Inoculating Against PTSD - Military Meditation

Study suggests meditation may help prevent PTSD By Bryan Bender | Globe Staff December 02, 2012 Kayana Szymczak for the Boston Globe ...

NORTHFIELD, Vt. - It is part of a highly regimented daily routine at Norwich University, the nation's oldest private military academy and a cultivator of battlefield leaders for nearly two centuries.

Dressed in combat fatigues and boots, a platoon of first-year cadets - "Rooks" - are up early in their barracks. On the orders of their instructor, the young men and women take their places. At 0800 sharp, they sit on wooden chairs in a circle and begin - to meditate. The first-of-its-kind training is part of a long-term study to determine whether regular brief periods of silent, peaceful consciousness can improve troops' performance.

Ultimately, researchers hope the transcendental meditation training might be made available across all branches of the military to help inoculate troops against acute post-traumatic stress disorder, which has reached epidemic proportions and is blamed for a record number of suicides in the ranks.

For an institution that demands that incoming cadets exhibit physical and mental toughness, meditation training is a radical approach. The broader military culture had long associated meditation with a leftist, antiwar philosophy. Known by its shorthand, TM was widely introduced to the West by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Hindu leader who once served as the spiritual guru to the Beatles. "I was very skeptical at first," said Norwich president Richard W. Schneider, a retired Coast Guard admiral who is among several university officials who have also been trained in the technique. "I'm not a touchy-feely guy." 'We want to send people to war whole and for them to come back whole.'

But the preliminary results of the study, now in its second year, surprised even its lead researchers. They have been methodically tracking the dozens of participants and several control groups of non-meditating cadets through detailed questionnaires as well as brain wave and eye scans to measure levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. "All those things decreased significantly," said Dr. Carole Bandy, a Norwich psychology professor overseeing the project. "In fact, they decreased very significantly." Positive traits such as critical thinking and mental resilience improved, according to preliminary findings shared with the Globe that Bandy and her team plan to publish next year. The project has garnered high-level attention from the Army.

"Becoming more psychologically fit is just like becoming physically fit. It is better to do it before you are injured," said retired Brigadier General Rhonda Cornum, a surgeon who until recently ran the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness Program and visited Norwich three times to be briefed on the work. "There seems to be no question that meditation is, frankly, good for you. I am very encouraged by the Norwich University study."

Not everyone at Norwich is on board. Top university officials acknowledged that a few people in the university community have privately snickered over how meditation is "not Norwichy," though there has been no formal opposition from the faculty or board of trustees. But Reverend William S. Wick, the university's chaplain, remains concerned that its practice could undercut the school's Judeo-Christian foundation. "Contrary to what is claimed by its advocates and presenters, transcendental meditation is not a neutral discipline but is, rather, philosophically, spiritually, mystically, and religiously based - having Hindu monism and a pantheistic world view as its underlying base," Wick told the Globe in an e-mail.

Some 'jokes about nap time' The participating cadets, however, seem to share a single-minded commitment to the meditation sessions, which for now are voluntary. Each of the six men and three women who attended the first of their twice-daily meditation sessions last week sit silently, focusing thoughts on their mantra, a word or phrase privately assigned to them by their instructor in August. For the next 20 minutes they sit motionless, some with their arms crossed, others with hands resting in their laps. Some can be heard breathing, others cannot. "Ok, let's take a few minutes and then open our eyes. Take your time," David Zobeck, one of two meditation instructors, breaks in.

The approach is one among a variety of meditation techniques that date back thousands of years. The periods of silent reflection are intended to nurture what practitioners call "restful alertness" to improve overall mental health.

Zobeck, an Air Force veteran, works for the David Lynch Foundation, founded in 2005 by the film director to provide TM to adults and children suffering from PTSD. Since 2010, it has donated nearly $1 million to teach the technique to military veterans and their families. The foundation is funding Norwich's program. "It seems like some wacko thing from the Far East but there has been so much research done, including on veterans suffering from PTSD who say they have got their life back again," Lynch, who has been meditating for four decades, said in an interview. "It's not a hippie thing, it's a human being thing." "It's like putting on a flak jacket against stress," he added. "The things that used to almost kill you in the stress department have less power. For a soldier this is money in the bank."

The meditating cadets at Norwich agree. "At first it's silly," said Chandler Camlin, 18, a first-year cadet from Stamford, Conn. "But at the end of that 20 minutes, you feel refreshed." "It feels like a whole tremendous thing off your chest," said Dayne Valencia, 19, of Houston. "You feel so much lighter - like you told the truth after holding back for a long time." Before she arrived at Norwich, said Hana Kita, 18, of Titusville, N.J., "I had less activities and I was more tired. I feel less stressed now than I did back home."

Yet the meditating cadets have also faced ridicule from fellow Rooks. "There are a lot of jokes about nap time," said Anthony Russo, 18, of Rockland. But much of the razzing has dissipated since the group recently outperformed the 17 other Rook platoons in the so-called "culminating event," a grueling competition requiring tests of mental and physical resilience. Said Russo: "That pretty much speaks for itself."

