Below is an extract from an essay about Einstein's question: Is the Universe a friendly place? 
I thought what is said here links directly to one of the benefits of breastfeeding and the close contact that results between mother and child...

The full essay can be found on http://www.dimaggio.org/Science+Humanity/Is%20the%20Universe%20friendly.htm  


            "The choice to believe in a friendly or unfriendly universe undoubtedly begins in our early years. It may well be that people who are preternaturally content, seemingly at peace with themselves and the world, were introduced to "a friendly universe" through proper nurturing as infants. Their early experiences became the foundation for their psychic life. The results of less desirable childhood beginnings are also obvious. If a child suffers a traumatic birth, and/or their parents abuse their natural trust, that individual may grow up extrapolating their experience to the whole of existence, always suspecting the worst and failing to trust in others.

            Rev. Gerard Pantin is the founder of Service Volunteered for All (SERVOL) in Trinidad and Tobago. In a speech he gave in 2000, he noted how the Yequana Indians of Brazil make sure that their babies are in physical contact with the skin of another human being 24 hours a day for the first two years. "These children grow up without that emptiness that we modern people spend our lives trying to heal or cope with. A lot of our modern preoccupation with 'feeling good' through sex and drugs dates back to the fact that the way in which we were brought up didn't give us the opportunity of feeling good about our infant bodies."

            Citing Einstein's famous line, Pantin adds that "Yequana children, because of close bodily contact, not only see the universe as friendly but feel it to be loving." Beginning with a bodily, visceral sense of an all-embracing love, the Yequena don't intellectualize over whether the universe is friendly or not; they carry within themselves the felt conviction that they are loved beings."

            Penny Reimers
            IBCLC, M.Tech (Nursing)
            South Africa
           

     

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