About Pōhala

ABOUT PōHALA

Pohala (v) - to recover consciousness; to wake from stupor. PōHALA, to ascend.

Aloha, and mahalo piha for your interest in this Body of Work called Pōhala.
My name is Ke’oni Hanalei. I come from a lineage which spans 1,017 generations. Much of what I share, today, remains honest to the founder of my lineage, Mahat.
The founding of Pōhala is far older than I am. Pōhala is much older than my tūtū, Kau'ikeonalani, who passed this ‘ike (knowledge) down to me.  Pōhala is even older than the culture of Ancient Hawai'i, and reaches mysteriously further beyond Tahitian contact to what can be described as "pre-polynesian." Beyond this is what my archaic Polynesian ancestors have called 'ʻē," or "before," "elsewhere," "Mū", and what many have named, "Lemuria." Over 10,000 years ago our planet made a monumental shift towards the culture we live in today.  The neolithic era introduced private property, and possession. This was the moment we began the split from nature. With access to 1,017 generations, I have retrieved essential codes of the origins of humanity, and the experiment of the Organic.

My Maui grandmother (tūtū), Kau'ikeonalani, with whom I spent a majority of my first 5 years with, was, herself, a record keeper of primordial knowledge. She was not the first.  Her mother and her mother-in-law were also medicine holders, or what we Hawaiians call "Kahuna” or “Makaūla.”  My grandmother held a reverence for the organic world, and she knew a language of the organic, seemingly forgotten by most others. I became inspired, and connected to the ferns and the waters, to the patterns of the sky and the colossal chess game shifting in the night sky. From the Mea Ne’e, the plasmic ones, to the near-mechanical human, I devoured the totality of cosmic history.

Pua’aehuehu, Fern Medicine, is just one of the many relics of the organic experiment to which I became versed in.  For the Ancient Hawaiians, botanicals have retained their sacred codes offered to them at conception, and unlike human beings, they have not forgotten how to interact with these codes, or its essence.  The human being is made up of countless emotional experiences; this is an interplay of reception and reaction.  The ancient people knew that recognition and understanding of Mans emotions are supreme in living a balanced, harmonious life full of Aloha.  The spores of endemic and indigenous Hawaiian Ferns, Pua’aehuehu, hold such codes which correlate to specific human emotions, traits, and virtues, which I refer to as The Principles of Aloha.  Aloha, or love, truly is the highest possible vibration in this reality. This is Pōhala.

When I was 5 my parents moved my brother, Rio, and I to Kaua'i and later to Ka'ū on the Big Island. Separated from my grandmother, I proceeded into adolescence and young adulthood without recognition of the potency of what she taught me. By the time I was 10 tūtū was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's and it became difficult to re-connect.   In 2000, tūtū finally hala (transcended) and a million questions of mine would remain unanswered.

This is where my re-emergence with Pōhala begins.  The potency of Fern Medicine has been considered kapu or "in moratorium" until recently when, in 2013, on the 13th anniversary of tūtū's hala, the kapu was lifted and all that was huna, or "secret," can now be disclosed. I have taken on this kuleana (responsibility) with great ha'aheo (pride).  This has become the purpose of my life, and the resolution of my ancestors.  I remain in gratitude for the life-force of my people before me, and of pure nature, and the uncorrupted memory of Source. Mahalo!

Our apothecary honors the rituals of the old, and include more modern methods of extraction. What is constant is our devotion to ceremony. All plant matter comes from the wilderness of Great Maui and Grandmother Kaua'i.  Each Fern or plant holds power in the houses of moon phases, and therefore their harvest and their distillation or extraction is performed on those sacred times.  Harmony with nature is key in our journey back into the Nucleus of the Great Spiral (Source). Approach with reverence, and always choose your thoughts wisely. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me for personal consultations on Fern/Botanical Medicine and their role in your very own hala.

ALOHA MĀ!