Dr Anthony Sharkey : 300 Hour Yoga Teacher Training

We are delighted that Dr Anthony Sharkey is part of our team of instructors at The elbowroom for our Advanced 300 hour Teacher Training course for 2018/19.

Anthony and I met over 10 years ago and we at The elbowroom relish any opportunity to train with this dynamic and talented man.

Practicing genuine self-care without having to take time out for it

The downside of being a busy yoga teacher is that time for self-care can get squeezed out of the schedule. You know you need to stay healthy emotionally, mentally and spiritually for your own sake as well as your family and students, but how can you do this when the demands of life take over?

The Deep Self-care of Meditation & Energy Medicine

The module will have two interwoven elements which you can add to your already existing self-care toolkit. They don’t require you to take any ‘time out’ as they can be practiced moment to moment throughout your day in any place and situation.

Before you start reading – Anthony promises the “teaching will have minimal theory and a maximum of experiential practice“.

Meditation

Meditation is usually thought of as a means of disciplining and controlling the mind which you have to spend hours of time practicing on a meditation cushion. Most seasoned meditators including myself in the past have found that despite years of conscientious practice doing this we have remained essentially untransformed. Sure, during meditation I would feel more calm etc. but as soon as I stood up from formal practice my stressful thoughts and feelings would start up again just as intensely.

What you will learn is a whole approach to meditation which more and more meditation teachers are tuning into and teaching. This approach does not rely on applying a technique or any type of control or discipline and one which doesn’t require you to sit formally if you are not naturally drawn to doing this.

Specifically, you will learn:

1. How to stop practicing meditation as a technique and start practicing it as an attitude so you can practice it all the time no matter what
You’ll learn to shift meditation from trying to control your mind (which will lead to a dead end) to letting go of control. Since most of our psychological makeup is geared towards control of some sort making this shift is what makes meditation such a powerful tool for emotional and spiritual transformation. Trying to control your mind or anything for that matter is innately stressful. When you learn and practice letting go trying to control in the context of meditation you will spontaneously start doing the same thing in your life because it feels so good to do.

2. How to move beyond the meditator
The mediator is the one who is controlling, manipulating and exerting effort and trying to make something happen. Until you leave the meditator aside meditation will be just another chore on your to-do list and it will stop being a relaxing and revitalising process. When you learn to set the meditator aside you’ll then have the knowledge and skill to set any part of you that wants to control, manipulate or that is trying to make things happen aside. This is a truly liberating experience, it doesn’t mean that you will stop wanting things to happen, it just means that there will be much less stress attached to your activities.

3. How to live the way you meditate so that every moment is one of spacious possibility 
When you have a little bit of practice of the above, it becomes a very easy matter to live in this way. When you really let go of control and set aside the one doing the controlling an inner atmosphere develops which is a very spacious and full of possibility. Ultimately it’s a space where you can have a direct experience of the reality of yourself as ‘an infinite being without limitation’. You as an ‘infinite being without limitation’ doesn’t require any effort or discipline to maintain since it is your natural state of being to begin with. Connecting with this level of reality in our everyday life normally eludes us but you can expect to experience it much more consistently and regularly after our time together.

Energy Medicine Tools

Energy Medicine theory and techniques have revolutionised how personal and spiritual development is practiced. The emotional and psychological problems that 20 years ago may have taken hours of meditation and perhaps many hours of therapy to resolve can now be let go of in a few minutes of targeted practice.

Specifically, you will learn:

1. Energy Medicine first-aid tools which work fast to relieve the inevitable emotional pains of life
These are tools you can apply in the moment to help relieve the emotional or psychological pain of anything that might be bothering you. My number one tool at the moment is something called the Havening technique. I use this with my patients who are sometimes in extreme emotional distress and it has a 90% success rate for quickly and permanently helping them find relief. It is also the most popular supplementary technique on my Mindfulness courses. When you learn and practice it for yourself you will be able to teach it to your Yoga students.

2. The five-minute energy medicine routine- when you don’t have the time to sweat it out on the mat
7 Essential Energy Medicine exercises which you can do in 5 minutes and which have been scientifically proven to strengthen your immune system and to keep the subtle energies of your body and mind humming throughout the day no matter how busy you are.

In addition to the above you will learn:

• Specific and clear steps of how to Let go of anything that is bothering you and can be practiced in the moment in any situation – from being caught in traffic to having an argument with someone
• A little bit on Goal setting. If you don’t have a plan for your life someone else does
• The one simple breathing exercise which seems to do the same thing as complicated Pranic breathing practices
• How to create a sacred space for yourself at home and why this isn’t just a nice thing to do but essential if you are serious about self-care
• Explore the liberating effect of practicing Yoga in the same way you practice Meditation – letting to of control and discipline. We’ll do this to music
• How to combine affirmations with Energy Medicine tools so that the affirmations actually work
• One simple practice (which will be your homework) which is 100% guaranteed to improve all your relationships. Seriously!

About Dr Anthony Sharkey

Dr Anthony Sharkey MB Bch BAO DCH qualified from Trinity College Dublin in 1982. Four years after completing his medical training he attended a Buddhist meditation class and had a deep calling to explore this path.

He was ordained as a Buddhist in the late eighties and subsequently lived in a meditation retreat centre for two and a half years, this entailed meditating for a minimum of 5 hours a day as well as organising and leading numerous retreats.

He trained as an Iyengar Yoga teacher around the same time. In the early 90’s he returned to Dublin and helped establish the Dublin Meditation centre. This was a space dedicated to Meditation and was also one of the first dedicated Yoga centres in Ireland.

During the 90’s he introduced over 4,000 people to the skills of meditation and yoga through evening classes and retreats. He also established several residential spiritual communities in the heart of Dublin.

He was the medical doctor and Mindfulness teacher on the first Mindfulness course for people with a medically diagnosed disease in 1996.

Currently, he works for the HSE in community medicine, has a private medical practice specialising in non-drug based treatments of anxiety and depression. He is an artist, dancer, he meditates for at least one hour every day. He teaches Mindfulness courses, and he runs weekends teaching meditation techniques.He is married to the wonderful and beautiful Lisa Markham and they have a baby girl called Bella.

Interested?

For more information contact our dedicated training coordinator, Moya Shields.