More senior cadets who have participated in the study bring a unique perspective. A few of them also serve in the National Guard or Reserves and have already been to combat. Against the din of upperclassmen berating three Rooks running to class, Shea Burke, a 21-year-old junior who returned in February from a seven-month tour in Afghanistan, described his reaction when he learned about the study in the fall: "Are you serious?" But the Marine Reserve lance corporal volunteered to participate. He now believes it has helped him rejoin campus life after a stressful deployment. "You are still twisted and trying to come out of it," he said, wrapping the fingers of both hands together and turning his hands back and forth. "It re-centers yourself." The native of Amherst, N.H., said he could have used it in Afghanistan and knows of other troops who need it now that they are back. "Too many buddies are turning to substances," he said of those who are relying on drugs and alcohol to relieve tension.

Senior Sam Lieber, 21, who was taught TM last year, said he meditated while he was completing reserve officer training last summer aboard the destroyer USS Chafee in the Pacific Ocean. "I still do it regularly when I need to recharge," the Hampton, N.H., native said.

John Dulmage, a Norwich researcher who served in 1991 Persian Gulf War, said he wishes he had been exposed to the technique much earlier. "They never really helped us with our mental health," said Dulmage, 67, a 23-year Marine Corps veteran from Barnard, Vt., who is a trained nurse and the study's chief data cruncher. "We want to send people to war whole and for them to come back whole." He said his recent exposure to TM has helped him cope with the loss of his wife to a debilitating disease. "It sorts stuff out for me," he said.

Among the research project's most influential boosters is retired Army chief of staff General Gordon R. Sullivan, a Norwich graduate and Boston native who is now chairman of Norwich's board of trustees. "It is a way to get out in front and expose them, in a prophylactic way, to help them handle stress before the fact," said Sullivan, who runs the influential Association of the United States Army in Washington. "Whatever skepticism I may have had was dampened."

Later in the training day last week, some cadets got a small taste of what might lie ahead after they receive their commissions as officers in the Army, Navy, or Marine Corps. After a drill on the football field, some gather in a corner of the field house for a role-playing exercise designed to test their critical-thinking skills. "You have two soldiers wounded," the instructor tells them. "One shot in the head, no pulse. Another soldier is shot in the chest." Consulting their handouts, the cadets have to make some quick decisions. "We have spent nearly 200 years preparing them physically to be military leaders," said Schneider. "What we have never spent any time doing is making them emotionally prepared for battle. We are waiting until the end of the fight. Why not give it to them before they get into the fight?" Schneider acknowledged that it is "going to take years to track these guys to see how they do." But he doesn't want to wait that long. "My plan is to make it available to anyone who wants it," he said. "I'm not yet to the point of requiring it [but] if this works I will be shouting from the rooftops."

Mike Bond - Saving Paradise

AMERICA’S TRAGIC WIND by Mike Bond

They tower over the wilderness like monstrous War of the Worlds steel insects, half the height of the World Trade Center and equally as visible. Miles and miles and miles of them, till the wilderness becomes industrial, and America’s lovely landscapes are all gone.

They kill birds and bats by the millions, far more than DDT ever did. Their developers laughingly call them “bird Cuisinarts” because they chop whole migrating flocks into piles of feathers and bloody bones.

They destroy communities and outdoor recreation, sicken families and drive them from their homes. They steal people’s money by ruining property values, set neighbors at each other’s throats, terrify wildlife and livestock, cause enormous erosion on hills and mountains, fill spawning grounds with sediment, despoil the beauty of the landscape for miles, and kill tourism.

Yet they are enthusiastically supported by the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups, and by the Obama administration. What are these insanely hideous things? They are called wind “farms”, but they produce no crop except misery, debt and destitution.

Sold to us as “green” and “renewable”, they are neither. These huge multi-billion monstrosities do not lower greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use because wind is so erratic that fossil fuel plants must run full-time to back them up and keep a “fixed” unvarying feed of power into the grid, to keep the grid from getting cooked or causing brownouts. In hundreds of studies across the world, not a single wind project has shown significant environmental value nor lowered greenhouse gases. In some cases they have been shown to increase CO2 generation because the backup plants have to work overtime.

But wind projects are a major cash cow for oil and energy companies that prey on the billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded subsidies provided by the Obama administration, the administration’s “payback” to the energy companies which helped fund the most recent campaign. Scores of other Democrats and some Republicans have voted to do the same.

British Petroleum, those fine folks who polluted the Gulf of Mexico, owns many wind projects and uses the tax credits to avoid reducing pollution at its refineries. Other U.S. wind companies are run by leftover Enron executives who haven’t yet done jail time, or by partners of the Italian Mafia. But they give tons of money to our politicians, who vote them more and more. These billions of dollars of subsidies are added to the 1.3 Trillion Dollars added annually to the national debt, which is now nearing 20 Trillion Dollars and can probably never be repaid.

Hundreds of communities from Maine to Hawaii have erected laws and moratoriums against industrial wind projects, but with our federal government’s backing, wind projects can override total public opposition, and continue their destruction of our wild landscapes and rural areas.

