It's a good way of shaking off the day. Sheehan has written a book called Playing Dead: How Meditation Brought Me Back to Life. Many will know the actor from his breakout role as the lovable motormouth Nathan in E4's supernatural teen show Misfits, and as gang member Darren in the gritty Irish TV crime drama Love/Hate.
I don't want to slag other meditation writing off, but a lot of it neglects to include moments of silliness, he says. The way I try to square it is by writing a book that's a good laugh.
Playing Dead is part memoir, part manifesto. It includes popular science, poetry, breathing exercises, and forays into bizarre humour (at one point he offers a tongue-in-cheek ode to his central heating). Sheehan is self-aware enough to realise that going on about the path to enlightenment may sound pretentious, or reduce your identity to cliche.
On screen, Sheehan is witty and electric, with an impish sense of humour and a flamboyant physicality. That energy seems at odds with the earnest self-seriousness one associates with wellness culture.
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