Vision
Our vision is to provide immersive educational programs that inspire personal transformation through deep connections with the natural world. Our programs offer training in an array of skills that enhance one’s ability to live vibrantly, connected to self and place.
Our work has evolved into 4 distinct programs:
Our Promise to Students
Teach with imagination
Hawthorn Institute is dedicated to helping students become pioneers in health sciences and holistic medicine. In order to achieve this goal, we strive for continual creative improvement in our curriculum and educational approaches.
Balance tradition & innovation
We value the knowledge, experience and skills that have been passed down for generations and we will continue to honor these traditions. We also value innovation, and do not mistake tradition for dogma. We are willing to blend the old with the new, the theoretical with the empirical, and to incorporate ancient wisdom as well as evidence-based research into our training programs. These practices will allow our traditions to continue to grow and thrive in a modern era.
Communicate openly & honestly
We value communication and promise to maintain an open dialogue between administration, faculty, students, and the community. We will stay receptive to feedback, input, and new ideas.
Our Story
From the beginning we have viewed Hawthorn as a living body of knowledge, which grows and adapts in response to our engagement with the plant and human worlds.
Much of our director team and core faculty have been working together over a decade. Together we have supported each other’s dreams and visions and have worked to unite our collective passions to offer transformational programs founded in human and environmental well-being.
In working with students over the years, we have inspired and cultivated transformation on an individual and community level. Together, we gracefully weave the fields of herbalism, yoga, Ayurveda, farming, and field studies into an interconnected web that helps support humans to live in right relationship with the earth.
Our approach is multi-generational and we hope to continue to nurture practices and offer skills that extend far into the future. We imagine the students of today becoming the future pioneers in holistic health. We imagine knowledge being passing down through our programs to communities and families; we imagine a healthy and vibrant life for all of us.