The Sierra Club, recently caught with its hand in the cookie jar taking $26 million from the natural gas industry in return for not criticizing fracking, is now pushing industrial wind power all over the country. Even though they too know wind “farms” don’t lower greenhouse gases or fossil fuel use. But who knows how many contributions they are getting from the wind

As industrial wind developer and oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens once said, “the only thing green about wind power is the money it puts in my pocket.” Do we need to keep them. The answer to the electricity part of America’s greenhouse gas problem is rooftop solar. PV panels are becoming so inexpensive that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) says they’ll soon be cheaper than coal or gas power. And they work as well in cold climates as

As I said in my latest book, SAVING PARADISE, our government is sadly becoming “the enemy of the people”. So it’s time to take our government back. And to get rid of industrial wind power before it devastates the last of our wild places.

Best-selling novelist, environmental activist and war and human rights journalist, Mike Bond can be reached at www.MikeBondBooks.com.

WHO’S REALLY IN CHARGE? by Christine Horner

All human activity is predicated on what we believe about God. Even in the most remote regions on Earth, indigenous cultures alike retell fantastic stories of something much larger than themselves woven into the tapestry of their lives. Our thoughts, whether consciously or not, loosely formulate around the essence of this mysterious force we cannot see, but have been told exists.

With the popularity of The Bible series on the History channel and increasing interest by the media in general, it seems now is the appropriate time to re-open the dialog, “What is God?” If this seems ridiculous to you, then stop and look at the ridiculousness of human behavior in the 21st century. Though technology has surged forward exponentially in the last century, it seems the same struggle and strife found in the Bible and throughout recorded human history exists at similar levels today. So what’s going on? Either the faithful following the Law of Love do so only when it’s convenient, or perhaps there’s something more.

 

CAN WE REALLY SEPARATE CHURCH AND STATE?

Consider that all you know about God has been passed down to you via historical documents and culture and conditioning. As a child, you may have been instructed to obey a condemnatory God, existing beyond our reach at the apex of the heap that metes out reward and punishment based on your blind obedience. These beliefs have allowed mankind to replicate a hierarchal, power-over structure rooted in exclusivity. But is there an apex?

The belief in a separate God is the co-conspirator to our social, economical and political structures. Rather than recognizing our neighbor or neighboring country as a necessary component to our own well-being, individuals, collective groups and nations play economic and literal hitman and we seek to compete with our neighbor for the abundance our home planet abundantly and freely provides. Over three billion people are left in poverty and despair with band-aid relief, lacking adequate food, clean water, shelter, healthcare and education—all in the name of Democracy, Capitalism, and even God.

When you walk into a forest or eco-system, who is in charge? When we contemplate God, all the Omni- words come in to play. Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent… Does God as Creator direct Creation from a disconnected Heaven or is Creation imbued with the same qualities as the Creator so that the acorn grows into a tree under its own power? Or birds journey migratory patterns utilizing their own internal guidance systems—what we call instinct.

By self-definition, Creation is infinite possibility or more accurately infinite expression. By that same self-definition, Creation exists in perpetuity. Its own power source, Creation produces more of itself, the third dimension as part to the whole.

Breaking it down further, third dimensional existence is subject to the Law of Conservation which states that the sum of all energy is constant; energy neither created or destroyed, merely changing form. When life “dies,” its form seems to disappear into formlessness for a time (death), recycling into different form as it re-couples with the rest of Creation. This cyclical pattern is referred to as the Circle of Life. When this is truly understood in its entirety, you see that Creation is form and formlessness—a paradox just coming to light in human consciousness.

A ROSE IS A ROSE

As Creation is self-sustaining as a whole, each part, or fractal is also self-sustaining in the role it fulfills. A rose is a rose; the Serengeti, the Serengeti; the Milky Way galaxy is the Milky Way galaxy. The caveat being that each fractal would necessarily exist in mutually-beneficial, self-similar relationship with other fractals. Thus, once again it is seen there is no separation. Think of the Universe as a giant quilt. It would appear to be random when comparing arbitrary sections, but viewed in its entirety it is a single blanket, as if homogenous in nature. Where is the apex?

What if the world has got it wrong and the Creator is not separate from us, but IS us, as part of the totality of Creation? If humans wish to continue acting out the story of separation, taking a predatory position at the apex of the heap here on Earth, we will continue to harm each other and our home planet. Any human construct requiring blind obedience with no room for inquiry is itself blind, ensuring its own, and our own, demise with its built-in self-destruct mechanism.

Are you ready to deconstruct everything you’ve been told about God by your culture by going within under your own power and try again? If you truly believe we are all one, the first thing that will become abundantly clear is that peace first begins with you, not your neighbor. If peace begins with you and there are nearly seven billion “you(s)” on the planet, who is in charge?

Are you smiling yet?

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Dedicated to the advancement of human consciousness, Christine Horner is the founder In the Garden Publishing and is the author of the recently published “What Is God? Rolling Back the Veil.” Her website is www.ChristineHorner.com. This article may be reprinted in its entirety with full attribution.

Christine Horner - What is God

Mike Finton - Saviors Guardian