A Field Guide to Balinese Sauna Herbs: Pegagan, Kayu Putih, Boreh

The three herbs you are most likely to meet in a Balinese herbal sauna are pegagan (gotu kola), kayu putih (cajeput), and boreh — which is not a single plant but a warming spice paste with several centuries of use behind it. Pegagan is a small creeping leaf associated with calm and clarity; kayu putih is a eucalyptus relative whose oil opens the airways; boreh is a blend of ginger, galangal, clove, and other warming spices that Balinese farmers once rubbed on their bodies after cold, wet days in the rice fields. In steam, each one behaves differently — and that difference is the whole point of a Balinese herbal ritual.

This is a field guide to those three. What they are, where they come from, how they smell, and what happens when a ladle of herb-infused water lands on hot stones.

Why Bali has its own sauna herbs

Sauna culture arrived in Bali from elsewhere. The herbs did not.

Bali has one of the oldest continuously practiced herbal traditions in Southeast Asia. It is written down in palm-leaf manuscripts called lontar usada — texts that catalogue plants, preparations, and the conditions they address. Some of these manuscripts are hundreds of years old. The knowledge in them is older still, passed between healers called balian long before anyone wrote it down.

The practical arm of this tradition is jamu — herbal preparations taken as drinks, pastes, and compresses. Walk through any Balinese market in the early morning and you will see the raw materials: turmeric roots stained deep orange, knuckles of ginger and galangal, bundles of fresh leaves sold by women who can tell you what each one is for.

So when a sauna is built in Bali, there is a question worth asking: what happens if the local pharmacopoeia meets the hot stones? That question is the basis of the herbal ritual at our Ubud location, where an apothecary shelf of more than fifteen kinds of Balinese herbs sits beside the dome — pegagan, kayu putih, boreh blends among them. You pick your herbs and pack your own tea bag with your own hands. The bag is brewed into a strong, concentrated herbal tea, and that tea is what gets poured over the stones as löyly. Most saunas reach for synthetic aroma oils; here the steam comes from real herbs, really extracted, chosen by you.

There is a piece of language buried here, too. Ubud takes its name from the Balinese word ubad — medicine, healing herbs. A herbal steam you can only taste in Ubud, the town named after herbs, is less a slogan than plain etymology.

The three herbs below are the core of that shelf.

Pegagan — the quiet leaf

What it is. Pegagan is the Indonesian name for Centella asiatica, known in English as gotu kola. It is a small, unassuming plant — round, scalloped leaves on thin creeping stems, growing low to the ground in damp places. In Bali it grows at the edges of rice paddies and along irrigation channels, often unnoticed.

Traditional use. Across Asia, gotu kola has a long association with the mind. Ayurvedic texts class it as a medhya rasayana — a herb for mental clarity. In Bali, pegagan appears in lontar usada preparations and in everyday life: the fresh leaves are eaten raw in salads and urap, brewed as tea, or blended into jamu drinks. Balinese grandmothers give it to children who need to concentrate. It is considered a cooling herb — not in temperature, but in temperament. Something you take when the head runs hot.

The scent. Subtle. Pegagan does not announce itself the way clove or ginger does. Fresh leaves have a green, slightly grassy smell with a faint bitterness underneath — closer to fresh parsley than to anything perfumed. In an infusion, it reads as a soft vegetal note, the smell of a wet garden.

In steam. This is where pegagan surprises people. Because the scent is so quiet, a pegagan löyly does not hit you — it settles around you. The steam smells green and clean rather than medicinal. The effect is less about the nose and more about the pacing: pegagan rounds are the slow rounds, the ones where the sauna goes quiet and people close their eyes. If kayu putih is the herb that wakes the body up, pegagan is the herb that lets the mind stand down.

Kayu putih — the one that opens the chest

What it is. Kayu putih means "white wood" in Indonesian. The tree is Melaleuca cajuputi — cajeput in English — a relative of both eucalyptus and tea tree, with pale papery bark that gives it its name. It grows across the Indonesian archipelago, and its leaves are steam-distilled into one of the most familiar smells in the country.

Traditional use. Nearly every Indonesian household owns a bottle of minyak kayu putih — cajeput oil. It is the country's default remedy, the thing reached for first. Rubbed on the chest for congestion, on the stomach for wind and nausea, on the temples for headache, on children before sleep. Balinese mothers apply it after a bath, and the smell of it is — for many Indonesians — simply the smell of being cared for. The active constituent is cineole, the same compound that gives eucalyptus its punch, though cajeput carries it with a slightly softer, sweeter edge.

