Chris Marano is a clinical herbalist with a health-care practice in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. His health care practice and teachings take him throughout the United States, Canada and the British Isles. He is founder of Clearpath School of Herbal Medicine, dedicated to the teaching of holistic health, herbalism, and Earth-based wisdom; and Clearpath Herbals, offering health consultations and high-quality, custom-blended herbal preparations.

His experience draws upon Chinese, Native American and Western healing traditions. He is a registered herbalist in the American Herbalist Guild (AHG), a professional member of the Northeast Herbal Association (NEHA), veteran teacher, author, meditation instructor, and has degrees in pre-medicine, Chinese philosophy and science education from Columbia University, a graduate degree from The Herbal Therapeutics School of Botanic Medicine, Zen and Chinese philosophy training from the Institute of Chung-hwa Chinese and Buddhist Culture, and training in Cherokee and Annishnabe traditions. In addition to teaching workshops, courses and apprenticeship programs through Clearpath Herbals in both Western Massachusetts and Coastal Maine, Chris also teaches Clinical Herbalism at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

"A Piece of My Story" - Narrative Biography

Growing up in urban New Jersey, three miles as the crow flies from the Empire State Building, I discovered nature where I could find it – in the cracks of sidewalks, vacant lots, the small back yards behind neighbors’ houses. Colorful flower beds and vegetable gardens were nice enough, but it was the gardens gone wild that called to me. Beautiful flowers that people scorned as weeds, tangled vines, sharp thorns, the smell of damp earth. The brightest butterflies –swallowtails and fritillaries – loved the wild gardens more too. It was there I learned to love nature and the Green World. I was blessed, too, with parents who brought the family on vacations to beautiful natural wonders all along the East Coast and out West to deserts and high-peaked mountains. A joy for my senses and sense of wonder, I learned the smell of “aspirin” in willows and poplars, the taste of wintergreen in black and yellow birch, the sting of nettles, the nuances of green that distinguish pines from fir from spruce. It was all an amazing and welcoming mystery. It still is.

In school I excelled in sciences and was encouraged to become a medical doctor. It seemed sensible. I have always enjoyed being around people, listening to their stories with keen interest. Friends and even strangers said they felt comfortable and safe telling me their stories, and that afterwards they felt better in the telling. My mother, a nurse, called that good “bedside manner,” and said it would go a long way in being a better doctor. But my heart wasn't in it. At Columbia University in New York City I studied pre-medicine, but was left cold by the indoctrination process, and so gravitated more toward Eastern philosophy, in particular Chinese Buddhism and Taoism.

I also missed nature, so upon graduating from college, I decided to abandon ideas of medical school and instead traveled the country taking odd jobs, learning about life and people from all walks of life, and especially getting back to the Green World. Somewhere along the way I also hooked up with one of the world’s pre-eminent Buddhist teachers, a Chinese Chan master, and eventually edited his magazine for 15 years, wrote seven of his books, and learned to practice and teach meditation and mindfulness. Living a lot of the time at the Chan Center, I found myself more often than not in the kitchen with monks, nuns and elderly Chinese women, cooking and concocting delicious vegetarian meals and strange medicine brews in arcane pots and kettles. “This good for qi,” or “This move blood,” or “This calm spirit,” they would say, holding up mysterious roots and twigs and berries, letting me smell and taste and drink. For me it was heaven. Chinese philosophy permeates every aspect of its culture, including human health and medicine, and gradually I “thought” more in Chinese than I did in the Western sense.

I also needed to make money, and so I became a secondary school teacher, honing my communication skills teaching biology and environmental studies for ten years in two, culturally diverse urban New Jersey high schools. It was during my tenure as a teacher that I also “stumbled upon” a Cherokee-based community along the Delaware River. Thus began my immersion in the philosophy, ceremonies and medicines of Native American culture. My explorations have led me to Aniishnabe First Nation medicine ways as well, and to this day, my Chinese side and Native American side walk hand in hand.

I couldn’t help but see the parallels between Native American, Chinese and Western health traditions, and I also reveled in the differences. At that point, in my early thirties, I could no longer deny my deep, burning desire to be a holistic health practitioner, in particular an herbalist, and so I began formal studies with one of North America’s foremost minds on the subject. Eventually I moved to the rural hills of Western Massachusetts – more wilderness than country – to better raise my son. Here I've been fifteen years, a well-respected community herbalist, growing and wildcrafting medicinal plants in gardens and woods of this beautiful, magical land of the greater Pioneer Valley, teaching people of all ages about the wisdom of nature and plants as well as the health traditions of the cultures I love and that are part of my marrow, and running a thriving clinical herbal practice.

These days I revel in teaching a whole new generation of bright, up-and-coming herbalists, collaborating with farmers, educators, health-care practitioners, permaculturalists, environmentalists and activists on sustainable projects to help communities in these turbulent times. I wish I could say it’s been a dream come true, but it surpasses anything I could have imagined, and the dream’s not over yet, because life keeps unfolding.