The Mindful Sniper

Firstly, I must apologise for my lack of a newsletter last Friday. Owing to work and family commitments, I need to back off to fortnightly newsletters for the time being but I will do my best to get back to weekly when the universe allows it! That said, let's get on with the topic at hand.

Having spent a fair amount of time discussing the concept with military members, veterans, and first responders, I’m convinced that mindfulness is suffering from a significant PR problem (no, not Per Rectum for all the healthcare folk out there, Public Relations!)

The problem I see repeatedly is a failure to recognise the practice of mindfulness as being relevant to military and first responder roles, and potentially even a suspicion that practicing mindfulness might lead to passivity and a softening of competitive edge or the ability to use appropriate force (up to and including lethal force) in those professions that might require to do so.?

Nothing could be further from the truth and in fact the opposite is true.?

Study after study have shown that the practice of mindfulness improves our performance in high-stress, high-consequence environments such as first responder and military roles, both in the acute stress situation on the job, and also the longer-term mental wellbeing of those who practice mindfulness.?

In short, mindfulness is a superpower but most of us are missing the opportunity to develop it.?

In my opinion, what’s required is a reframing of how we view mindfulness to build relevance to those who need it most. Let’s look at an example – stay with me on this one!

I want you to image the following mindfulness activity being done in nature:

Start by sitting or lying very still in a position where you can observe your surroundings, ideally with a decent view out into the distance.?

Next, start to tune into your surroundings, taking particular note of any upward or downward slope of the ground as it moves into the distance. Cast out any unwanted or uninvited thoughts as they arrive and start to become absorbed in your surroundings.?

Scan your surrounds for objects that catch your eye, both natural objects like trees and rocks, but also anything that seems artificial, out of place, or reflective. Allow your eyes to be drawn to any movement as it presents and explore its source. Choose some specific objects in the distance and focus on them intently, one by one, considering in your mind the exact distance between you and those objects.?

From there, focus your attention on any wind that might be present by feeling for the sensation of it moving across your face or other exposed parts of your body, and looking for the movement of leaves in trees and any other mobile structures in your field of view. Allow your attention to focus exclusively on the direction of the wind and its strength. Now pan your eyes from near to far and assess whether the wind is consistent throughout, or whether the wind patterns are different at different distances.?

Now turn your attention inwards, initially focusing on your breath with a deliberate effort to control and slow your breathing, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly, feeling your heartrate slow as you do so.?

Once you have good control of your breathing and you have calmed your heartrate to as low as you can, focus your full attention on the tip of the index finger of your dominant hand. Take one final deep inhalation, exhale half of it, hold the rest, and then keeping the remainder of your body as relaxed and still as you can, begin to bend the index finger of your dominant hand gently and gradually.?

Taken out of context, this activity would seem a bit a woo-woo and irrelevant for most military members or first responders, and I completely understand their dismissal of it.

However, if we then add the context of lying behind a high-powered sniper rifle in a military or law enforcement environment, we begin to see how such a practice is highly relevant to a sniper.?

The mindfulness activity described above outlines some of the exact techniques used by sharpshooters to prepare for a long-range shot that might be the difference between hitting and missing their target, mission success and failure, and potentially even the difference between life and death.?

Widening the lens to include other first response communities, the power of mindfulness is equally important and potentially lifesaving. In outstanding book “Blink”, author Malcom Gladwell tells the story of a firefighter who, through the power of mindfulness, was able to tune into the environment of a burning house and realise things weren’t what they seemed. He proceeded to withdraw his team just prior to what would have been certain disaster. I won’t ruin the story for anyone who hasn’t read the book (and in my opinion it’s a must-read) but it’s a great example of the requirement for mindfulness for anyone who operates in high-consequence environments.?

The best part about mindfulness is that we can all get better at it and it doesn’t cost a cent. Before we get to how we can do that, let’s back up and consider WFT mindfulness is anyway!

WTF is mindfulness anyway?

The term mindfulness gets thrown around regularly these days, but it's worth taking a moment to dig down into what it means, and what it implies from a psychological perspective.?

A quick Google search of the term mindfulness gives us some useful definitions to start wrapping our head around the concept, for example:

“The quality or state of being conscious or aware of something”.

And...

“A mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique”.?

Researchers in the area have concisely added to the list of definitions of mindfulness by describing it as “nonreactive awareness of the present moment experience” [1].?

Have you ever found yourself physically present somewhere but mentally somewhere completely different? Ever been at the park with your kid but your mind is anxiously running an event from work the previous day on loop in your mind and strategising what you’re going to do on Monday to rectify the issue? (or, more commonly, of a cool comeback that you wish you had have said in the moment but didn’t think of it). Ever been at dinner with your loved one but find yourself frustratedly thinking of reasons why your vintage Lamborghini is down on power again and running rough once it warms up? (just me? It was a diaphragm stuck shut in one of the carburettors for anyone interested).

These instances are the opposite of mindfulness and when it boils down to it, mindfulness is about paying attention to the here and now without investing too much emotional energy into the thoughts that pop into your mind.?

Our minds are wonderful tools, but like any tool we need to learn to use them properly to get the best result from them. Mindfulness, as with any other mental activity can be learned but takes dedicated practice. Just like mathematics or learning a new language, no-one is born a natural at mindfulness. Equally, just like math or languages, there are some among us who are innately more inclined to being mindful and possess higher trait or dispositional mindfulness as a function of their genetics, environment, psychology, and cultural factors [1].

Fear not however, even for those with very little trait mindfulness, or indeed for those with mental health conditions on the opposite ends of the mental spectrum to mindfulness including anxiety and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), studies confirm that mindfulness can be improved through deliberate practice [2].