The scent. Immediate and unmistakable. Camphoraceous, penetrating, with a fruity-sweet undertone that eucalyptus lacks. One breath and the nasal passages feel wider. It is a scent with a physical action attached — you do not just smell kayu putih, you feel it in the sinuses.

In steam. Kayu putih is the classic löyly herb, and the reason is mechanical. Steam carries volatile oils, and cineole is very volatile. When water infused with kayu putih hits stones at 90°C, the oil vaporizes instantly and rides the heat wave across the dome. The first breath is sharp — some people flinch — and then the chest opens. Breathing becomes noticeably easier, deeper, more deliberate. In a hot dome, where the instinct is to take shallow breaths, kayu putih quietly corrects that. It is the herb we reach for early in a session, when the body is still arriving.

Boreh — the farmers' fire

What it is. Boreh is not a plant. It is a preparation — a warming paste made from ground spices, and one of the oldest bodycare traditions in Bali. A typical boreh contains ginger, galangal, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, and rice powder to bind it, though every village and every family adjusts the recipe. Some add turmeric for the skin, or candlenut for oil.

The tradition, properly told. Boreh comes from the rice fields. Balinese farmers spend their working days standing in water — planting, weeding, harvesting, often in rain. Cold, wet, and repetitive. In the evening, the remedy was boreh: the spices ground fresh on a stone mortar, mixed with a little water into a coarse paste, and rubbed over the legs, back, and joints. The paste heats the skin the way chili heats the tongue — not by temperature but by compounds like gingerol and eugenol that trigger the body's warmth receptors. Circulation rises to the surface. Stiff muscles loosen. The farmer sleeps warm.

This was never a luxury treatment. It was household medicine, made by hand, applied by family members to each other. Only much later did spas take boreh indoors and present it as a signature Balinese treatment. The spa version is real enough — but the origin is mud, rain, and aching legs, and it deserves to be remembered that way.

The scent. Rich and layered. Ginger and galangal give the bright, rooty top; clove and cinnamon supply a sweet warmth underneath; nutmeg and pepper add darkness. If pegagan smells like a garden and kayu putih smells like a pharmacy, boreh smells like a kitchen — specifically, a Balinese kitchen an hour before a ceremony.

In steam. Boreh in löyly water turns a sauna round into something closer to a ritual. The spice oils are heavier than cineole, so they vaporize more slowly and linger longer — the scent builds across the round instead of spiking and fading. The warming compounds do a small trick on perception: the same 90°C air feels deeper, more penetrating, because the skin's warmth receptors are being stimulated from two directions at once. A boreh round is the one people talk about afterward. It is also the round that connects the sauna most directly to Bali itself — the same spices, the same logic of warmth, that farmers have trusted for centuries.

How the three work together

A good herbal session is sequenced, not random.

The pattern we use in Ubud usually runs kayu putih first — open the airways while the body is fresh and the first sweat is arriving. Then boreh in the middle rounds, when the body can take deeper heat and the spice has time to build. Pegagan comes late, when the work is done and what remains is the settling.

Between rounds, the cold does its part. In Ubud that means plunges at 17°C and 5°C, then the fire pit under the trees and the yoga shala. The herbs shape the heat; the cold water resets the slate; the rest is where everything lands.

None of this requires belief. Pegagan, kayu putih, and boreh are not magic — they are plants and spices with specific, mostly well-understood actions, used the way Balinese households have used them for a very long time. The sauna simply gives them a new delivery method: steam.

A note on our rooftop in Kuta

The herbal steam ritual lives in Ubud. Our Kuta rooftop runs a different program — a geodesic dome at 80–95°C, four individual ice baths at 17°C and 7°C, beanbags under the open sky. Ten minutes from the airport, built for heat, cold, and sky rather than herbs. Many guests do both: Kuta for the sharp contrast, Ubud for the plants and the fire.

If you want to smell these for yourself

The full apothecary shelf — pegagan, kayu putih, boreh blends, and whatever is fresh that week — is at BALI SAUNA + KAYUN HERBAL STEAM in Mas Village, Ubud (Jl. Raya Mas No.51). Open daily 8:00–21:00; entry is a flat 250,000 IDR — one price for everyone. Details on the ritual are on the herbal ritual page, and current rates for both locations are on the prices page. No reservation is needed, though a WhatsApp message to +62 813-3921-110 is the easiest way to ask what is on the shelf that day.