In this episode, Dr. Sam Berne explores the foundations of aromatherapy and how essential oils support vision, calm the nervous system, and restore whole-body balance. This talk is adapted from the first part of his professional Aromatherapy Master Class. ONLINE | Aromatherapy Foundations Certification January 28, 2026 – March 4, 2026 • Wednesdays, 5:30–6:45 PM MT • ???? Live on Zoom Ready to go deeper with essential oils and learn how to use them clinically, energetically, and intuitively? Join me for a 6-week Aromatherapy Foundations Certification training where we’ll explore 15 core oils that support vision, nervous system regulation, immune balance, digestion, respiration, and emotional healing. This is a professional-level course for practitioners, coaches, healers, and serious students who want to bring aromatherapy into their work and daily life with confidence. ???? Learn more and register here: https://www.drsamberne.com/workshop/online-aromatherapy-foundations-certification/ ???? Podcast listener bonus: Mention that you heard about the course on my podcast and receive $100 off the registration fee. To claim your discount, email Dr. Berne at appointments@drsamberne.com before registering. Sam Berne (00:00.078) And this is being recorded and thank you for the ping in terms of emails. If you didn't get the link for today's class and there were a couple of last-minute signups and my team and I tried diligently to get everybody the zoom link. My suggestion would be when you do get the recording link and the handout today. that you download it to your computer. We just never know between zoom and the Dropbox how long the recordings will be on there. If I think I'm going to download this to them to my Dropbox and my Dropbox tends to last longer than zoom, but this is yours forever. And there's a lot of great information. We will have time for Q &A at the end and also we're probably going to do a little meditation as well. So I think I'm going to share my screen and we'll start in on. my presentation. Feel free to make any comments in the chat box. I'll be monitoring those throughout our presentation today. So the title of this workshop is called see clearly now essential oils and natural protocols for vision renewal and a little backstory on how I actually got involved in aromatherapy. Sam Berne (01:49.835) Two things happened. One was that I was working with a lot of people. I was doing a test called the tissue mineral analysis hair analysis. Many of you maybe have had that done and I was working with a group of doctors with working with different detoxification systems to get rid of heavy metals out of the body. And hair mineral analysis is one of many ways to do that. So in the in the process, I happen to be at a health fair and I met this woman who had a small boutique aromatherapy company and I told her what I was doing. And so she donated some essential oils to me to use on these kids. We worked with the children in the study. Who had heavy metal toxicity and the essential oils. We actually used were black cumin, which we put six drops in a glass of water and they drank in the morning. Black cumin is a is a really great essential oil for immune health. We used it a lot. We used it a lot during covid. The second oil that I used was in a world called patchouli and patchouli works very well at getting heavy metals out of the body and it's a good detoxifier. We had the protocol was two drops on the soles of the feet in the morning. We also used a another essential oil for adrenal health cedarwood Atlas, which is a tree Atlas a tree essential oil and we had parents put two essential oil, two drops of that Cedarwood Atlas on the back around the kidneys and adrenal area. And then the last essential oil we use, which we're going to talk about today was spike lavender. And we had parents put two drops of spike lavender on the soles of the feet and we had them do it for three months. Sam Berne (04:15.004) We tested the the kids there were 20 kids in the study and we measured their hair mineral analysis at the beginning and then at the end of three months and at the end of three months doing that essential oils protocol. What we found was that the heavy metals had left the body completely hundred percent. I was I was really actually pretty surprised and so that really caught my attention on the power of medicinal essential oils. And not all essential oils have that level of therapeutic value, but the ones we were using from the small boutique company and I'll talk about, you know how to choose a company to use and anyways, it was a really it was really great experience. So then I began studying aroma therapy. became certified in it. I worked for a company and I taught classes and certification and did that for a few years and then kind of went off on my own. And so aroma therapy and essential oils or something that are near and dear to me. I feel they're really really great support medicinally and so That's that's one way that I got into it. Another way was personally I had some digestive issues that I was dealing with during the time I was doing a lot of traveling and teaching. So I began using cardamom essential oil and basil essential oil and I would put those in water and sip them after I ate and within two weeks the Digestive inside the digestive situation cleared up and never came back and every now and then if I you know eat something that's a little hard for my digestive system. Basil is my go-to and pull a basil essential oil and a glass of water and that tends to take away the the digestive distress. So. Sam Berne (06:37.678) We're not going to go into, know, all the different essential oils, respiratory digestion and and so on, but I am doing a certification course in aromatherapy starting the end of January 2026 and I'll talk more about that certification. It'll be online six court six weeks and you'll need to buy 15 foundational essential oils that will go through. And we'll talk about all the different systems. But today we're going to focus a little more on the vision brain part of my clinical work. So my resume is that I've been involved in holistic optometry for 40 years. And to me, vision has always been a doorway to my nervous system health, my fluid body health. Learning all different kinds of modalities from your ideology to craniocic role energy healing the eyes are an amazing doorway into the body and coupling that with the central oils is a very intelligent plant medicine and I'll talk more about why I think that is but I have consulted and counseled thousands of people. to use essential oils and it's made a really big difference in their life. So I hope to be able to do that for you. So, as you know, in my brand, I have a new direction in vision. Carry my vision. Care is holistic. It's mind body and the process is called functional vision, integrative body. And so that means that the eyes are related to the body. They were related to the brain. They're related to our metabolic and systemic health. There's just so many possibilities. Sam Berne (08:39.986) in terms of, you know, applying different aspects of vision to my to my work. So let me just see if everybody is. Okay. Yes, I will hold off on some of these until the end, but I'm tracking your questions and we'll we'll keep going. Appreciate the comments, by the way. So I have a strong lineage of teachers and at every workshop and seminar that I teach, I honor my mentors. I wouldn't be here without them. This is a picture of me back in 2016 when I was leading retreats at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California did that for seven years. We used to run month-long retreats at Esalen and it was tremendous loved it. Anyways, I want to just briefly touch and give gratitude to my teachers. Am Skeffington. I never met him, but his writings were incredible and he was one of the fathers of holistic optometry. Dr. Albert A. Shankman was my optometrist and helped me completely reverse my myopia. You've probably heard that story and I went to him early on in my career and optometry and by completely reducing my myopia. It inspired me to focus on a more holistic approach. Dr. Albert Sutton was a great friend and mentor of mine who helped me understand child development and how our vision really starts in utero and our in utero experience our birth and our bonding experiences have strong imprints on how we develop our eyes and vision and dr. Sutton was a major influencer in that dr. John streff and dick a pal. They were my teachers and professors when I attended the gazelle Institute and gazelle was a institution affiliated with Yale study center at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, and I spent a year there learning how to evaluate and treat special needs kids. Sam Berne (11:03.902) It was an amazing time early in my career to get that training under my belt. I'd like to thank Emily Conrad. Emily is a somatic pioneer. passed away in 2014. She started the practice continuum movement. I was an authorized continuing movement teacher trained by Emily since left continuum, but still use many of her somatic principles. If you want to read a good book, her book that came out life on land, is today. That book is if you read it, you go, my goodness, that's what's happening today. And she wrote that book 10 15 years ago. So pretty amazing. Shout out to Dr. Kordkoff, who taught me about biofield analysis and the GDV camera. My research with assisted dolphin swims. using the biofield analysis and measuring people's energy fields before and after dolphin swims color therapy central oils really wonderful. Dr. Hazel Parcells. She was one of my early teachers here in Santa Fe. I met her when she was 103 years old. She was just starting a retreat center in Sapio, New Mexico and she lived to 106 and I became A student of hers for three years and she taught me a lot about nutritional therapies,