Peter is a medical herbalist, clinical aromatherapist, practitioner of Chinese medicine, and respected author. His experience spans over 30 years. Peter apprenticed with Cantonese herbalist Dr. Lee in London, graduated from the College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture (U.K.) in 1980, studied with Ted Kaptchuk, O.M.D., completed his postgraduate studies in Chinese medicine at the Ecole Européene d’Acupuncture in Paris, and completed Western herbal medicine training at the College of Consultant Herbalists in England.
Peter also apprenticed with medical herbalist Christopher Hedley MNIMH, and with pharmacist-herbalist Henri Verdier in Paris, with an emphasis on the clinical uses of essential oils.
Peter is well known for his extensive research, writings, and lectures in the field of herbal and essential oil medicine. In addition to directing Snow Lotus Seminars, he is an adjunct faculty member at the Northwestern Health Sciences University in Minneapolis, MN.
Peter Holmes L.Ac., M.H. is the author of several acclaimed textbooks on herbal and essential oil medicine:
Aromatica: A Clinical Guide to Essential Oil Therapeutics (2 vols.)
Clinical Aromatherapy: Using Essential Oils for Healing Body and Soul
The Energetics of Western Herbs: Treatment Strategies Integrating Western & Oriental Herbal Medicine (2 vols.)
Jade Remedies: A Chinese Herbal Reference for the West (2 vols.)
The T.C.M. Materia Medica Clinical Reference & Study Guide
Personal Statement from Peter Holmes, L.Ac., M.H.
As I began working with the oils in the 1980s as a medical herbalist and acupuncturist, I became aware of the need to have absolutely pure and supreme quality oils for my clinical practice and my seminars. This initiated what has become a more than thirty year journey around the world in search of artisan producers distilling on a grassroots and traditional level.
My search was for distillers that worked in the time-honored artisan way, living closely with the very source of the plant materials. In my estimation, there is no better way to collect the distilled fragrant essences of our earth, Gaia, in all its amazing aromatic diversity.
In terms of my clinical practice, essential oils have profoundly enhanced and enlarged both the context from which I treat, from which I hold the patient-practitioner relationship; and the actual treatment choices available to me. Essential oils selflessly offer the gift of an incredible diversity of applications and treatment options for resolving health issues in the body, the mind and the soul.
Amazingly, these treatment options are not limited to the traditional or handed down: they are in the process of being continuously explored, experimented with and rediscovered by us, the individuals who choose to use them for healing! I believe that essential oils hold an important key to achieving a true cure for illness at the deepest levels, just as they hold the open-ended promise of individual change and evolution towards integration and wholeness.
It is my pleasure and honor to be able to share these fragrant jewels of the earth with you. Please enjoy them, get to know them as personal allies, listen to and learn from them. Ultimately, benefit from their remarkable healing effects on body, mind and soul as they suggest evolutionary solutions.