Meditation center offers immense experience at monthly retreat

Meditation, once associated mostly with Buddhist monks or New Age devotees, has become increasingly popular in America the last 20 years, according to numerous media reports.

Many schools, sports teams and corporate wellness programs use meditation — also called “mindfulness” — to improve focus, productivity and feelings of well-being.

There are numerous studies being done to explore the benefits of meditation in reducing stress and promoting healing.

It’s also seen as a great way to unplug from our busy, hyper-connected world.

Birmingham residents can explore meditation at Birmingham Shambhala Meditation Center, which offers a weekly schedule of classes, special programing and one-hour meditation sessions.

But the center — located in Forest Park for about 15 years — also offers a unique monthly opportunity for a longer, more immersive meditation experience.

The Sunday Unplugged Meditation Retreat — held on the fourth Sunday of the month — is a three-hour session. It will be held again on August 26, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.

The center has offered Sunday Unplugged since 2015, according to Marion Buckley, director of practice and education.

“A good number of us have gone to longer meditation retreats and wanted to offer the opportunity for slightly extended practice times to our community,” she said.

Sunday is a good day for the longer retreat because more people are free.

“It offers a daytime, weekend meditation period for people who have trouble coming to our weeknight meditation sessions,” Buckley said.

Participants do not necessarily have to stay for three hours, according to Buckley.

Sunday Unplugged “is a drop-in situation where people can come and stay as long as they want,” she said.

The sessions include sitting and walking meditation and begin and end with Shambhala chants.

The Shambhala chants are themselves a kind of mindfulness practice, according to Buckley. “You pay attention to the words and to their meaning,” she said.

Our meditation sessions are usually timed with 25 minutes of sitting meditation alternation with 10 minutes of walking meditation.

One reason for the walking meditation is that it “provides an opportunity for movement and activity. ”

Meditation has important benefits, especially given our often stressful lives, according to Buckley.

“People rarely just sit and let their minds rest instead of chasing around after worries, plans and other mental and emotional reflections of daily life,” she said.

“Meditation can help us be more directly engaged in our daily life activities, to relate more genuinely with others and to slow down and temper our knee-jerk reactions in your life,” Buckley said.

The longer Sunday retreats can aid this process.

“When we do sit down to meditate, it takes a while even for experienced meditators to feel the dust settling,” she said.

One-hour sessions help, but “in longer sessions we can feel this effect even more clearly,” Buckley said.

And the Sunday event -- like the other meditation sessions at Shambhala -- are literally unplugged. All cell phones must be turned off.

Sunday Unplugged is held each month barring occasional programming conflicts.

For details, call 532-4077 or go to birmingham.shambhala.org.