This book fills a big lacuna in education. It is not enough to talk about love. Lucky are the parents and teachers who now have such lesson plans to teach children and adolescents in an active and fun way to develop their inner resources to become loving and geuninely caring, without overcare. The three basic HeartMath tools of HEART LOCK-IN, FREEZE-FRAME and CUT-THRU and numerous interpersonal skills are taught through the activities. [Please confer my other reviews of Doc Childre's books, starting with Cut-Thru.] I have been recommending this book to hundreds of parents, school-heads and teachers and have heard of very favorable responses. The HeartMath materials will certainly have much to contribute to humankind.

I feel I must begin this review by letting readers know that I do have a close association with HeartMath and Doc Childre in that I co-authored another book, The HeartMath Solution with Doc. With that said I still feel compelled, whether somewhat biased or not, to share my perspectives about Teaching Children to Love.

Doc puts great emphasis on the need to better educate children in the area of mental and emotional self managment. The 80 games and activities he developed for this book do excatly that. The games are intelligently organized, easy to teach children and they are effective.For anyone who works with kids, whether it be a parent, grand parent or child care provider, I can safely say that this is as good a resource as I have seen for helping young people develop the skills they need to navigate these challenging times. It was created from care and it shows.

Howard Martin

All of the Heartmath Institute's information is wonderful. Another Heartmath publication, The Hidden Power of the Heart by Paddison, is one of my favorite books. I first encountered the Heartmath message at a Institute of Noetic Sciences Conference where they were teaching Freeze Frame. The Heartmath books hadn't been selling in the conference bookstore but after the Heartmath presentation, they flew off the shelves. Heartmath has done compelling, peer reviewed research demonstrating the connection between the heart and the mind - physically, emotionally and spiritually. If you can't afford to take one of their seminars, this is the next best way to begin. It will teach you the difference between care and over-care. Fabulous stress buster. Music on the included CD has been proven to have positive physiological benefits -said to boost immune system and DHEA production. If you are interested in the mind-body connection to healing, this book/program is for you. You can find out more about the Heartmath Institute's work on the web.

Sara Paddison gives a winning and very personal testimony to the value of the Heartmath world-view and techniques. If you look through the Table of Contents, you may easily classify the book under "spirituality" with chapters on compassion, surrender, God's creation, deep heart listening, forgiveness, death... The heart of the book can be summarised, I think, by this paragraph. "As you practice loving each person you meet, you will perceive at deeper levels that earth is all one family, a global family living in one back yard. The first step of the mathematical equation for fulfillment, one that anyone can do and understand, is to just love the people. The more people in this stressful world that can build this foundation and take Step 1, the better chance humanity has." (2nd last page) Yet this is not mere pious verbiage. Readers are introduced to the scientific basis, world-view and technology of Heartmath. (Please confer my review of Cut-thru for some background.) I'd recommend this book in particular to people who are under stress, confused or not finding meaning in life. Sara's own experiences may inspire them. My reservations with the book are related to language that is too vague and sweeping. For example, "Einstein's discovery that everything is energy helped launch a whole new science, Quantum Physics, which states that nothing is really separate from anything else, everything is interconnected and interrelated." (p. 77) In reading the crucial chapter on "The Dimensional Shift", I miss more stringent criteria for each of the 5 dimensions. And I still don't know what the author's first two dimensions are. Even though I'm a Catholic priest, I actually feel uncomfortable in Chapter 14's mixing science with faith, using the Big Bang to prove God's creation. There are more recent evidences of an expanding universe. But in terms of science, we cannot rule out an eternal pulsating universe before the Big Bang. Science deals with the realm of knowledge that can be postulated and proved, while faith is in the realm of beliefs, values and meaning. The Genesis story of creation has no implication for how the world developed scientifically. It only aims at shedding light on the meaning of life, of each person in face of evil and suffering. How do you explain light before the creation of the sun on the 4th day? [Aside from a short Introduction by Deborah Rozman, Ph.D. and the author's expanded Preface, the only revisions that I can spot are 4 to 5 pages in Chapter 15 on "Holographic Awareness".]

Sara Paddison gives a moving account of her personal transformation through using HeartMath techniques. She includes summaries of recent scientific research on the heart--how it actually functions, its two-way communication with the brain, and its relationships with other organs. This gives a scientific framework for understanding the emotional, mental and even physical improvements she experienced. I already knew HeartMath techniques worked by the time I read The Hidden Power of the Heart, but Sara gave me insight into why and how they worked and an a fuller sense of their potential. Sara includes descriptions of how to do some HeartMath exercises and refers to other books and the HeartMath website for more. I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking simple, practical and powerful tools for stress relief, emotional and habit pattern management, awakening intuitive intelligence and more.