What you believe is the most important factor in raising happy, healthy children?

Today’s world is very interesting in regard to what we find makes a successful human. We judge our success by material possessions, which is understandable in a world based on Newtonian physics that says “matter is primary.” And we measure how successful we are by how many toys we end up having, how much we own — this gives us our status in a hierarchy. Well, the problem with this is that this not really where health and happiness come from. Health and happiness come from harmony within the body. So you might ask, what would that represent? And I say love. You say, well that’s a nice emotional word and all that. But, actually love becomes physiologic. The sensation of love releases all the chemicals that provide for the growth and maintenance and health of the body. So the matter of being in love keeps us in a chemical environment that supports our vitality and our growth. Love becomes biochemistry. And the biochemistry of love is the most health-promoting, growth-promoting chemistry that you can have.

There are two ways to transmit love to a child, both of them occurring at the same time, physical and energetic. The physical love involves the touching and the holding, which is the physical reassurance to a child that he’s safe and will be taken care and there’s no need to fear the world. But love is also an energy, a harmony. When somebody is in love, you can be around them and feel an energy that’s quite different than the energy of someone who’s living in fear. And so the child is not only picking up the physical tactile expression of love, but the child picks up the energy. It’s like beautiful harmonic music, compared to fear, which is more discordant, more severe and striking. A child is reading love on two levels, the physical level and the energetic emotional level. And parents really should be feeding both of these because this is the love that makes a healthy biology.