Yerba Santa (Eriodictyon californicum)
The Holy Herb of Breath, Boundaries & Grief
There are plants that comfort, and plants that challenge.
Yerba Santa does both.
Growing wild on sun-soaked slopes of California’s hills and chaparral, Yerba Santa, “Holy Herb”, is a medicine of protection and release. Not flashy. Not soft. But deeply, sacredly loyal.
At Soulcraft Apotheca, Yerba Santa is one of our most powerful allies for clearing the lungs, guarding the heart, and walking through grief without forgetting your own name.
✦ Breath as Boundary, Breath as Prayer
Traditionally used by Indigenous peoples of California for respiratory support, Eriodictyon californicum clears the lungs, not just physically, but emotionally. It’s medicine for the kind of sorrow that settles in the chest. The kind that lingers. The kind that needs a way out.
Used for:
Chest congestion, wet coughs, and bronchial inflammation
Post-illness lung support
Grief that won’t move
Energetic boundaries in emotionally dense spaces
It’s especially useful after long exposure to emotional toxicity, ancestral burdens, or trauma that blocks the breath. Yerba Santa doesn’t erase grief, but it helps you breathe through it.
✦ How We Use It at Soulcraft
This blend is made intentionally, in small batches, harvested with ecological and spiritual respect for the land it grows on, often after fire, in places where life insists on returning.
✦ Energetics & Spirit Work
Temperature: Warming and drying
Tissue State: Damp, boggy, congested
Planetary association: Mars (protection, cutting cords) & Mercury (breath, communication)
Elemental: Fire & Air
Chakra affinity: Heart & throat
Yerba Santa is often carried or burned in protection rituals, used to ward off illness or spiritual heaviness. In folk traditions, it’s been placed on altars to honor ancestors or help guide the dead to peace. For the living, it teaches the sacredness of saying no, of creating space, of not taking on what’s not yours.
✦ A Final Breath
Working with Yerba Santa is not always easy. It asks for truth. It demands clarity. But in return, it offers relief, in the breath, in the boundaries, in the spaces you forgot were yours.
For those who carry the weight of others. For those who speak for the dead. For those whose lungs ache from holding too much
Yerba Santa reminds you: You are holy, too.
Explore our Iron Lung Smoke Blend in the Apotheca →