Kutira Décosterd

Kutira’s perseverance in manifesting visions has been proven to many people as nothing short of miraculous.

Born and raised in Switzerland, Kutira traveled for many years internationally. For many years he studied with spiritual masters in the East and West and ultimately settled in Maui in 1985 where she founded the Kahua Hawaiian Institute.

Kutira is an Embodied Spirituality teacher, body-mind psychotherapist, author of “The Lightness of Body and Being,” musician, social entrepreneur,  and mentor to many young students far and near. Her passion in design led her to create sacred temples and her artwork is widely appreciated.
She is also known for her diplomatic skills to gracefully connect people internationally to support a vision of living in kindness and harmony while sharing precious skills with a larger community of like-minded people.

Kutira has won several awards for her pioneering work in environmental sustainability.      

Kutira is an entertaining speaker and presenter, as well as an accomplished teacher and seminar leader. Her guided meditations and self-help tools are widely used and loved by the alternative healing movement. She enjoys sharing her expertise with entrepreneurs, the corporate world, non-profit organizations and people committed to making a difference in the world.

    Kutira is well known as a ‘Master of Ritual’, creating sacred space for celebratory events, and life passages. Studying with various teachers and Shamans in East and West since her early 20thies, she  developed a deep understanding of our interconnectedness to Oneness Consciousness.

There is a certain “specialness” when she officiates weddings, land blessings, rituals, concerts or other events. She has a natural talent for bringing a mature love into a ceremony that everybody can relax in.

She has been a student of Kumuhula Auli’i Mitchell, learning ancient Hawaiian music, chants, dance, and arts   

    Kutira worked with Dr. John Lilly, world-renowned scientist and dolphin researcher, from 1988 to 2001, where they created the program “A Dolphin and Whale Adventures in Consciousness”. As an Oceanic Tantra teacher, she connected the natural undulatory movements of dolphins and whales with conscious breathing and explored these embodied practices when swimming with these magical marine animals. She has had many profound experiences swimming with dolphins and whales around the world. With her husband Raphael, she has created several volumes of music inspired by dolphins and whales: among them the albums “The Calling” and “Angels of the Deep”, which Dr.John Lilly called the “cetacean nation anthem”.

    As a nurturer of the earth, Kutira is an “environmental spiritual activist.”  As a founding member of Bamboo Technology she was instrumental in 1998 to gain State approval for bamboo to be used as an alternative building supply. Kutira’s vision embraced bamboo as the sustainable lumber of the future and in 2013, she became the recipient of the Bamboo Pioneer Award. She is passionately involved in supporting green building and the expansion of sustainability in America and Asia.

     In the past 20 years, her passion focused on empowering women and organizations that support ecological, sustainable, and spiritual education. Her deep karmic relationship with the country of Bhutan and its people allows her to lead a yearly retreat into the magical land of the dragon. She serves on the advisory board of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation under the Patronage and initiative of Her Majesty the Queen Mother, Tshering Yangdoen Wangchuck.

    Kutira is a founder and continuing board member of Food Security Hawaii. She has been a mentor to many students and teachers, and now dedicates a large part of her time to create food security and total self-sufficiency for the islands of Hawaii, creating a global blueprint for a sustainable future and ecotourism. In 2019, she created an innovative Agroforestry garden which continues to provide a bounty of organic native staple foods and shares teachings about permaculture and tropical farming to support grower education. 

     Drawing from her rich Hawaiian training Kutira specializes in weddings, land blessings and other ceremonies. With over 30 years of experience she is licensed by the State of Hawaii and is sure to provide a magical experience channeling years of devotion into each ceremony. She has a natural talent for bringing mature love into a ceremony while providing an engaging experience for all.

Kutira and her husband of 30 years are passionate about the ever-growing vision of the Maui Eco Retreat. Raphael creating and teaching music, Kutira creating beauty in every moment, her vision for community fuels her unwavering passion to share this abundant land and knowledge with the world. Come join her in one of her Sacred Journeys to Bali, Bhutan, Nepal or book a private retreat with Kutira in Maui.

Raphael F. Sharpe

When Raphael walks into a room, he exudes a sense of richness and authenticity.
Raphael has been called a creative genius and his music has powerfully influenced the body-mind healing movement. He weaves a universal sonic energetic resonance that takes the listener into their heart and far beyond to pure-source-energy. As a boundary breaker Raphael composes from a space of deep meditation and silence.
Having had his first near-death experience at the age of 5, it is no accident that his most famous album is “Music to Disappear In” with hundreds of letters sharing with him saying: “the last thing my mother, (brother, grandfather, etc.) heard was your album over and over.  His motto is “The sole purpose of music is none other than the glorification of God and the nourishment of souls”.
Coming from a lineage of an honored psychic mother and a ragtime piano player father, he began composing classical concertos at the age of 13. Brought up by nuns and an American Indian healer called Chief Bushy Head, he went on to study at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he was soon performing professionally in dance companies, churches and symphony orchestras ~ as a choir director for Handel’s Messiah, as a rock ‘n roll band leader, a concert pianist, a ‘gypsy’ violinist, a juju drummer for an African dance company, among many other musical venues. Directing his church choir for many years and accompany  musically the service was a highlight for Raphael and many church visitors. Truly a communion with the Divine.

From 1972 to 1984 Raphael was a leading part of the American New Age movement, creating new music with alternative healers and shamans such as Fritz Pearls, Dr. John Lily, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Gabriel Roth, Marianne Williamson, Gary Zukav, and the list goes on. With 50 years of these experiences, he has been at the cutting edge of exploring the art of music healing and how music and sound affect the chemicals and immune system of the human body.

Raphael is also a world-renowned pioneer of new age music and has performed at hundreds of workshops and Shamanic events. He has a talent for intuitively downloading original music that adds an essential magic to any occasion. His forte is, his ability  to translate traditional indigenous music into a universal vibrating form. (Hawaiian, Ayahuasca/South American, Tibetan, Bhutanese and others)