The Secret to Calm Parenting

This is an excerpt from A Calm Brain, a new book by Gayatri Devi, MD, a neurologist and the director of the New York Memory and Healthy Aging Services.

Calm is a sense of internal composure that lets us function to the best of our abilities. It is the ideal state of the brain, supported by a body completely allied with it, allowing us to harness our cognitive powers while maintaining a balance with our emotions. When you are calm, you are in your zone, unperturbed by distractions or distress.

The brain has complex systems for relaxation and calm to counteract its mechanisms for alertness and anxiety. These body-based visceral systems lie not within our frontal lobes, our rational higher brain, the seat of logic and thinking, but within our core brain, which controls our emotions and impulses, and the vast environmental sensor and receptacle that is our body. Read the full excerpt here.