UM Researcher Helping Soldiers Battle Stress
Amishi Jha, Ph.D. is probably one of the most influential women you never heard of.
She’s everywhere: smiling next to media mogul Arianna Huffington, meeting with the military and Congress in Washington, advising her friend Goldie Hawn, speaking to leaders at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, with the Dalai Lama in India.
At 42, Jha, a neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami, is the ultimate oxymoron — a rock star in the field of contemplative neuroscience. She studies how practices like mindfulness meditation change the structure and function of the brain, increasing attention and working memory while minimizing stress.
Practiced for centuries by Eastern cultures, mindfulness is defined as paying attention in the present moment.
Although she is following in the footsteps of giants in the field, they say Jha is blazing her own trail. Her work is influencing such disparate fields as the military, primary education and business. Jha currently has five active research grants with the U.S. Army, which is trying to help soldiers protect their minds as well as their bodies amid multiple deployments and life-altering injuries.
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Walter E. Piatt and his soldiers had just returned in 2009 from back-to-back deployments to Iraq when he expressed to an army doctor a desire to help prepare soldiers mentally and emotionally. The doctor connected him with Jha, who came to speak to military leaders about her research.
Now commander of the Seventh U.S. Army Joint Multinational Training Command, stationed in Germany, Piatt says within five minutes of listening to Jha’s presentation, she had described challenges soldiers were facing after multiple deployments. “She pretty much described me,” he said in a telephone interview. “It was not the nicest thing to hear, but she was very accurate.
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Locally, Jha is partnering with Valerie York-Zimmerman, president of Mindful Kids Miami (MKM), a non-profit organization she founded with a goal of reaching Miami Dade students. They will conduct a school-year long research study at St. Thomas Episcopal Parish School in Coral Gables, focusing on mindfulness training on teachers and ultimately on their students. They also will work with George Washington Carver Middle School in Coconut Grove and the Academy for International Education, a charter school in Miami Springs.
As part of her research for the Army, Jha says, she wanted to study a civilian environment where employees have a predictable cycle of intense mental stress. She chose accounting, and approached the Coconut Grove accounting firm Kaufman Rossin.
Nearly 200 employees volunteered for the two-week training.
“The typical mindfulness training is 31 hours in eight weeks. That’s a lot of time to ask folks to give us,” Jha says. “We’re systematically trying to reduce that time to see if we can get similar benefits.”
Continue reading about Kaufman, Rossin’s Mindfulness involvement with UM researcher Amishi Jha, Ph.D. at miamiherald.com.
