When you first become a health coach or yoga teacher, one of the biggest questions you ask yourself may be, “Who do I want to help?”

I mean… you probably didn’t choose this path for the stacks of cash that most yoga teachers have lying around, right?

You got into this because you want to help people. And you probably want to help as many people as possible with as many issues as you can.

If you want to transform lives (and get clients and students), it’s essential to figure out who you want to connect with and what your future clients and yoga students really need.

From there, it’s simply a matter of getting educated and adding tools to your practice that can help you get real world results for your clients and students.

When I started my health coach practice, I knew I wanted to offer some sort of cannabis counseling as part of my practice. Cannabis helped me kick the pain pills, lose 60 lbs. and become active. I wanted to share that kind of radical transformation with my clients.

I also wanted to be formally educated with a certificate as a cannabis professional, so my clients knew they could trust my suggestions. I wanted to be able to build my practice and offer my clients something really unique, transformative, and helpful.

I searched for a training program for several months before finding the Holistic Cannabis Academy and I’m starting the Holistic Medical Cannabis Practitioner training this month. I am… so… excited!

I wanted to document my experience, starting with the moment I found the Holistic Cannabis Academy, so other practitioners can get inspired and confident to move forward on this path… and together, we can create a movement and help even more people.

Cannabis Education Reframed

Let’s face it. We all grew up in the era of cannabis prohibition. And, for most of the world, that era is still going strong.

Because of that, we may have some sticky beliefs about whether or not cannabis is good for everyone… or not. We don’t want to scare our clients and students by bringing it up. Or maybe, we just don’t want to send them down the wrong path or offer misinformation.

Even a quick google search about the benefits of cannabis will yield results about cannabis addiction and how some researchers are pushing back against the idea that cannabis is a useful medicinal plant. It can be confusing and can make us fear that offering recommendations around cannabis may lose us clients and students. Laura Lagano, one of the co-founders of the Holistic Cannabis Academy, wrote about this on the Huffington Post, labelling this fear as cannaphobia. Sadly, it’s real.

Beyond that, we may not know exactly HOW cannabis can be useful for our clients and students. Even if we’ve experienced radical transformation and heard incredible stories about others healing with cannabis, it can be incredibly difficult to suggest or counsel our clients around how cannabis can help.

But it’s time to face facts: more than half the states in the US have legalized medical cannabis and 17 states have laws governing the use of low THC, high CBD for medicinal use. Canada, Australia, and Urguay have legalized the use of medical cannabis and many other nations are following suit.

The landscape of health and wellness is changing as cannabis legalization continues to sweep across the globe. Becoming an early adopter of cannabis-based coaching, counseling, and teaching, will help your clients heal and help your business grow.

Why I Chose HCA’s Holistic Medical Cannabis Practitioner Program

HCA was the only online medical cannabis certificate that fulfilled the list of requirements I consider essential for building a cannabis-based health and wellness practice:

1. They offer a certificate: If you’re already a medical or wellness professional and you want an education program that will mean something to you and your clients, they offer a Holistic Medical Cannabis Practitioner certificate. If you want to start your practice and launch your cannabis career, they also offer a Holistic Medical Cannabis Counselor certificate. You’ll be tested and receive a certificate as proof of your competency.
2. The curriculum is outstanding: I poured over this list for days. HCA offers a varied, in-depth, useful, and compelling curriculum that is available nowhere else – believe me… I checked. They offer topics that you can integrate specifically into your health coach and/or yoga teaching practice. The following topics were the most exciting to me. I can’t wait to incorporate these into my current practice:

• The Integration of Yoga + Meditation with Cannabis
• Ayurvedic Constituents of Cannabis
• Food as Medicine: An Integrative Approach to Diet + Cannabis
• Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency
• Treating the Spectrum of Mood Disorders: Stress, Anxiety + PTSD

1. They cater to professionals, but there are programs for everyone: For HCA’s practitioner program, you’re already a health and wellness professional (i.e. Yoga Teacher, Health Coach, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, etc.). As this profession continues to grow, you will be in good company and have a community of professionals to refer to and get referrals from. If you’re not a certified practitioner, they offer a Holistic Medical Cannabis Counselor certificate that you can use to start your cannabis-centric career.

I’ll keep you all updated on my experience attending the Holistic Cannabis Academy. Let me know if you have any questions or feedback in the comments section below. Or feel free to send me an email at [email protected].

Much love,

Corinne