Trained in Eastern and Western Herbal Medicine, Master Herbalist Karen M. Rose has dedicated her life’s work to empowering individuals to reconnect to their own ancestral traditions. Over the past 20 years, she has created several outlets to offer her teachings and healing modalities to women, people of color, Black, and LGBTQX communities. The opening of the Brooklyn-based, Sacred Vibes Apothecary in 2009, was merely the beginning. Karen has now expanded her enterprise, opening Sacred Botanica and Sacred Spice in 2020, two new locations in Brooklyn, to make healing more accessible to the greater community.
Karen’s inspiration for this work began as a child in her native home of Guyana, where she was exposed to how African, Caribbean, and Latin American traditions profoundly influenced plant medicine and community healing. The legacy of these lands is the foundation of Karen’s core values and spiritual practices.
Regarded as a Spiritual Herbalist, Karen is revered for being the first to teach Spiritual Herbalism, plant medicine deeply rooted in ancestral healing and spiritual consciousness. Offering guidance to those on the path to finding the truth, she has trained over 400 herbalists through her Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship program as an act to reclaim their own health and offer healing to their own communities.
Karen’s accomplishments include several in-house projects such as the Sacred Vibes’ Annual NYC Spiritual Herbalism Conference, 2019, 2020 Herbal Almanac, the Global Virtual Apprenticeship Program, the Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship Community, and the FREE Herbal Community Summer workshops. Karen has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Black Enterprise, Refinery29 and Allure Magazine, Organic Life Magazine, Elle.com and has partnered with brands like BET, and Squarespace.
Karen currently resides in New York City with her three children, grandson, parents, and sisters. Her family is valued foremost and all of her work is supported by this firm foundation.