The Deep Self-Care of Meditation and Energy Medicine
Dr. Anthony Sharkey’s 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.
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.
Learning
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 every day life normally eludes us but you can expect to experience it much more consistently and regularly after our time together.
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 – two hours every day, he teaches Mindfulness courses, and he runs weekends teaching self-healing Energy Medicine techniques.
He is married to the wonderful and beautiful Lisa Markham and they have a baby girl called Bella.