S
‘Learning every day’
JMU student pinpoints gap in Marines’ stress inoculation By Ciara Brennan (‘17)
toward a “homeostatic baseline” after a stressSteven Davic was introduced to alternaful experience. tive methods of regulating stress during During the monthlong experiment, Davic his yearlong stint as a Non-Commissioned noticed the positive effects the exercise had Officer Research Fellow at the United States on the Marines. Those who had completed Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. basic training and joined the unit just weeks Corporals and sergeants are “the people before were “laughing and smiling and not [who] are most intimately connected to losing discipline, not being dissident, but the ground level or front line,” said Davic, being comfortable and being happy. … a former Marine now in his senior year at That’s something I had never seen before.” JMU. As the first sergeant to participate in Davic extended his enlistment another six the program, he was tasked with providing a months so he could stay at the lab and help different perspective on various experimen- Davic (right) with fellow members of the Student Veterans Association during the bring up three more waves of sergeants and tal projects that will impact future Marine annual Memorial Day display on the Quad. corporals. From this experience, he threw Corps operations. The experiments on stress regulation struck a chord with Davic, himself headlong into understanding the science behind breathing prowho had previously witnessed the acute effects of stress on his lower- tocols and helping the Marine Corps implement these alternative stratranking Marines. As a leader, Davic had followed the Marine Corps egies. As a JMU student, Davic is close enough to Washington, D.C., model of “stress inoculation”—intentionally creating an exacting and the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, to maintain the professional environment for new Marines to build up tolerance and become relationships he cultivated in the Corps. prepared for the battlefield. But Davic noticed a troubling shift in his junior Marines’ body lan- Battlefield-ready guage and an uptick in simple mistakes in areas where he knew them “[There is a] famous saying, ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except to be capable. He began to question whether there was a better way to in the light of evolution,’” Davic said. “Bodies, virtually across the expose them to stress without compromising their well-being or ability. entire animal kingdom, developed [the stress] response deep, deep back in time as an all-purpose, general response to any type of shortterm physical crisis. To move you away from it or to move toward it.” ‘A suite of tools’ to combat stress When humans experience crisis, the heart rate increases, blood pressure Davic found it at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory: climbs and a fresh batch of glucose is released into the bloodbreathing protocols. “This isn’t something like lighting candles and incense and stream “to get your body primed and ready for action,” Davic meditating,” he said. “[It’s] a suite of tools that people can use in explained. “But just as stress promotes certain body funcreal time to help regulate—and in most cases, downregulate and tions, it also decreases and inhibits other body functions.” Digestion and reproduction are inhibited with few reduce—their stress response.” To demonstrate the protocols, Marine Corps infantry com- consequences, but so are areas of the brain, like the mander-turned CrossFit gym owner David Herron took the prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational and complex plunge, subjecting himself to an ice bath to artificially induce higher-level thinking—crucial functions for military stress in the body. Then he began box breathing, an exercise devel- personnel and professionals working in high-intensity environments, such as nurses, police officers, firefighters oped by former Navy SEAL Mark Divine. “Imagine there’s a box on your chest,” Davic explained. “If you put and paramedics. As a result, individuals are more likely your finger on your bottom right point of the box, that’s kind of where to act impulsively, aggressively or riskily when stressed. The Marine Corps’ method of stress inoculation lacks you’re going to start at, and you’re going to go clockwise.” Herron’s breathing pattern synced with the sides of the imaginary box: a deep the return to a baseline, he said, without which individuinhale going up the right side of the box, holding his breath across the als “start accumulating that stress and building it up over top, a deep exhale going down the left side and another breath hold across time, and it becomes something more chronic, somethe bottom. Davic suggests 10 to 12 cycles to unwind and downregulate thing more serious—a mental health concern.”
44
M A D ISON
M AG A Z I N E
