By Darcy Infante

They come to express themselves. They come for communion. They come to get high from the music created by a cellist who calls himself "Mystic Pete."

Walking into Fencers in Santa Monica one recent Sunday for an event called "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy," the dancers appear to be the main attraction. People are sprawled out on the floor, some are crawling and others bound across the large, open room in hopping gyrations. Some people dance in groups; others dance alone. Scattered around the room, a few dance as couples. A man with long gray hair, wearing baggy polka-dotted pants and a pirate's shirt looks as if he's practicing Tai Chi. A young, hearty-looking girl in tights and a bright blue leotard with a glittery skirt looks like a sleepwalker or someone in a trance.

The event is part of a growing movement of experimental healing, and those gathered are people who seek alternatives to commercialized medicine. It's as if the dancers are shaking off stress or using movement to work through deep emotions that have been stirred up during the week.  Dancing, drumming, singing and writing workshops are part of a growing cottage industry that uses art as a vehicle for healing, restoration, pain-management, tranquility and well-being.

Cellist, producer and vocalist Peter Ludwig, "Mystic Pete," is one of the artists who is taking his music to a new level in an effort to give people tools to heal themselves. This is where Ludwig does his best work, providing a doorway to another world—one he accesses through his music. Poised behind his cello, Ludwig cuts a space-age figure, wearing modern-looking, goggle-like glasses, which make him look as if he really were a visitor from another world.

Ludwig's compositions use the deep, sustained vibrations of the cello. The music seems to create a vibratory field that people can tap into. Ludwig says his music brings listeners into a meditative Alpha state that quiets the mind. His CD, "Deep Self," is used as background music for meditation, yoga, massage, relaxation and sensual union. Today, the dancers are getting a chance to hear "Deep Self" performed live. The electronic vibrations evoke the same feelings as those stirred by the rumblings of a large group of chanting Tibetan monks.

Ludwig's unconventional music career began when he started playing cello in the third grade. He expanded his repertoire to include vocal work when he was 19 and started chanting while training to be a medium. The chanting melodies stayed in his head long after he lost interest in channeling and became a platform for his hypnotic compositions.

Ludwig is also involved in bodywork

and massage. It was during bodywork that he first felt a special kind of energy flowing from him to the people he was working on. "It's that same kind of energy that flows through my music," he says. "I perceive myself as a healer first and music and creativity is almost like a representation of that." Ludwig believes that other people can feel the energy, too.  "Sometimes people weep, all the time people come up to me and tell me how they were moved."

His special talent evolved through the years. "Something happened that was explosive when I was a teenager," Ludwig says. This explosion of energy was confusing and disorienting. No one could explain what was happening to him and there was no training for his gift. Finding out what to do with the energy took many years and a very circuitous route.

Ludwig, who is 46, found himself married and a father at the age of 20. Because he needed to find some way to provide for his family, he had to work in the world and take on, what he calls, "very mundane activities." When his children were growing up, he worked as a professional chef, a paralegal and legal consultant. Eventually he taught legal training skills in several vocational programs, including at Beverly Hills High School, but his experiences with intense energy resurfaced repeatedly.

"I remember working as a cook at a crepe restaurant in Venice and my energy blowing wide open. All kinds of wild phenomena were happening while I was cooking the crepes. I'm lighting these things [crepes] on fire and carrying them to tables. Glasses started shattering in the restaurant—something was coming off of me that was so intense and crazy. I had one of the bus boys stand in front of me and said 'feel this,' and I just put my hands around him and I felt a surge of energy come out of me and he said, 'Wow, what was that!'"

Ludwig also found spiritual inspiration as a father. "Much of my spiritual awakening happened when I was becoming a dad," he says. During the years that his mystical focus was sidetracked by fatherhood and making money, his music was still developing. The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Mozart and Beethoven were a few of his musical influences.

In 1999, when he had finally made a pile of money, he decided to go back into music as a career. He had already played around Los Angeles when he was younger so he knew what it was like to be the center of attention, but that role didn't feel like his true calling. So instead of using music to simply entertain people, he formed a group called Tonehenge, a band best described as electronic music. With Tonehenge he began using music as a spiritual-healing tool.

"I feel like what I'm supposed to do here—the bigger work—is to use music as a vehicle to take people into deep inner states. ... Use music