Neuroplasticity, Performativity, and Clergy Wellness: Neighbor Love as Self-Care [Hardcover]

This book invites readers, particularly clergy members, to rethink their understandings of the human person in light of recent developments in neuroscience. In addition to bringing together religion and neuroscience, it engages narrative theory, exercise physiology, and constructions of wellness to raise crucial questions about human identity and relationality and argue for a model of care that connects self-care and care for/with others. Furthermore, it claims that human beings are whole, intra/inter-relational, dynamic, plastic, and performative agents who have the capacity to story themselves neurophysiologically (in both top-down and bottom-up ways) through their regular practices of wellness.William D. Roozeboom is adjunct professor of practical theology and spiritual care and counseling at Fuller Theological Seminary and Claremont School of Theology. He is also a certified pastoral counselor with the American Association of Pastoral Counselors (AAPC), a staff counselor and congregational and community liaison at Christian Counseling Service, and supervisory and interim pastor at Bethany Reformed Church.

Roozeboom provides clergy, chaplains, and others engaged in pastoral care a window into the dramatic implications of neuroscience to help us better understand the embodied ecosystem within which the brain is highly responsive and intricately interrelated to spiritual, personal, and relational wellbeing. Roozeboom demonstrates the pivotal role for practices of self-care in this embodied ecosystem including not only renewing and supporting physical and spiritual well-being but also enhancing our capacities for the practice of neighbor love. Nancy J. Ramsay, Brite Divinity School

Roozeboom offers a vibrant reminder to all of us concerned with the spiritual well-being of persons (and to those of us working at the intersection of pastoral theology and the neurosciences): what we do is as important to who we are as what we think and feel. Moving beyolÃ#