A couple of weeks ago, I was in San Antonio to do resilience training with Army hospital professionals. My job was to demonstrate why guided imagery audios were an effective, portable, user-friendly, idiot-proof tool for managing stress and preventing burnout for health providers, wounded warriors and veterans alike.
It was an impressive group of health care professionals we were training. Some had backgrounds straight out of health and mental health, while others came from the combat side -- former special ops, rangers, snipers, bomb dismantlers and so on. Some straddled both worlds. They came from as far away as Korea and Germany, and as close by as Fort Sam Houston, and every place in between. They'd seen a lot of seriously nasty stuff.
I picked their excellent brains during breaks. I wanted to know what they thought about helping active troops learn self-calming and relaxation skills.
Months ago we'd begun sending thousands of guided imagery audios for stress and insomnia to our service people in Iraq and Afghanistan, pre-loaded onto these durable, portable little MP3 players called Playaways that the soldiers really like. The hope was that by teaching them to self-regulate their mood and biochemistry, they'd be less prone to acquiring posttraumatic stress; as well as gain new skills for dealing with depression, grief, guilt, self-doubt, irritation, boredom, loneliness and all the rest.
But over the years, we'd heard objections - that soldiers couldn't afford to relax; that calming them could endanger them and make them more vulnerable to attack. I wanted to know if these experienced professionals thought this was true.
What they told me was, Hell, No.
One man told me it was a myth that soldiers had to stay all worked up and furious at the enemy in order to fight well. He'd been, among other things, a sniper in Iraq, and what he'd needed most was a kind of calm, detached focus -- similar to an athlete's state of flow -- where he was very present and alert, but also very quiet inside, so he could spot any movement that might mean danger to his cohort, and be so calm and detached, that his hands were steady as a rock.
I heard something similar from a former bomb de-fuser -- the critical importance of putting himself in an emotionally detached, calm but hyper-alert and focused state of mind. I'd never thought of dismantling a bomb as being the ultimate kind of meditation, but, of course it is. It sends every other thought clean out of your head, and your attention is focused on a very narrow band of things, excluding all else. That's the definition of meditation.
Come to think of it, my Transcend Vietnam vet pals at the Louis B. Stokes Cleveland V.A. , who helped me make our current imagery for PTSD, used to say the same thing about reconnaissance and walking point -- crisp, clear, calm focus was the best way to keep yourself and your men intact.
Another reminded me that the great Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Greek martial arts began with training in meditative stillness. He'd studied as many ancient traditions as he could find, because he felt they had much to teach him downrange. I was glad to be reminded that the idea of warriors cultivating a calm, detached, single-pointed focus was old as dirt.
A former medic talked about the importance of troops being able to control and regulate their feelings -- not just so they didn't make mistakes in combat or with civilians, but also with each other. They get into some pretty dumb ruckuses with each other, just out of sheer boredom and irritation. (Sebastian Junger has some great descriptions of this in his new book, War .
We're also becoming increasingly aware that our service people are being over-medicated downrange, mostly with legal drugs. This creates new problems - everything from slower reaction times to possibly an increased vulnerability to suicide later on. It's probably a better idea to teach our troops to adjust their moods or get some sleep by sticking an audio in their ear if it can substitute for a pill in their mouth.
So, all told, I was strongly encouraged to keep getting meditative tools to our troops. I'll keep asking and brain-picking, but this is good for starters. My interest has always been the long-term mental health and emotional resilience of our service people. But if these tools don't endanger them, and instead can make them sharper war fighters, I'm okay with that. If they've got to be in harm's way, let them be as strong and as safe as possible.
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Keep on keepin' on Belleruth! Please continue to write on this subject.
It's great for them to watch their physiological measures of stress drop like stones, right there on the screen, in the very first session. Hard to beat, if you've got the equipment!
clearly, all forms of meditation are not equal in their ability to reduce stress, provide relaxation other measurable benefits. nor does research on one practice apply to all others. the various practices engage the mind in different ways and many have different aims. i've been doing TM for decades and know that it's very different from what my mindfulness friends are doing, and they report different results. some practices have not been found to significantly reduce anxiety or high blood pressure -- perhaps because they engage the mind in a way that keeps it busy on the surface instead of taking the mind into deep transcendence. if the military is going to recognize meditation, it will probably be on the basis of solid scientific validation.
here's a video about meditation for vets: http://www.tm.org/videocafe#6ki4c-XkYsM
Thank you Belleruth for the great work you do in supporting integrative and holistic health practices. I have circulated your videos with our soldiers and staff and they have found them very helpful. I hope you won't mind that I am adding an article to support your article about the harm that conventional mental health delivers...perhaps they don;t know any better, but they should at least follow your advice. http://www.newciv.org/mem/persnewslog.php?vid=400&time=1281285693
Much appreciation,
BR
BR
Yeah, Mehta Meditation, for instance. Not sure if the high-test, heart-opening meditations (my personal faves) would work in a combat situation. We're trying to get as much feedback as possible from our soldiers downrange, to try to begin to figure all this out. It's complicated, that's for sure. No one-form-fits-all solutions, I suspect.
