Kahua Hawaiian Institute

About

To Empower the Wisdom From Within

The Kahua Hawaiian Institute, est. 1985, is the umbrella for many endeavors: the movement of Embodied Spirituality; the creation of music, meditations, videos, and spiritual retreats; the practices of organic farming and education in the field of ecotourism.

Our artistic and educational community lives ecologically and responsibly on 15 acres of sustainable land on the pristine North Shore of Maui, surrounded by 18 acres of cliffs and oceanfront. Our hiking trails lead to freshwater pools and 150-foot waterfalls. Powered by the sun, nurtured by conscious composting and restorative soil building, it is a working blueprint for living close to the earth.

KAHUA ~ in Hawaiian means "to empower the wisdom from within".

Meet the

Founders

Kutira

Kutira Decosterd

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.

Extended bio

Raphael

Raphael F. Sharpe

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.

Extended bio

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.

Watch the film

You Are the Way

Begin in Hawaii, Journey to the Himalayas

A place to retreat and let go

Maui Eco Retreat

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.

Step Onto the Land

The Paro Taktsang monastery clinging to a sheer cliff face above forested Himalayan valleys in Bhutan

More than a journey, it is a teaching

Bhutan Eco Retreat

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.

Begin The Journey

Go deeper

More Ways to Connect

Raphael at a keyboard and Kutira singing beside a grand piano during a concert

Shamanic Music

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

Listen Deeper

A volunteer laughing while reaching up to a hanging bunch of bananas in the agroforestry food forest

Sustainable Food Garden

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

Five people leaping in silhouette against the sunrise above a sea of clouds on Haleakalā

Healthy Lifestyle

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.

Body-Mind Morphing

Find Your Lightness

Raphael and Kutira standing with open arms in front of luminous energy-body paintings

Embodied Spirituality

Embodied Spirituality draws from the ancient wisdom of Taoist, yogic, and Buddhist traditions, offering simple yet powerful practices to strengthen the body, support vitality and longevity, open the heart, and free the mind. Empowered by love, they can become nothing short of miraculous. Born from decades of studying with masters across East and West, this living practice weaves meditation, breath, movement, sound, and conscious presence into a path of remembering our interconnectedness with all of life. The body is the home of our consciousness, and when we inhabit it with awareness and care, spiritual awakening becomes something we live.

Embodied Spirituality

Come Home

Join us

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.

Apply to volunteer

Unplug. Belong. Grow.