🧭 What Is Boling Expeditionary Research?
In 2021, while studying at Harvard, Melanie Boling launched Boling Expeditionary Research, a research and consulting organization that blends extreme‐environment fieldwork with neuroscience and behavioral wellness strategies.
The initiative addresses psychopathology in extreme environments, focusing on how environments like high altitude, polar zones, isolation, and simulated Mars analog stations affect brain function and behavior.
🔬 Research Themes & Methodologies
Psychological Field Kits: Designed as tools to mitigate risks such as stress-induced cognitive, emotional, or team breakdowns in extreme settings (e.g., analog space stations or remote expeditions).
Dopamine Control & Neuroplasticity: Research explores whether controlling dopamine responses in extreme environments might support neurogenesis instead of neurodegeneration.
Breathwork & Mindfulness Practices: Techniques like Pranayama and Holotropic Breathwork are integrated to enhance mental resilience, emotional regulation, and autonomic nervous system coordination in high-stress context.
Cognitive Flexibility & Self-efficacy Training: Boling examines mindfulness-based strategies to foster adaptability, self-efficacy, and healthy behavioral patterns under extreme duress.
🌱 Real-World Applications
Field research includes tests of her psychological field kits at Mars analog habitats (e.g., FMARS) and studies in challenging geographies such as the Arctic, Utah, the Amazon, and remote Pacific islands.
Studies include examining Amazonian plant-medicine practices (such as ayahuasca) for treating PTSD, TBI, and military sexual trauma in Indigenous ceremonial settings, often in high-altitude rainforest zones.
Ongoing interests include the mental health effects of climate change, gut–brain axes under environmental stress, and restoration of circadian and hormonal balance in isolation or confinement scenarios.
🧩 Professional Service & Consultations
Boling Expeditionary Research provides holistic wellness consulting services, including breathwork and trauma-informed coaching via virtual or in‑person consultations (e.g. in Tacoma, Washington area).
As a multi-disciplinary practitioner, Boling brings together expertise in psychology, neuroscience, yoga therapy, Reiki, and wilderness medicine, all of which inform her field-based interventions.
Boling Expeditionary Research is a cutting-edge venture blending academic research and applied wellness to support human well-being in some of Earth’s—and potentially Mars’—harshest environments. It emphasizes practical resilience tools, such as tailored field kits, breathwork protocols, and mindfulness techniques, backed by neurobehavioral research.