I don't know if it is true, but I have read that many more American Vietnam Vets have killed themselves than the almost 60,000 who died during the war. Speaking for myself, I know of many more who have committed suicide than who died in that war. The only thing I know to do is to be supportive and compassionate to those who need it. Sometimes it helps.
Thank you ever so much for that enlightening information.
You know why they reported *soldiers couldn't afford to relax; that calming them could endanger them and make them more vulnerable to attack* to you don't you? For the same reason AMA doesn't require correcting the cause of medical conditions but only the treating the symptoms, there is more money to be earned by treating, prevention in your case, than healing.
at your enemy that is not what meditation is about. That is having better concentration. It is the preliminary practice to meditation proper.
Meditation is development of the mind. So why not explain how meditation help soldier with PTSD problem?
There are so many meditation blogs here in living but emptying the mind is just a start. None of these bloggers go into details how to treat PTSD
If you use just this way to treat PTSD any benefit derived is as short as the time you are sitting down not thinking.
If you are familar with the Buddhist story of Agulimala here's a short take,
Ananda asked the Buddha, " Agulimala had killed so many people won't he face suffering for his deeds."
"He is in the state of hell now in room. The fire of hell is hot."
When Ananda neared the door he could feel the heat.
The hell here is not the opposite of heaven. It refer to the suffering state soldier experiences in PTSD.
There are many causes of PTSD, some are physical so you need medication while some are psychological. Each must be investigated, analysed in order to provide the proper treatment.
The american Indian would go into his death dance before going into a battle he knew he might not come out of. That could be seen as a meditation, and they would have a purification after the battle. That too could help with PTSD. a ceremony to wash away the horror.
Having a religious element is not, necessarily, a bad thing -- the Native American "death dance" was, after all, also a religious ritual.
TM "was?" ...over 300,000 school kids have learned in the past 3 years. TM is going strong, with more and more research studies coming out every year. The NIH just gave another 2 million for scientists to further the body of research supporting TM's effectiveness -- that's $26 million over the past 18 years.
Meditation imho would cause our c0rp0ratist soldiers to leave in droves. I have a lot of respect for the people of the armed forces, just not it's overall c0rp0ratist intent. The armed forces of America are no longer about defence, only economic hegemony. Try to deny it.
However, this does make a lot of sense to veterans dealing with ptsd, and their families.
the VA paid for instruction in TM for some time
not enough follow up was done in funding more studies etc
recently a small study with 10 soldiers [ Dr Sarina Grosswald , maybe Dr N. Rosenthal or Dr stixrud ] found TM relievs PTSD and improves life
it would be good for people concerned about people's mental health to accept TM as the most efffective remedy
studies have shown mindfullness meditation is not better than placebo similaryly psychotherapy and medication are not effective against TRAUMATIC stress
i will be a great day when western prejudice and arrogance against TM ends
Naparstek is obviously enthusiastic about what she is doing but so is the Pope
Anything that works to reduce the suffering of our service people is fine with me..
A study with 10 soldiers isn't statistically stable enough to prove anything - just promising and needing follow up.
Guided imagery got gangbuster results at Duke/Durham VAMC, but one study had only 52 subjects and another 20 - compelling, exciting, but not enough to be unassailable, research-wise. We need at least 100 to nail this. We're working on it.
In the meantime, whatever helps - TM, guided imagery, who cares?
Our emotional reaction to our fear and horror is instinctively registered in our memory as a learning experience primarily for life preservation. Our memories is in the past and become our referrences for our perceptions and decision making. The strong emotions attached to those memories suppose to help us protect our lives often become a hindrance.
A child playing with fire for the first time gets burn. He react emotionally to the pain and this become a learning experience for the rest of his life so as to avoid the same action.
The mind sometimes become oveloaded with such emotions and need to discharge them in dreams and nightmares. If you are interested to know more, then you need to sift to my past comments. I also commented on a similar post in HuffPo on PTSD some time back and advocated meditation as a method of healing.