What Cardiac Arrest Patients Saw During Near-Death Experiences

[00:00:00]An ICU nurse spent her life studying near-death experiences, and this is what she found. Penny Stori not only dedicated her life to being an ICU nurse, but she also got a PhD in near-death experiences in cardiac arrest patients. This is so interesting to me, and let me help you understand why. in an ICU which I used to work at right we have the most controlled way to monitor a cardiac arrest which means someone's heart stops okay and it's the best place to have a cardiac arrest the ICU because there are people who are very well trained in what to do when that happens and there's monitors and all these different things to quote unquote bring you back right so if you're ever going to have a cardiac arrest the ICU is the best place to do it so she spent her life not only being an ICU nurse but also studying what happens to patients when they have a cardiac arrest, heart stops, okay? And then they come back, what was their experience and were there any patterns? And guess what? There were patterns, which I'm going to get into in a second, but I want to give Penny a little more credibility here. First, I'm going to read this off because I don't want to mess anything up. She got her PhD in research in 2005 at the University of Wales based on ICU patients over a five-year perspective study. So five years she's getting all this information. Okay. And the focus was in cardiac arrest survivors who reported their experiences. Okay. So that means in an ICU setting people go into cardiac arrest a lot. So it's people who go into cardiac arrest survive what their experiences are. She did eventually publish many books and many academic studies, things like that, which I want to get to it right now because they're important. Her main scientific book, her core work is called Near-Death Experiences of Hospitalized Intensive Care Patients, a five-year clinical study. Now, I love this because yes, we can go into like the mystery of near-death experiences, which is also very heartwarming and comforting, but I also love taking a scientific view of near-death experiences, which I think this is what Penny has given us. And it still is really cool, but also knowing that there's like a scientific basis around it makes it even more cool to me.

[00:02:18]So, this book is over 500 pages. Yikes.

[00:02:22]But it's based on ICU patients interviews and clinical correlation because remember in the ICU we are all monitored so that we're able to see like when their heart stopped, how long were they out, what was going on so we can actually get some clinical information as well along with their stories, quote unquote stories. There's structured research. It's not a memoir and it's published and who publishers are. We don't care about that or do we? She interviewed cardiac arrest survivors, which means people whose heart stopped and came back. compared near-death experience reporters versus non-neath experienced reporters because some people who come back didn't experience any kind of like phenomena. She compared the two. She looked for patterns, not just stories. Love that. And then try to correlate experiences with medical timeline. I think that's pretty self-explanatory, but just in case. What she means is because they're in an ICU setting and everything is monitored. You see no blood pressure, no heart rate, compression started when heart rate comes back when, how long of a timeline was that, right? What do those findings, how do they compare to the patient's story? I love this. I love it. I love the science and the mystery coming together. Okay, she did write eventually a mainstream book that isn't like scientical study things called The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences. So, that could be more for like someone who's not in the medical field. So, what were her findings? Right, that's what everyone wants to know. There were three findings, three patterns that anyone who experienced the near-death experience phenomena, the the things that they generally saw and what happened. Now, she first starts out saying, and I like this, that the near-death experience was in the minority of patients. So, it it was not in the majority. The majority of cardiac arrest patients in the ICU, the majority of them did not have NDEs.

[00:04:16]Period. Okay? So, it was only a small percentage of those people that had them. And then the ones that did have them. So, that's the first fact. The first thing that they found was only the minority of people had them. Now, here's what they found with the majority of people who had them. Number one, out of body perception. So the first thing the people who did have the NDEs after cardiac arrest was out of body perception. They could observe the resuscitation. They saw themselves being resuscitated.

[00:04:51]That's crazy to me. That's crazy to me.

