063 What is Relational Neuroscience? The Four E's of Our Identity (2 Minute Explainer)

Ever wondered how your mind, brain-body, and relationships shape your identity? How do experiences become a part of who you are?

This two-minute explainer episode delves into the realm of relational neuroscience, a field that embraces our fundamentally social nature and how it influences our neural and relational connections.

In it Geoff summarizes relational neuroscience into four digestible E's: embodied, embedded, encoded, and extended.

And come study with Cyd and Geoff in this new, innovative Doctor of Ministry (DMIN) in Spiritual Formation and Relational Neuroscience.

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Transcript

Geoff Holsclaw: 0:05

Trauma, abuse, mental health, resilience and moving from surviving to thriving. These are all topics related to relational neuroscience, because it's not just about brain scans and neurons. Relational neuroscience is an integrated field that recognizes that we are fundamentally social creatures who are formed through interactions of our neural connections in our brains and our bodies, as well as the relational connections of all the people that we are connected to. I like to summarize relational neuroscience with the four E's. First one embodied. Who we are is physically embodied. We are not just brains, we have a body. Our identity and our experiences happen to us through our bodies.

Geoff Holsclaw: 0:52

Second, we are embedded. Who we are is relationally embedded with those people that we have relationships with. No person is an island. We are the we that comes before the me, for good or for bad. T hi rd, encoded. All of our embodied and embedded experiences are bits of information that are seeking meaning. They're seeking to understand, and those bits of information and meaning are turned into filters that shape future thoughts and emotions, both consciously and unconsciously. And the fourth E is extended our embodied existence and our embedded experiences are extended out into the world through culture and technology. These four E's of relational neuroscience are mutually related And they're all different ways that we could talk about how we are formed and transformed, and that's why relational neuroscience is so important for talking about spiritual formation.