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Kinde Nebeker MFA, MATP-EP holds Masters degrees in Graphic Design and in Transpersonal Psychology with a concentration in Ecopsychology. After thirty years of work in the design profession, in the last decade she has trained as a Wilderness Rites of Passage Guide, completing workshops and apprenticeships with The School of Lost Borders, Animas Valley Institute, and Naropa University’s transpersonal psychology department. She is the creator and owner of New Moon Rites of Passage and works with individuals and organizations in many areas of change and transformation, such as leadership, life transitions, grief, and general psycho-spiritual development and wellbeing.

Kinde is committed to cultural renewal through the work of deepening and transforming our relationships to the natural world, to ourselves and each other as together we create the conditions for the shift in consciousness that we must make in order to become a sustainable species on the planet.

Other stuff about me

I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah in the 60’s. I was a classical pianist and artist as a kid and spent a great deal of time outside, climbing trees and making spaces amongst rocks and bushes. I’m the oldest of five siblings. I lived in San Francisco and Berkeley from 1986 to 1992. I have owned a design business since 1990. I am a rock climber and yoga practitioner and world traveler. I have taught design at the University level, been involved in many community organizations, and done public art projects. I have a great partner who is a loving support and amazing listener. I am thrilled at all I’ve been able to learn and do and see so far in my life, and am on the edge of my seat to see what is coming next!! My story is the story of millions of other human beings—perhaps you recognize it? And yet it is also unique:

Over a decade ago — in my early 40’s — I began to feel rumblings of discontent. Archetypally, my life began to dismember itself as I struggled to find my way through increasingly strong and bewildering inner stirrings. I left a marriage to a man I dearly loved and plunged into a several years of darkness, withdrawing in many ways from the world to plunge into my inner landscape and find out who the hell I really was and why I was here.

My First Vision Fast

In the summer of 2007, I did a vision fast as part of a Transpersonal Psychology/Ecopsychology degree. In a safe and sacred community of nine students and two guides, my schoolmates and I experienced a contemporary 9-day wilderness rites of passage trip, centered around a 3-day solo fast in a beautiful red rock canyon in southeastern Utah.

It was a time out-of-time. Over the three days that I spent in my chosen site behind a giant sandstone boulder on the west side slope of the canyon, so much happened. And so little!! I laid inert on the ground, too tired to move. I climbed up to the base of redrock splitter cracks and watched a thunderstorm pass from the safety of a rock overhang. I stood draped only in a blue saraong and declared my own power. I made small cowpie fires when the temperatures suddenly dropped. I smeared markings in charchol on my body at the chakra points and sat in the sun on a giant flat rock and communed with psychadelic-colored lizards (real ones). I sat up all night in a sacred circle of rocks and waited for the moon to rise in the east . . . and eventually, the sun.

Upon returning from our ordeal, (so ecstatic to see each other and take that first glorious sip of miso soup!) our group shared mythical stories of our time out on the land. The guides held us strongly and lovingly, mirroring back to us the profound lessons we had been given.

Since that first fast, I have done three more fasts, the most recent being The Great Ballcourt Initation Fast in March of 2016. With hindsight, I see a pattern these fasts have taken that mirror the hero's journey of my own life. Such magical Mystery!

The Power of Wilderness Rites of Passage

Since that first fast, an inner urge continues in my soul to bring nature-based rites of passage work into the mainstream. The power of this ancient form of knowing one’s self and one’s place in the world remains mysterious, quite beyond my rational mind’s understanding. And each time I fast or guide others, the transformation I experience or witness in others is profound beyond anything I experience within modern culture.

I am called to be a mentor and guide for others who seek deep and authentic connection to themselves, to life, to others, and to this world.

I believe re-awakening to ourselves as an inseparable part of the mysterious spirit of the natural world is the source of living sustainably, of creating the new culture.

Do you feel a call?

If you feel a yearning in yourself to become more deeply connected, I can be a co-creator with you of the change we wish to see in the world—which begins with a real and lasting change in our selves. Please contact me. I'd love to chat!