Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

This episode is cross-posted from Here, Not There, by Colleen Ramser, where she turns the tables and interviews me about the work we do and the upcoming Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. Below are Colleen's show notes.  

What if the gap between what you believe about God (head) and what you feel (heart) has something to do with the way your brain learned to protect you? Geoff Holsclaw explores how attachment theory, relational neuroscience, and theology can deepen our relationship with God and change the way we read Scripture, experience prayer, and understand God’s presence. Together, Colleen and Geoff discuss how attachment patterns can shape faith and relationships—and why knowing that God is loving doesn’t always mean we feel close, safe, or seen. Their conversation offers a thoughtful, hopeful look at moving beyond spiritual clichés toward a more embodied and relational faith.

This episode also highlights the Attaching to God summit this fall, October 13-15 (free!), where you can dive deeper into what it looks like to deepen your relationship with God, self, and others. Colleen will be featured talking about restoring wholeness after spiritual abuse.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

Does security come from the outside? Or is security something we can cultivate from within as we become more and more anchored in God’s unshakable love? 

Geoff Holsclaw talks with therapist and psychologist of religion Dr. Allison Cook about her new book, The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn’t Come Easily. They talk about internal family systems (parts work), and how the soul adapts to disconnection by creating "shadows". Drawing on her own story of believing in God yet feeling a “brick wall,” she connects embodied experiences of love, attachment, and neuroscience to spiritual formation.

Dr. Alison Cook is a therapist, psychologist of religion, bestselling author, and host of the top-ranked The Best of You podcast (and has also published a book by the same title, along with . Widely recognized for her ability to bridge faith and psychology in a way that is both deeply practical and spiritually alive, Dr. Alison has spent over two decades helping people move from feeling disconnected to feeling secure, grounded, and loved. And she is coming out with her new book, The Secure Soul: Finding Inner Strength and Connection When Trust Doesn't Come Easy.
 

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

Mental health resources increasingly focus on the self as the antidote to psychological suffering, offering strategies for prioritizing self-care and self-esteem. Yet as people focus more on the self, their suffering may actually worsen. Clinical psychologist Joshua Knabb argues that when people focus less on the self and more on God, their mental and spiritual health may improve.

Clinical psychologist and California Baptist University professor Dr. Joshua Knabb joins the Attaching to God podcast to talk about his new book, Worship and Awe in Christian Psychology: How Centering God Transforms Mental and Spiritual Health.

In this episode, Dr. Knabb contrasts Buddhist mindfulness with Christianity’s relational telos of communion with the Triune God, talks about learning to relate differently to suffering rather than trying to eliminate it, and connects Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to desert spirituality themes like watchfulness and staying in one’s “cell.”

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

Geoff Holsclaw welcomes Rusty McKie—spiritual director, somatic coach, pastor, author of The Art of Stability, and founder of Steadfast Ministry. 

In this special Father’s Day episode, Geoff and Rusty talk about how seasons of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation shape both midlife discernment and a boy’s transition into manhood. Rusty explains his burden to help fathers and sons navigate adolescence through Man School, a discipleship framework designed to form Jesus-loving men who are whole.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

Geoff continues talking with regular guest David Clayton about how the Desert Fathers and Mothers understood sin as discorder (of all kinds) and how asceticism was a path toward freedom to love God and others. 

They discuss sin not merely as rule-breaking but as patterns that impair clear seeing, free choosing, and loving well. Asceticism is presented as training that frees the heart by reshaping habits, while emphasizing grace, mercy, and the hope to “begin again” each day. They particularly focus on the concept of "watchfulness" and the neuroscience of "paying attention." 

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

In this episode on early Christian monasticism, Geoff and regular guest David Clayton explore how the Desert Fathers and Mothers understood sin as discorder (of all kinds) and how asceticism was a path toward freedom to love God and others. They discuss sin not merely as rule-breaking but as patterns that impair clear seeing, free choosing, and loving well. Asceticism is presented as training that frees the heart by reshaping habits, while emphasizing grace, mercy, and the hope to “begin again” each day.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

What if you have more power over how you experience your life than you think? What if you could learn how to change the patterns that are keeping you stuck? What if there is a life-changing art of self-brain surgery?

Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw interview neurosurgeon, trauma survivor, and author Dr. Lee Warren about the shift from feeling like a helpless “patient” to acting with agency like a “doctor.” Drawing from bereavement after his son’s death and the breakthroughs of functional MRI observations, he shows us how the mind can transform the brain.

Find out more about Dr. Lee Warren here.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

You often hear that we live by the stories we tell about our lives and the lives of others. But how does that actually work? It works through our imaginations, that part of the mind that allows us to see what’s deeper, that ‘something more’ of experience, that reality bigger than the world. 

Dr. Justin Bailey joins the show to talk about how the imagination dwells at the heart of discipleship and spiritual formation, how it helps us go deeper than just believing and behaving, and how we can grow it. 

You can connect more with Dr. Bailey at his website and his Substack. 

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

Host Geoff Holsclaw interviews Dr. Kyle Strobel (Institute for Spiritual Formation, Talbot School of Theology) about his book When God Seems Distant: Surprising Ways God Deepens Our Faith and Draws Us Near. 

Kyle explains “early consolation” as a common season where God gives pleasure and zeal that can mask unformed character, and how this can be followed by “the desert” where these early consolations are removed.  But these seasons are God’s gift to reveal the heart and grow love.

Follow Dr. Strobel on his Substack.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.

During this Easter week, Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw talk about how we walk by faith, and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), but that this isn't just blind faith. They discuss walking by faith, emphasizing that Christian faith is relational trust and attachment rather than merely ideas, and that faith crises often begin with emotional wounds and ruptures in church relationships that later get translated into doctrinal doubt.

They argue resurrection faith is not blind, citing reasons why it is reasonable to believe that Jesus really was raised from the grave. They close by reflecting on trust in everyday relationships, Jesus’ experience of betrayal, Psalm 121, and Aaron's Blessing.

Join 5000 others for the 3rd Annual Attaching to God Summit, focused on Deepening Relationships. 

Register for FREE (and get Swag Bag gifts sent to your email). 

Stay Connected: 

• The FREE Attaching to God Summit is happening (Oct. 13-15).
• Check out our Attaching to God 6-Week Learning Cohort.
• Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
• Support our ministry with a one-time or regular gift.