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‘Learning every day’
‘Learning every day’
JMU student pinpoints gap in Marines’ stress inoculation
By Ciara Brennan (‘17)
Steven Davic was introduced to alternative methods of regulating stress during his yearlong stint as a Non-Commissioned Officer Research Fellow at the United States Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory.
Corporals and sergeants are “the people [who] are most intimately connected to the ground level or front line,” said Davic, a former Marine now in his senior year at JMU. As the first sergeant to participate in the program, he was tasked with providing a different perspective on various experimental projects that will impact future Marine Corps operations.
The experiments on stress regulation struck a chord with Davic, who had previously witnessed the acute effects of stress on his lower-ranking Marines. As a leader, Davic had followed the Marine Corps model of “stress inoculation”—intentionally creating an exacting environment for new Marines to build up tolerance and become prepared for the battlefield.
But Davic noticed a troubling shift in his junior Marines’ body language and an uptick in simple mistakes in areas where he knew them to be capable. He began to question whether there was a better way to expose them to stress without compromising their well-being or ability.
‘A suite of tools’ to combat stress
Davic found it at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory: breathing protocols.
“This isn’t something like lighting candles and incense and meditating,” he said. “[It’s] a suite of tools that people can use in real time to help regulate—and in most cases, downregulate and reduce—their stress response.”
To demonstrate the protocols, Marine Corps infantry commander-turned CrossFit gym owner David Herron took the plunge, subjecting himself to an ice bath to artificially induce stress in the body. Then he began box breathing, an exercise developed by former Navy SEAL Mark Divine.
“Imagine there’s a box on your chest,” Davic explained. “If you put your finger on your bottom right point of the box, that’s kind of where 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 inhale going up the right side of the box, holding his breath across the top, a deep exhale going down the left side and another breath hold across the bottom. Davic suggests 10 to 12 cycles to unwind and downregulate toward a “homeostatic baseline” after a stressful experience.
During the monthlong experiment, Davic noticed the positive effects the exercise had on the Marines. Those who had completed basic training and joined the unit just weeks before were “laughing and smiling and not losing discipline, not being dissident, but being comfortable and being happy. … That’s something I had never seen before.”
Davic extended his enlistment another six months so he could stay at the lab and help bring up three more waves of sergeants and corporals. From this experience, he threw himself headlong into understanding the science behind breathing protocols and helping the Marine Corps implement these alternative strategies. As a JMU student, Davic is close enough to Washington, D.C., and the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, to maintain the professional relationships he cultivated in the Corps.
Davic with his fellow Marines at the Marine Warfighting Laboratory
Battlefield-ready
“[There is a] famous saying, ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,’” Davic said. “Bodies, virtually across the entire animal kingdom, developed [the stress] response deep, deep back in time as an all-purpose, general response to any type of short-term physical crisis. To move you away from it or to move toward it.”
When humans experience crisis, the heart rate increases, blood pressure climbs and a fresh batch of glucose is released into the bloodstream “to get your body primed and ready for action,” Davic explained. “But just as stress promotes certain body functions, it also decreases and inhibits other body functions.”
Digestion and reproduction are inhibited with few consequences, but so are areas of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational and complex higher-level thinking—crucial functions for military personnel and professionals working in high-intensity environments, such as nurses, police officers, firefighters and paramedics. As a result, individuals are more likely to act impulsively, aggressively or riskily when stressed.
The Marine Corps’ method of stress inoculation lacks the return to a baseline, he said, without which individuals “start accumulating that stress and building it up over time, and it becomes something more chronic, something more serious—a mental health concern.”
— Steven Davic, JMU senior
By focusing on breathing, the bodily function a person can consciously control, individuals can actually affect the unconscious aspects of stress response, such as higher-level thinking, he said.
The “psychological sigh” is a breathing exercise consisting of two inhales through the nose—the first one long and deep, the second one short—followed by a long exhale through the mouth. It is, “as we know now, the quickest way to downregulate your stress,” he said.
Parents of young children might recognize the sequence as the final combination of breaths at the end of a hard cry. Davic said this is no coincidence; it’s the body’s innate way of restoring calm.
Box breathing and the psychological sigh are “real-time solutions that, say, a firefighter, Marine overseas or frontline nurse in a COVID-19 hospital ... can apply to their day tomorrow,” Davic said.
A bold plan
A Newman Civic Fellow and Hinshaw-Warren Hillcrest Scholar at JMU, Davic likes that Madison isn’t a “cookie-cutter degree factory” but “a university where they really support, cultivate and encourage you to have your own individual experience and to make it work for yourself.”
After finding a mentor in intelligence analysis professor Timothy Walton, who previously served in the Navy and was a CIA analyst for more than 20 years, Davic chose to triple major in anthropology, psychology and intelligence analysis.
For his proposal to shift Marine Corps stress regulation training to include breathing protocols, Davic is one of seven finalists from Virginia for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the premier graduate fellowship in the U.S. for those pursuing careers as public service leaders.
Davic admits the plan is ambitious, and the process will be long.
Running an ultramarathon in Romania.
First, there are gaps in the science that must be filled, he said. Then, the protocols need to transition through “the Valley of Death,” a phase where highly anticipated prototypes seem to get stuck indefinitely, before they can get out of the lab and into real-life scenarios. They also must be effective when practiced by increasingly larger groups, he said. And finally there is the arduous task of implementing a new policy in the highly organized military system.
If Davic is ultimately chosen to be a Truman Scholar, he will receive $30,000 to pursue a master’s degree in public policy and a doctorate in psychology at Georgetown. If he doesn’t receive the scholarship, his plan won’t change. His personal mantra is “learning every day.”
“Truman makes what I want to do a little bit easier, but it doesn’t change any aspect of it at all,” he said. “In life, you’ve got to pick something to put your attention, your focus and your energy behind, and this is something that I found worthwhile to pursue.”