The concept of mindfulness is rooted in ancient contemplative practices but has become a focal point of contemporary psychological research and application. Its integration into Western psychology got a boost in the 1970s through the work of an American scientist by the name of Jon Kabat-Zinn. Kabat-Zinn earned his PhD in molecular biology while being a keen student of Zen Buddhism which led him to integrate the two into his hugely successful science-informed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program [3].

Following the foundational work by Kabat-Zinn in using modern science to demystify the benefits of the ancient practice of mindfulness, there has been an explosion of interest in the area, with countless studies demonstrating the positive effects of mindfulness interventions in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression [4]. Parallel advances in neuroimaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows us to see which areas of a brain are being activated real-time by detecting increased blood flow to those regions, has been instrumental in revealing alterations in brain structures associated attention, self-awareness, and emotional regulation following mindfulness training [5]. These neuroscientific findings have contributed to a deeper understanding of how mindfulness can induce positive changes at a structural level in the brain.?

In the first couple of decades of the 21st century, the scientific research into mindfulness has extended beyond its benefits in helping to treat mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression to its application as a human optimisation tool to help people thrive. Study after study have proven the benefits of mindfulness to extend beyond the clinical setting and into various facets of life, including education, workplaces, and sports, and its relevance to a spectrum of age groups from kids to geriatrics, as well as across a wide spectrum of cultures.?

Not only has mindfulness proved beneficial in psychological areas such as attention, self-awareness, and emotional regulation, owing to the pivotal links between our brains and bodies, but the practice of mindfulness has also been demonstrated to improve a wide range of physical parameters including our blood pressure [6] and even the function of our immune system [7].?

Studies specifically into the role of mindfulness training in military and first responder populations show benefits in both work performance, including reductions in inappropriate use of force and workplace accidents [8], as well as longer term benefits in the reduction of symptoms of anxiety, depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress [9].

For a deeper dive into the exact mechanism of mindfulness on different regions of our brains, check out my previous newsletter titled “Mindfulness and Machine Guns” . For the purposes of this newsletter, the practice of mindfulness helps downregulate our release of chronic stress hormones including cortisol, and also reduce our release of acute stress hormones like adrenaline in fight-or-flight situations. The net result is an ability to think more clearly and perform better in high-stress environments.?

Grounding

Here's a simple “grounding” activity to get you started in building your mindfulness muscles. It’s done by tuning into your senses.?

1. ?Start by tuning into your sense of sight and identify five things in your immediate surroundings. Move your eyes slowly from one to the next and examine the shape and colour of those objects.?

2. ?Next, close your eyes and focus on four things you can hear. Spend a few seconds on each before moving on to the next.?

3. ?From there, tune in to three things you can feel. This might be the feeling of sun or wind on your skin, the pressure of your feet contacting the ground or your backside touching a seat, or the feeling of any clothing against your body. Take note of any tension you have in your muscles and try to relax it, or perhaps anything that’s itchy, while resisting the urge to scratch it.?

4. ?Then, move your attention to your sense of smell and try to pick up two scents in the air.?

5. ?Finally, focus on your sense of taste and explore anything there. It might be the residue of something you recently ate or drank. If there’s nothing there that’s ok as well, the concept is just to focus on your senses exclusively one-by-one.

That’s it! This simple mindfulness activity can be done almost anywhere and need only take a minute or two. Doing it daily is a great way to get started down the mindfulness pathway.?

Other easy ways to get started include really tuning in to the taste and texture of things you’re eating (as opposed to just mindlessly shovelling them into your head as we normally do) and for the brave, give yourself a blast of cold water in the shower and explore how that feels while trying to reserve the inclination to judge it as either a negative or positive feeling. From there, the sky is the limit with mindfulness and the benefits of practicing it regularly are well proven and especially relevant for those operating in high-stress, high-consequence roles. ?

This newsletter is an adaptation of a chapter from a book I'm currently writing, with the working title "The Mindful D**khead". If you're interested in the topic, keep an eye out for that one in the future!

As always, comments and questions are welcome. If you feel this newsletter might resonate with others in your community, please share it widely.?

Until next time, stay safe, and don’t forget to have some fun!

Cheers,

Dr Dan Pronk

References

[1] Zeidan, F, Baumgartner, JN, Coghill, RC, The neural mechanisms of mindfulness-based pain relief: a functional magnetic resonance imaging-based review and primer, Pain Reports, vol. 7, no. 4(4), 2019.

[2] Zylowska, L. et al. (2008). Mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with ADHD: A feasibility study. Journal of Attention Disorders, 11(6), 737-46.?

[3] Kabat-Zinn, J. (2013). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. Bantam.

[4] Khoury, B., Lecomte, T., Fortin, G., Masse, M., Therien, P., Bouchard, V., ... & Hofmann, S. G. (2013). Mindfulness-based therapy: a comprehensive meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 33(6), 763-771

[5] Tang, Y.Y. et al. (2015). The neuroscience of mindfulness meditation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(4), 213-225.?

[6] Solano Lopez, A.L., 2018. Effectiveness of the mindfulness‐based stress reduction program on blood pressure: a systematic review of literature. Worldviews on Evidence‐Based Nursing, 15(5), pp.344-352.

[7] Black, D.S. et al. (2019). Mindfulness meditation and the immune system: A systematic review of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1445(1), 39-57.?

[8] McCraty R, Atkinson M. Resilience Training Program Reduces Physiological and Psychological Stress in Police Officers. Glob Adv Health Med. 2012 Nov;1(5):44-66.

[9] Cohen, M. (2016). Mindfulness-based resilience training for first responders: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Traumatic Stress Disorders & Treatment, 5(2), 1-7.

P.S.?

If you're interested in hearing more from me, you can check out the books below which are available through Amazon and other online book retailers.?