Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year

Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year

Course Overview

Holistic nutrition means understanding how our food creates physical, emotional and spiritual health and wellbeing. Find out how you can use the power of food to heal current health problems, and find a happier way of living!

Holistic cooking means creating food that is delicious and colourful, and also gives us physical health, emotional balance and a stronger sense of self and where we want to go in our life. Using an understanding of food energetics, we can turn around illnesses and emotional difficulties for a brighter, more energetic life.

We start teaching days with some simple Do-in exercises, including stretching and breathing, and working on the acupuncuture/shiatsu meridians of energy to nourish our organs and body.

We use Oriental medicine to understand how to increase health and heal many health problems, using the healing power of food and lifestyle medicine.  This includes lots of hands on cooking classes, learning how to prepare a wide range of colourful plant based dishes including breakfast, lunches, suppers, snacks and desserts.

We gently encourage emotional sharing in a safe space, and ways to release old unhelpful emotions, to create more lightness and joy.  We also encourage students to connect to their deeper self or 'soul', for guidance in becoming more of who they are and finding their deep direction in life.

This course will help you:

• Heal many current physical health problems.
• Enjoy more energy and a stronger immune system.
• Let go of old limiting emotions and find greater joy and love in your life.
• Enjoy creating many easy to cook plant based dishes.
• To use food as medicine to help you and others heal and stay well.
• Learn Oriental medicine health assessment methodes, to keep your body in balance and health
• Connect wtih your 'inner self' to get in touch with your authentic being.

This is an exciting year where you can expect to experience changes in your own physical and emotional health. and if you decide you would like to train professionally you can go on to a second year course to qualify as a Holistic Health Coach, Healing Chef and Wellbeing Shiatsu Practitioner.  Your studies can deepen in our third year Holistic Health Consultant course, enabling you to give in depth dietary and lifestyle guidance to help clients heal a wide range of health problems.

Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year

What You’ll Get

At the end of the Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year you will receive a Certificate in Holisitic Healing and as a Healing Chef.  If you choose to go onto the second year course you will qualify as a Holistic Health Coach and Wellbeing Shiatsu practitioner.

Why Study with the IMS?

• This is the most holistic course bringing together nutrition, cooking, food and lifestyle medicine, and emotional healing in one transformative learning experience.
• This holistic approach to health is the future of medicine, looking at the whole person and a variety of ways to find greater health and wellbeing.
• Courses have a maximum of 10 students so we can give each student plenty of personal guidance in their own personal health and development, and in learning many new skills.
• Your teachers have many years experience of guiding clients and students towards greater health.  The school is led by Oliver Cowmeadow who has over 40 years experience of teaching and guiding thousands of students and clients towards greater health.  Found out more about and the other teachers on this course here.
• The school has it's own purpose built teaching kitchen, and accommodation in beautiful countryside in Devon, England.
• Choice of either fully residential, or mostly online learning.

Prerequisites for IMS’s Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year

The main requirement is an enthusiasm for studying health and an appetite for making positive changese in your way of eating and living.  This is a very practical course, there's a lot of great theory but participating is very much about learning new ways of living yourself.

To find out more about the approach we use to Holistic Healing you can:

• Join a short course such as our very popular 5-Day Looking After Your Health course.
• Check out our wide video collection on our YouTube channel.
• Download a Home Study course such as Macrobiotics Made Easy.
• Contact us for a free 15 minute chat with one of our teachers.

Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year

Course times, fees & booking

Timings

Next residential course runs from July 2025 to March 2026 (course code 07.25.1)

Next online/intensive will begin in February 2026 (course code 02.26.1).  This course is taught live online from February to July, and then with a residential at the school in Devon, UK for learning practical cooking and lifestyle skills.

Fees

We are offering bursaries of £750 for two people who would love to take up this course but would need assistance to do so, if you are interested in applying for one of these please contact us directly to discuss with a member of the team.

The course fee for the online/intensive is £2995.00, and for the residential course £3,900. A deposit of £750 is payable to secure your place. The course fee includes all teaching, course materials, small group tutorials, and three meals each day.

We frequently get couples, good friends, and sometimes mothers and daughters or sons joining our Foundation Year Course. To make this easier financially we offer a 25% reduction for the second person. This reduces the residential course fees for the second person from the usual fee of £3,900 to £2925, saving £975, with 10 monthly instalments of £222.50.

The Online/Intensive course fees drop from £2,995 to £2246.25, saving £937.50 with 10 monthly instalments of £154.62 (after paying your £750 deposit and adding a £50 administration fee for paying by instalments).

If you want to use this joint discount, please complete two application forms below for our Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year and contact the school office to ask for this discount.

Accommodation

We have three accommodation options on site, please email us to request accommodation and prices.

Course syllabus

Full Residential Course Details Full Online Course Details

Cancellation Policy

All courses and accommodation are subject to the school cancellation policy, which includes changing dates. Please click here for details before booking.

Apply or find out more

To secure your place, complete the Holistic Nutrition & Cooking Year Application Form. If you’d like to discuss your possible participation in this course you can book a time to talk with Oliver Cowmeadow here.

Training Pathway