Manifest Your Dreams.
Where Ancient Traditions meets Cutting Edge Science
WATCH OUR Movie: THE dance of earth & spirit
Twenty years in the making, “The Dance of Earth & Spirit” chronicles the life of Kutira and Raphael, and their quest for true sustainability. With a mélange of both historical and new footage, a remote part of Maui transforms into an ecological paradise by merging ancient traditions with cutting edge science, driven by the power of Spiritual Embodiment. Discovering the ecological miracle of bamboo, they built the first permitted bamboo house on U.S. soil, leading their modest lives to the Himalayas and the Kingdom of Bhutan. In sharing their story, they give us practical steps to start our journey to true sustainability. “The Dance of Earth & Spirit” honors Mother Earth in creating a sustainable blueprint for generations searching for their Eco-Soul.
Meet the FOUNDERS
KUTIRA
Born and raised in Switzerland, Kutira studied with spiritual masters across East and West before settling on Maui in 1985, where she founded the Kahua Hawaiian Institute. An Embodied Spirituality teacher, body-mind psychotherapist, musician, and author of The Lightness of Body and Being, she is also an award-winning environmental activist and a beloved "Master of Ritual." From the Maui Eco Retreat to her sacred journeys in Bhutan, where she serves on the Queen Mother's advisory board of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation, her perseverance in manifesting visions has touched countless lives. Today her passion is mentoring entrepreneurs and artists internationally, guiding others to live with kindness, beauty, and harmony with the earth.
RAPHAEL
Raphael is a composer, musician, and teacher, a world-renowned pioneer of New Age music. Raised in the 1940s and '50s by a psychic mother and an American Indian shaman named Chief Bushy Head, he brings a clear, down-to-earth way of teaching what seems complex. A child prodigy who composed his first concertos at thirteen, he went on to play alongside many of the great healers of the New Age movement. His best-known album, Music to Disappear In, has sold over 500,000 copies, and he is famous for his "Psychic Readings Set to Music." Raphael composes from a space of deep meditation and silence, translating the world's indigenous traditions into one universal, healing vibration.
You are the way
MAUI ECO RETREAT, a place to retreat and let go. When you step out of the car, you feel it: you are on sacred land, the place the ancient Hawaiians called the "resting place of mature souls." Here there are cascading waterfalls, sunrise over the ocean, and hiking trails through the jungle forest. At night, a sky of a thousand stars and planets hangs so near you want to reach out and grab them. When we arrived in 1988 it was pure jungle, no roads, no electricity, no buildings, and we became pioneers, building off-grid with a sustainable, regenerative vision long before the world was ready for it. Today this hidden sanctuary welcomes guests from around the world, offering each the same gift the land first gave us: stillness, beauty, and a deeper way of living close to the earth. Experience the real Maui away from the hustle and bustle.
BHUTAN ECO RETREAT is more than a journey, it is a teaching. As we travel outward through the only nation that measures its wealth in Gross National Happiness, Kutira guides us inward with The Dragon's Path of Bhutan Wisdom and The Living Wisdom of the Divine Feminine, inspired by Tara. This is the heart of her spiritual and cultural immersion journey in the Himalayan Kingdom of the Thunder Dragon, where for over twenty years she has led groups through ancient monasteries and living traditions, and serves on the Queen Mother's advisory board of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation. Her Sacred Feminine Voices of Bhutan album and The Dragon's Gift Oracle Deck are her offerings to the land that opened her heart and shaped her path. Come walk this magical kingdom with her, and let it open yours.
READY FOR MORE?
SHAMANIC MUSIC holds the sound of our life's work, songs drawn from ancient shamanic traditions of Hawaii, Bhutan, Tibet, Africa, Bali, South America, and beyond, where ancient prayer meets the modern science of how sound moves through the body. At its heart lies a single teaching, the truth at the center of Raphael's series Earth Harmonies and the Universe: everything is frequency, and every soul carries its own. Through music we tune to that frequency, letting it move through body, mind, and spirit.
"To heal is to make whole." — Raphael
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Into the garden → AgroforestryHawaii.com / FoodSecurityHawaii.org
SUSTAINABLE FOOD GARDEN grew from a single sacred plant: bamboo. As a pioneer of structural bamboo, Kutira built the first permitted bamboo house on U.S. soil and, in 1988, established the Kahua O'Malio Bamboo Farm LLC. As a founding member of Food Security Hawaii, she has devoted herself for over a decade to feeding the islands. Today her vision lives as an innovative agroforestry garden, a bounty of taro, Tongan spinach, and native Hawaiian staples grown from soil enriched by roaming chickens and conscious composting, a living blueprint for self-sufficiency and a sustainable future.
Into the garden → AgroforestryHawaii.com / FoodSecurityHawaii.org
HEALTHY LIFESTYLE was born from Kutira's own journey home to her body. Weaving the science of cellular renewal with embodied spiritual practice, it became a path toward balance, vitality, and ageless living, a way of feeling at peace in your own skin. Her book, The Lightness of Body and Being, carries the teaching at its heart: that a loving relationship with the body is a reflection of our deeper relationship with the earth, and brims with inspiration and nourishing recipes to help you choose wisely, embrace rejuvenation, and find delight along the way.
Find your lightness → Body-Mind Morphing
EMBODIED SPIRITUALITY, from the golden ages of Taoist, yogic, and Buddhist wisdom, come simple yet powerful techniques for strengthening the body, awakening longevity, opening the heart, and freeing the mind. Empowered by love, these practices become nothing short of miraculous. Born of decades studying with masters across East and West, this living practice weaves meditation, breath, movement, and sound into a path of remembering our interconnectedness to all of life. More than a teaching, it is a way of being: present, awake, and rooted in the earth. For the body is the home of our consciousness, and only when we tend it with care can we truly grow.
"My name, Kutira, means temple in Sanskrit. I have built temples, and every day I remember that my body is one too." — Kutira
Coming home → Embodied Spirituality
Volunteer
We open our gates to kindred souls who long to learn the land by living it. As some of the first WWOOF hosts in the early '90s, we have welcomed over a thousand volunteers and students into our ohana, sharing permaculture, tropical farming, and the wisdom of off-grid living. Drawn from near and far, hands in the soil by day and gathered for yoga, meditation, and Shamanic teachings by evening, each student leaves with far more than knowledge, an experience that has changed their lives.
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