Photo by Spc. Charles Probst, Operations Group, National Training Center
As described in previous blog posts, mindfulness meditation has swiftly gained popularity as a self-care strategy for improving psychological health. It’s not only a hot media topic, but also an exploding area of new research. This Army post describes a new study about a mindfulness meditation group whose members met in a three-dimensional virtual world, Second Life.
Mindfulness-based meditation and the military are generally two things that one would not associate with one another.
But on Fort Sam Houston, Texas, Dr. Valerie Rice, chief of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Human Research and Engineering Directorate Army Medical Department Field Element in San Antonio, has participated in the Army Study Program since 2012. She has led a study entitled “Evaluating Next Generation Resiliency Training Using the Virtual World of Second Life” for the last four years.