How 5 Near-Death Experiences Led to the Launch of Spiritual Awakenings International

By Yvonne Kason MD, MEd, CCFP, FCFP
 

By some twist of fate, I have been blessed with five near-death experiences (NDEs) over the course of my life. Each of my NDEs had powerful aftereffects on me, and altered the course of my life both as a medical doctor and as a spiritual seeker. Ultimately, they led me to become the co-founder and president of Spiritual Awakenings international, a new global network dedicated to raising awareness about NDEs and other Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

It was my first adult NDE as a young doctor in a medevac plane crash, March 27, 1979, that launched me on a quest to understand STEs. I struggled for years afterwards to understand and find a name for my out-of-body and mystical white-light experience I had while I was close to death that day. Today I know this was a Near-Death Experience.

I strived to understand several other Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs) that I experienced around that time and in the years that followed: a kundalini awakening; mystical experiences; and psychic experiences including clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience, and past-life recall. My personal search for understanding and the moving STE stories I heard from many of my patients prompted me in 1990 to become the first Canadian Medical doctor to specialize in the counselling and research of persons having NDEs and other spiritual experiences.

In 1994, I coined the phrase “Spiritually Transformative Experiences” in my first book on STEs, A Farther Shore, as an umbrella term to describe the broad range of experiences which I found all tended to change the experiencer’s values and attitudes in a more spiritual direction, and could have shared physical, psychological, and spiritual aftereffects. Over the years, I’ve counselled close to 1,000 persons who had diverse types of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

I also observed that powerful STEs tend to initiate or accelerate a long-term process of spiritual transformation in the experiencer. I defined STEs into five broad categories, each with many subtypes: 

• Mystical Experiences
• Spiritual Energy/Kundalini Awakenings
• Psychic Episodes
• Near-Death Experiences and Other Death-Related STEs
• Inspired Creativity and Genius

To my great astonishment, the divine hand touched my life again in 1995, and blessed me with another powerful near-death experience in a near-miss plane incident. Remarkably, this NDE left me in a profound state of ongoing unitive consciousness for two months afterwards, a long-lasting STE!

Then, much to my surprise on November 8, 2003, I had my third adult near-death experience, after a slip-and-fall accident on ice where I fell backwards and hit my head on rock pavement, suffering a serious traumatic brain injury with a brain hemorrhage. I found my spirit whisked out of my body by a force greater than myself, and brought back to the white light realm of love, joy, and bliss that I had glimpsed in my 1979 NDE.

Unfortunately, I became disabled by this 2003 traumatic brain injury. Thankfully, on February 24, 2016, I experienced a miracle: a spontaneous brain healing — yet another type of STE — which has enabled me to now write and give talks again! 

As I reflected on my NDEs while writing my new books after this dramatic healing, I came to realize that I also had two NDEs when I was a child — one at the age of five when I went out-of-body when I was almost hit by a train, and another at 11 years old when I went out-of-body again when I was seriously injured in a car accident. I describe all five of my NDEs in detail in my new book, Touched by the Light, and in my Shift Network video interview here.

For over a year now, I felt a strong inner calling by Spirit to start a new global network — by STE experiencers, for STE experiencers — to raise awareness and promote sharing of all types of STEs. On June 15, 2020, together with my dear friend and co-founder Robert Bare, we launched Spiritual Awakenings international (SAI).

 SAI builds on my passion of the last 30 years: advocating for people who have had STEs. As a medical doctor, I am horrified by the mislabeling as “crazy” or “hallucinating” that happens to so many beautiful spiritual souls — souls who are experiencing diverse types of STEs. I feel as a multiple NDE and multiple STE experiencer myself, I need to stand tall and affirm loudly that these experiences are real, and not a sign of mental illness.

My heart felt that now, in 2020, was the right time to start this new global online network to raise awareness of STEs. My passion was also to give STE experiencers a safe forum to share their stories, and to facilitate networking between STE experiencers and different interested groups and networks worldwide. “Bringing us Together” is Spiritual Awakenings International’s motto. 

I helped create our beautiful and informative new SAI website, which provides a wealth of online information about STEs. Readers are given suggested further readings on each type of STE, including my new book, Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

Our SAI website also showcases our affiliated groups worldwide, as well as our SAI Circle of Honor. In the Circle of Honor, we honor and say thank you to the groundbreaking pioneers of the last 100 years who helped raise global awareness about different types of STEs.

 “Spiritual Awakenings International Presents” offers free monthly online speaker events showcasing fascinating STE-related speakers from around the world. Dr. Nicole Gruel from Australia presented October 17, Raymond O’Brien from England will present on November 21, and Dr. Christopher Kerr from U.S./Canada on December 5. All are welcome. Register and find more information here.

I am absolutely delighted at how Spiritual Awakenings International has blossomed and grown in just three months. We already have over 500 subscribers from 22 different countries on six continents around the world. I invite everyone interested in STEs to subscribe to Spiritual Awakenings International, to help in “Bringing us Together.”
 

Yvonne Kason, MD, is a retired family physician and transpersonal MD-psychotherapist, previously on faculty at the University of Toronto. Her medical specialty was the research and counseling of patients who had diverse types of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs), a phrase she coined that is now used widely by many professionals in the field.

Yvonne was the first Canadian medical doctor to specialize her practice on near-death experiences (NDEs) and other STEs. She was a founding member of the Kundalini Research Network; the Canadian coordinator of the Spiritual Emergence Network; the founder of the Spiritual Emergence Research and Referral Clinic; and the co-founder of the Spirituality in Health-Care Network.

She is the President of Spiritual Awakenings International, a new global network dedicated to raising awareness about NDEs and other Spiritually Transformative Experiences. She is the Past President of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS) and is a member of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

She is currently a member — and was the 2018 Keynote speaker for — ACISTE (American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experience), and was a founding member of the Kundalini Research Network and numerous other organizations that explore the intersection between medical science and spirituality. 

She’s published five books, including her brand-new one, Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences.