Most of us know lei as something beautiful- flowers placed around the neck in welcome, celebration, or arrival. But in this conversation with Keya Guimaraes, herbalist, educator, storyteller, and lei maker, we are invited into something much deeper.
Lei is not simply adornment, but herbal formula. It is a living relationship with plants, and a healing practice that teaches us how to belong.
In this episode of The Dancing Willow Podcast, Keya shares her relationship with Hawaiian herbalism, lei making, traditional plant medicine, beauty, reverence, and what it means to become naturalized to the land beneath your feet.
To listen to the podcast interview and enter into Keya's beautiful wisdom and energy, you can find the episode here!
Hawaiian Herbalism and Becoming Naturalized to Place
Keya’s story begins in Hawaiʻi, on Kauaʻi, but her life and work have carried her through many places, countries, ecosystems, and thresholds. At the time of our conversation, she was in Massachusetts, surrounded by ferns and mugwort, while continuing to hold her deep relationship with Kauaʻi and Hawaiian herbalism.
One of the central threads of our conversation was this question:
How do we become naturalized to the land we are on?
How do we become familiar enough with a place to listen? How do we become humble enough to be taught? How do we root ourselves into the soil beneath our feet?
Keya describes this as a practice of relational attunement. It is not something we can accomplish through the mind alone. It requires our senses, time, watching the plants, learning the seasons, and allowing ourselves to be changed by the place where we live.
As herbalists and plant people, it can be tempting to gather knowledge quickly. We want the Latin names, the actions, the constituents, the uses. And of course, these things matter. But there is another kind of knowing that only comes through repeated presence.
The cost of becoming intimate with place is time.
And in a world that asks us to move quickly, consume quickly, and extract quickly, this is a radical teaching. To know the plants beneath your feet, you have to return again and again.
Place-Based Herbalism and the Medicine Beneath Your Feet
At Dancing Willow Herbs, we often talk about place-based herbalism- the idea that the plants growing around us are deeply connected to the bodies, people, and ecosystems they live among.
This does not mean we can only work with local plants. But it does mean that herbalism is not separate from place.
The herbs growing in the high desert of Southwest Colorado are shaped by drought, wind, altitude, sun, and resilience. The plants growing in Hawaiʻi are shaped by ocean, volcanic soil, humidity, and tropical abundance. The plants growing in Massachusetts are shaped by moss, forest, frost, and seasonal turning.
Each place has its own language.
Keya reminds us that when we land somewhere new, or even when we have lived somewhere our whole life, we still have to learn how to belong there. We still have to become naturalized.
This can happen through herbal medicine, but it can also happen through walking, sitting with trees, tending bees, making art, breathing with the land, or developing a daily practice that connects us to the living world.
Lei as Herbal Formula
One of the daily rituals Keya turns to for deepening connection to her place is the practice of making leis.
Many of us think of lei as something placed around the neck when we arrive in Hawaiʻi.
But Keya invites us into a much deeper understanding. In her practice, lei is not just beauty. Lei is formula.
Just as an herbalist might formulate a tincture, tea, syrup or poultice, lei can be created with intention, plant energetics, ritual, and relationship. The plants are chosen not simply because they look beautiful together, but because of the medicine they carry.
What is needed for this moment?
Is this lei for grief, birth, death, forgiveness, transition? For a person sitting in a chemo chair? For a mother crossing the threshold into birth? For someone releasing an old identity and stepping into another?
The medicine is aromatic, energetic, symbolic and relational. When we wear a lei, it releases scent, transfers vitality, and medicinal properties.
The Ritual and Energetics of Lei Making
Keya speaks about different styles of lei making and the way each carries its own energetic signature.
Some lei are pierced with a needle. This style has a linear quality- one plant or seed after another, moving forward in a line. Keya describes how this could be useful when something needs to be pierced through, moved, or worked through directly.
Other lei are woven in a spiral. The style Keya often works with is called wili, a winding method that spirals the plant material around a central spine. This style carries a different feeling: cocooning, weaving, amplification, synergy, and holding.
There are also braided lei, such as those used in certain releasing ceremonies. Keya shared a powerful traditional practice using limu kala, a seaweed lei, in ocean ritual for forgiveness, release, and untangling.
How the lei is made matters. Where it is placed on the body matters. How it is tied matters. The chant or spoken word matters. The way it is returned to the earth matters.
The whole practice is alive.
Beauty as Medicine
This conversation also opened into a deep reflection on beauty.
Beauty can be complicated, especially for women. Many of us were raised in a world where beauty was treated as currency, performance, or worth.
Because of that, it can be tempting to reject beauty altogether- but Keya offers another way.
Beauty does not have to be superficial. Beauty can be a doorway into reverence. Beauty can be a way the living world gets our attention. Beauty can soften us enough to receive.
The beauty of a rose is not separate from its medicine. The color, scent, softness, thorns, sensuality, and presence are part of the teaching. The beauty is not ornamental. It is communicative.
In the conversation, I shared that I have been feeling into beauty as a nervous system state. When we are rushing, guarded, overwhelmed, or disconnected, we often cannot even perceive the beauty around us. To experience beauty, we have to become receptive.
Beauty asks us to soften, and making lei or working with the plants around us can be a way to tune into the medicine of beauty.
Daily Practice as an Umbilical Cord
One of the most practical teachings from this conversation is also one of the simplest:
We need daily practices that connect us back to the earth.
For Keya, that practice is lei making. Every day, wherever she is, she gathers small amounts of plant material with permission, weaves lei, chants, listens, and returns the lei to the land when its vitality has been offered.
But the invitation is not that everyone needs to make lei every day. The invitation is to ask: what is your practice?
What is the small, repeated act that keeps you connected to the place where you live?
It could be sitting with the same tree every morning, making tea from a plant in your garden, walking without headphones, breathing with the land before you begin your day. Tending bees, brushing your dog, watering your plants, or learning one plant each month for a year.
The practice does not need to be grand, it just needs to be consistent enough to become a cord.
A daily umbilical cord back to the living world.
Returning the Lei to the Earth
So then, what happens after the lei has been worn?
A lei is not meant to last forever. In fact, that is part of its teaching.
As the flowers wilt, as the scent fades, as the life force transfers, we are reminded that all living things are temporary. The lei gives its vitality, and then it is returned to the Earth.
Keya shared that she offers her lei back to trees, creating a grove of adornment and reciprocity. This image stayed with me: trees dressed in the remnants of ceremony, flowers returning to the larger body of the earth.
Listen to the Full Episode
Listen to the full conversation with Keya on The Dancing Willow Podcast to learn more about Hawaiian herbalism, lei making as a healing practice, beauty, reverence, and becoming naturalized to the land beneath your feet.
