The latest in military strategy: Mindfulness

As commander of the coalition forces in Iraq, Major Genereal Walter Piatt juggled ruthless pursuit of enemies and delicate diplomacy with tribal leaders, using a trove of modern weaponry and streams of tech-generated data.

But his best decisions, he said, relied on a tool as ancient as it is powerful. Piatt often began daily operations by breathing deliberately, slackjawed, staring steadily at a palm tree.

Mindfulness — the practice of using breathing techniques, similar to those in meditation, to gain focus and reduce distraction — is inching into the military in the US and those of a handful of other nations.

This winter, Army infantry soldiers at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii began using mindfulness to improve shooting skills — focusing on when to pull the trigger amid chaos to avoid unnecessary civilian harm.

The British Royal Navy has given mindfulness training to officers, and military leaders are rolling it out in the army and Royal Air Force. The New Zealand Defence Force recently adopted the technique, and military forces of the Netherlands are considering the idea, too. This week, Nato plans to hold a two-day symposium in Berlin to discuss the evidence behind the use of mindfulness in military.

A small but growing group of military officials support the techniques to heal trauma-stressed veterans, make command decisions and help soldiers in chaotic battles. “There’s a stereotype this makes you soft. No, it brings you on point,” said Piatt.

The approach, he said, is based on the work of Amishi Jha, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami. She is the senior author of a paper published in ‘Progress in Brain Research’ about the training’s effectiveness among members of a special operations unit.

The paper reported that the troops who went through a monthlong training regimen were better able to discer n key infor mation under chaotic circumstances and experienced increases in working memory function. They also reported making fewer cognitive errors.

The neuroscience of mindfulness involves, in part, strengthening a part of mental capacity known as “working memory” — a shortterm, moment-to-moment catalogue of tasks understood by scientists to effectively hold only a few pieces of information at one time.

Research shows that mindfulness helps soldiers overcome post-traumatic stress disorder. That has been the experience of Britain’s chief evangelist Commander Tim Boughton.

Boughton discovered when he retired from active duty in 2008 that he’d grown withdrawn and angered by the horrors he’d seen: mangled civilian bodies; deaths of 48 compatriots in battle in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Falklands, Northern Ireland.

He now starts and ends his day with five minutes of breathing exercises. He uses it each time he feels anxious. The traumas haven’t disappeared, he said, but they don’t haunt him everyday.