Silent Think Time: How to Bring Virtues Back into Our Home, Schools, Counseling and Work

Writer, poet, artist and teacher Karen Zalubowski Stryker announced today the release Silent Think Time, How to Bring Virtues Back into Our Home, Schools, Counseling and Work, published by Outskirts Press. Stryker manual contains daily simple breathing, mental and physical exercises to help readers master a positive mindset that leads from restlessness to peace, desire to contentment and ignorance to wisdom. Her goal is for everyone to do a daily body mental introspective tune-up, to re-center and self-heal ourselves; we give tune-ups to our cars ‘why not to our body, mind, and soul?’

We can improve the quality of ourselves by doing STT 15+ minutes twice per day and by creating STT rooms in all areas of our daily lives: home, work, school, military, nursing homes, hospitals, and prisons, airports/bus/train terminals, in order to rebalance or re-center ourselves. Drawing on Eastern thought and diverse other practices, Stryker uses positive thinking, scientific body energy studies, breathing and physical exercise, Chi, chakras and quantum physics to orchestrate a period of daily “silent think time” that readers can use to survive the constant strobe lights and noisy chatter that surrounds us in our daily lives.

We live in a world where technology has advanced far faster than our understanding of ourselves, and the result is a greedy, violent world with few paths to individual peace and understanding.  Too many people function in a chronically numb, sleep deprived and ill fed state that keeps them perpetually off balance as individuals.

STT is a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) technique, a form of meditation, which involves focusing one’s attention on sensations, feelings and state of mind. This activity has been shown to reduce harmful stress hormones. In one study, researchers took MRI scans of the brains of people who had participated in meditation for eight weeks. The density of the gray matter in the hippocampus increased significantly compared with the control group.

Practicing Stryker’s silent think time techniques and refreshing oneself daily with “Will I Do This Today?”, “What-If & Why?” questions, the poems, sayings and affirmations, she has included in her guide will help bring readers back into balance and more able to practice the self-discipline and self-control needed in a scattered “emotional-firefly”, “me-only” world such as ours. By doing STT one can take control of their own body, mind and spirit healing, and will fuel a loving sensitivity toward others, secure composure, clear thinking, and will aid in reestablishing our intuitive self.

STT also talks about Schuman’s resonance: our changing earths vibrational frequency, sound and music and self-healing, “entraining” music vs higher IQ music, STT and our brain, “I will-I won’t-I want”, alcoholic brain studies,  “living in time”, reflective listening, and positive vs negative words in our vocabulary.

All teachers, counselors, parents, coaches, business human resource departments, military veterans, prisons, hospitals and nursing homes can benefit from this book. For all of these groups, doing positive "SILENT THINK TIME" (STT) once or twice daily  will raise morals, virtues, and brain functioning, and will help everyone who participates to develop the full potential of human consciousness.

Ideally, we should set up STT rooms in all areas of our everyday lives: home, work, school, nursing homes, hospitals, prisons, airports, and bus or train terminals. In STT rooms, everyone in your home, school or these other places can re-center and balance their energies several times daily. You can help change the quality of our educational system, your family and work attitudes by doing your part to have STT rooms and lessons implemented!

Do you want your students, family, clients, employees or inmates to behave in ways that are positively centered, emotionally balanced, cheerful, kind, respectful, polite, self-controlled, patient, understanding, wise and peaceful? Have you asked yourself daily, “Who am I in relation to the rest of the world?” and “What was my most precious moment today?” If not, then you can benefit from this book.

The ideas presented here can also improve creativity and academic performance; reduce the effects of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other learning disorders; and help people deal with anxiety, depression and substance abuse. Practicing STT can help alleviate post-traumatic stress disorder in children or adults who have experienced any type of violent acts.

By focusing and concentrating during SILENT THINK TIME lessons, your mind will fuel a loving sensitivity that will result in wanting to know others better and creating a happy environment, making ideas flow better throughout the day. The lessons will stimulate our willpower and reestablish our intuitive selves, keeping us motivated toward the correct pathways in life.

Technology has advanced thousands of times faster than our true understanding of ourselves and our ability to be self-controlled and self-disciplined. Materialistic items have taken precedence over pursuing our true needs for love, balance and becoming respectful,  cooperative individuals.

Because we are chronically sleep-deprived and ill-fed, with unbalanced energies, we often make wrong choices in life. If we developed a better understanding of ourselves and our true desires, we wouldn't make incorrect choices in vocation, investments, life companions, etc.

Sensory stress overload changes our hormones, immune system, brain and entire bodily functions; therefore, we need to slow our stressed activities.

As STT students or as meditators learn to silence the chatter of their minds, reducing the extraneous mental and emotional "noise clutter," we notice they become easier persons to be around because they seem steady, imperturbable and more balanced than others.

STT AND CHILDREN

Children pay a big price for living in this world of sensory and informational overload. The Internet, videos, iPods, TV and all the rest have turned our young emotionally numb. They create an amplified artificial support crutch, enabling youngsters to hide their pain, rather than communicating to those in their true support system: the families and relatives who love them unconditionally.

Kids' TV cartoons cause children to be in constant strobe light motion, like "emotional fireflies," thus losing their emotional connections, balance, and knowledge of values, compassion, understanding and concentration. Children under the spell of these frantic, quick-changing video images and loud, wild characters are unable to focus calmly and positively on life's really important matters: family and friends.

By applying STT lessons and positive thinking, we can teach our children to refocus and concentrate on their attitudes and behaviors with serene composure, thereby improving their virtues and morals. If schools would incorporate this philosophy and lessons in all grades, they could help children correct their negative behaviors and find greater peace and maturity.

STT AND ADULTS

Bringing back good virtues and morals aids a person in distinguishing between the principles of right and wrong. It means being in excellent conduct or character and being ethical in thoughts, attitudes and behavior, including sexual activity. It involves having sympathy and respect for others, with a mental mindset of courage, discipline and confidence.

STT is the ability to think deeply by adopting a calm, passive attitude – a neutral mind, in which you do not judge yourself or others. That peaceful, blissful attitude is carried into all your daily activities.

Virtuous people have the effective power or force, efficacy, potency and ability to heal or strengthen themselves or others. They have bravery, uprightness, rectitude, good quality and accomplishment, while being excellent in general valor, courage and daring to do what is just with a sense of duty and responsibility to the world. As in Christian theology the three virtues are faith, hope and charity.

A thorough application of STT leads to mastering a balanced mind, free from worries, doubts, and fears of the future, resentment, anger or shame of the past.

Genre: Family and Relationships/Interpersonal Relations; Education: Teaching Methods & Materials/General; Body, Mind and Spirit/Meditation

About the author: Karen Zalubowski Stryker has earned five college degrees, seven teaching endorsements and has been a teacher, systems analyst and business owner. She is a writer, poet, artist and traveler in forty-two countries and she has recently been on the radio talking about Silent Think Time.