Peter began practicing vipassana at the Insight Meditation Society in 1982 during a two-week meditation retreat led by Ruth Denison and since then has participated in dozens of retreats lasting from one week to three months, with many teachers at IMS and elsewhere. For the last 15 years he has completed self-retreats during the last two weeks of December in the cottage in the back yard of his home. In 1986 he brought his interest in the Dharma to graduate school and practiced mindfulness based cognitive therapy as a psychotherapist until the pandemic forced retirement from private practice early in 2020. He founded the Orlando Insight Meditation Group as a nonprofit corporation in the early 1990’s, teaching courses and leading residential retreats in Florida, and is currently teaching through the Zoom application.
In the 1970’s Peter travelled around the South making and selling jewelry at art festivals, so his approach to the cultivation of mindfulness is influenced by how he created jewelry, combining the esthetics of Right Speech, Right Action and Right Livelihood with the craftmanship required to develop the capacity for insight required to support the process of Awakening. “I am still an artist, but the medium I work with now is my process of self-understanding, creating beauty with the heart and mind, then offering what I am learning to others.”