Michael Patrick Peters created and founded Dance Meditation Technique in 2011. The modality is an electric unchoreographed concentrated movement meditation that has seen over 14,000 participants experience its benefits. With now thousands of hours of teaching, he is the most experienced innovator and facilitator of formless movement as meditation in the Midwest. At one point, Dance Meditation Technique was offering 3-4 hour retreat evenings at yoga studios all across Michigan. Michael also guides apprentices who want to learn his unique modality.
Michael has practiced and studied many spiritual paths since the age of 16 including Tibetan Buddhism, Qi Gong, Zen Buddhism, various Yogic paths, Christianity, Judaism and more. Michael has been a part of the Jewel Heart community in Ann Arbor for over 24 years and has been a student of the Hindu meditation master Mata Amritanandamayi Math for 24 years as well. This intense and in-depth study and practice of the healing arts was done in great part to heal from the profound distress he experienced as a young man who dealt with institutional abuse, a highly dysfunctional family, and the realization of “impermanence,” which occurred for him when his Grandmother died at the age of 18. Due to the healing effects of meditation, yoga, study and critical thinking that was strengthened and aided by critical mentors over the course of years, Michael became a father and entrepreneur of 25 years, building and designing gardens, unique events, apparel, branding development, and innovative business concepts.
Michael is also an artist, musician and poet. His creativity ranges across the board of mediums from painting and song writing to debate and garden design. He is also a board member of the Catatonia Foundation and is active in helping bring awareness and support for individuals and families suffering with acute mental distress.
Michael has robust event curation experience. Before creating DMT, he helped manage Detroit’s longest lived monthly event, Motor City Funk Night, from 2009-2011 and has created and or curated dozens of unique events within the city of Detroit and in southeast Michigan.
He was the only apprentice to gardener Betty Sturley whose gardens have been featured on HGTV and who has had flowers named after her.
Some of his life story can be heard in the podcast interviews he has been a part of which are listed here.
DMT is the culmination of Michael’s life work and effort to find a solution to his own misery. He recognizes that such suffering is nothing but a part of the near universal human reality that we experience profound stress, tension and pain and that there is in fact a productive way to face and work with it and ultimately turn it into profound personal power. Those who come to his class are consistently blown away by its ability to relieve stress, anxiety and depression and help individuals find and feel deep joy, mental quiet and peace again, even if for only a few moments.