total Program Hours 618

Clinical Residency & Roundtable is now a year-long program

We've expanded our Clinical Program! Please note that the hours and duration of the program has increased from previous years. It is now a year-long program, with more than 200 additional hours of clinical training.

When it comes to clinical experience, the more the better. What makes our clinic unique is a rigorous focus on follow up care. Chronic health conditions do not resolve in a single visit. Transformations of serious and chronic diseases occur with continued care over an extended time. It often takes several visits over months for disease patterns to disappear.

Our extended program hours allow for more time working with clients to help them achieve their goals. There is nothing more rewarding than being able to facilitate client transformations to the point where they no longer have the condition they came in with. This is the experience we want our clinicians, and our clients, to have. With our new expanded program, you will gain an abundance of real life training to carry you into your own clinical practice.

Roundtable meetings - 63 hours

Weekly meetings for case discussion. Meetings often consist of lesson topics that are relevant to cases in the clinic, and provide clinician support.

Client Face Time - 230 hours

Time spent working directly with clients

Case Analysis - 205 hours

Time spent on client research, case assessment, and written case reports.

Case Review - 120 hours

Time spent reading case reports and providing collaborative feedback on every case that comes through the clinic.

For detailed information on this program, please read the Clinic Program Handbook

General Enrollment Information

Registration closes September 1, 2025

You must have previous herbal education & training to apply (see Prerequisites).
Prospective students must fill out an application for enrollment.
There is a non-refundable $50 application fee.
Once applications are accepted there is a deposit required to hold your place in the program.
You must be 18 years of age or older to attend classes.

Prerequisites

This program has prerequisite requirement of a minimum of 400 hours of pre-clinical training in vitalist herbalism, having attended our Advanced Herbalism in the Vitalist Tradition program or the equivalent. Prior to Advanced training students must have a minimum of 300 hours of Foundational herbalist education, having attended our Footprints in Medical Herbalism program or the equivalent. Together, this totals a minimum requirement of over 700 hours of study with the specific education in the methods of vitalist healing strategies to enter into our Clinical Residency and Roundtable program.

Students who complete both our first and second year programs are certified in over 800 hours of Vitalist Herbalism. Those who go on to complete this Clinic Program, will have accumulated over 1400 hours of formal herbal education.

Clinic Program Schedule

First Day

September 15, 2025

Last Day

August 24, 2026

All meetings and appointments are on Zoom; you will need your own Zoom account.
Roundtable meetings (Class Time) are held weekly on Mondays.
Free Clinic appointments are held monthly, on the second Saturday of the month.
Student Clinicians will perform thorough Client Intakes (average 2 hours) and Follow-up Sessions (1 hour).
After each client appointment, student clinicians will submit their case in written form via Google docs.
Each client case will be reviewed by Heather Luna, Paul Bergner and the rest of the class.
Faculty and community feedback will be given on each of your clinic cases.

Clinic Program Calendar 2025-26

Tuition

Total Program Cost $5000

$1150 - Tuition Deposit
$3850 - Tuition Balance

Tuition Payment Plan

Once your Tuition Deposit and Course Materials are paid, you will have monthly payments. Tuition payments are billed on the 4th of each month (dates given below). Please contact ACORN directly to make custom payment arrangements.

Acceptance

Within 7-14 days you will receive an email from us about your acceptance, and to schedule a phone call with the director Heather Luna.

Once you are accepted into the Clinical Residency & Roundtable program:

Enrollment Packet - You will receive an Enrollment Packet with important documents that will need to be completed, signed, and returned promptly. You will also get information to help you prepare for the first day of school.

$1150 Tuition Deposit is due upon acceptance - This deposit counts towards your total tuition. You will receive an email invoice to pay this amount. The deposit holds your place in the program and helps make the monthly payments affordable.

What our Graduates are saying...

"...the transformation I have undergone during this program is life changing. I never imagined I’d be where I am today— looking at opening my own clinical practice, with a handful of clients who trust and support me—and I couldn’t feel more ready to begin this next chapter of my career."

"Of the many wonderful aspects of this program, I highly value the clinical experience I have had the opportunity to gain. It has allowed me to refine my technique of cultivating an interview, developing rapport, diving deeper in follow ups, and seeing through the mist in order to identify the core of what is contributing to a person’s [health] case. In addition to the valuable experience of getting a handful of clients with different ailments/backgrounds/needs, I have loved the opportunity to work with my select clients for several months in a row. Our relationships have developed, we have learned from each other, and we keep uncovering new layers of things to work on."

"I will be forever grateful for this journey and the opportunity to learn from two amazing teachers... I can honestly say that I have grown immensely as a person and a practitioner this past year and feel more prepared than I could have imagined. I know the feeling of inadequacy shows that I will be able to keep growing and learning. This train ride is where I am meant to be right now in my life and I feel very blessed to be able to help those in need along their journey."