[00:04:54]I don't care if it's happening minority patients. That's crazy. Were seeing their body from above. Okay. So they were saw they saw themselves from above and they were hearing staff conversations. Okay. So that's that's the first pattern out of body perception. And when they say that they say I could see myself being resuscitated I mostly saw myself from above and I could hear the staff conversation and this was you know correlated with like making confirming like yes this was all being said what they what they heard was accurate yada yada nonphysical awareness. Now what does that mean? Because I had to look too. Non-physical awareness means they felt detached from their body. They had a floating perception and lack of physical pain. So they were feeling like they were floating. They were out of their body and they did not have any pain. Even though they saw themselves like going through a bunch of stuff, they didn't feel any of that. So the second thing they noticed was this non-physical awareness. They were not their body. The third thing they noticed was emotional neutrality or peace. And this is what we all love hearing about, right? this peaceful feeling that supposedly death feels like. So reduced fear. They did not feel fear. A calm observation state. Although they saw their body getting worked on, they were calm and didn't care. An emotional distance from the medical chaos. Because you have to remember, you're in an ICU.

[00:06:22]I've been in those resuscitation things countless times. It's organized chaos.

[00:06:28]But they felt uh not attached to that medical chaos. I love that. And the last thing was distorted time perception. So the fourth thing is they all had distorted time perception. So the patients often said something like it felt like time slowed down or it felt like there was no time. And what's really weird is when I have had any kind of like weird um or you know for lack of a better word weird weird sensations when I'm watching someone die like during the actively dying phase or I see someone take their last breath. I often say in the room it feels like time stands still. So I feel like I I don't I mean obviously it could be a different thing but I I understand what someone says when they say it feels like time slowed down or there's absence of time.

[00:07:14]I feel like I can even feel that when I'm witnessing someone actively die or when someone's taking their last breath.

[00:07:20]It can feel like that as well. Or they say something like it feels like time was not linear. Right? So there's something about time. there's a distortion of time and anyone who had this near-death experience uh said that that was one of the patterns they saw.

[00:07:34]The thing she likes to talk about is how in this type of setting it's very it's very medical and clinical. It helps because we know the time of things medically and clinically and they did seem to match with what the person was saying, right? So the person was saying they were witnessing this. This is what was happening. Here's who was taking notes. visit a and those things did match which I think is pretty pretty cool if you ask me and I really like that her biggest stance that she takes after doing this 5-year long study and she like basically dedicated her life to doing this her biggest stance is not to prove that there is an afterlife to to not make this mystical which I think is fun to do and I think it's okay if people do that but I love that as an ICU nurse she says no uh I'm not here to do that I'm having the research show its own thing. So she's not claiming that the research is showing there is an afterlife. There is life after death.

[00:08:30]The soul exists. She's not saying that.

[00:08:33]What she is saying, though, is that this phenomena of near-death experiences is real and is occurring. Now, it's not in the majority of patients. She's already saying that it's in the minority of patients, but the minority of patients who who have experienced it experience the same thing. And it is real. And what it can do is kind of push back on our current belief of what the consciousness is, right? We think the consciousness dies with dies when we die. And what she's saying is maybe not. Maybe we maybe we don't fully understand consciousness. And that and that is true. We we no one can say we do. Maybe we don't. in her study can show that maybe we don't fully understand it because here's a population of folks that experienced something uh that we say can't happen. And the last thing she says is that patients experiences deserve to be taken seriously and not dismissed. And I feel like that's what she had done with this five-year long study um showing that patients are telling us something and we should not just dismiss them. We should we should take it seriously and listen. Okay. I I I personally love learning about things like this. Yes, I love hearing like personal anecdotal stories of near-death experiences, which we've which I've gone over on this channel, but this is a really cool scientific way, I think, to look at near-death experiences. This is a more analytical way to look at near-death experiences. It's a study showing and proving that they do happen.

[00:10:06]They do happen and there's patterns to how and what happens when someone has a near-death experience and it's in a clinical setting. So, Penny Sator, I hope I'm saying your name right. My hats off to you. Thank you for giving us this 5-year long study and teaching us more about our consciousness.