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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the best of Coast to Coast podcasts.

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Speaker 1: fascinating conversation and check out recent shows where we learned

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Speaker 1: here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Let me tell you about our guest here. Dr Penny

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Speaker 1: Sartori worked as a nurse for twenty one years, spent

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Speaker 1: seventeen of those years working in intensive care. In two

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Speaker 1: thousand five, she was awarded a PhD for her hospital

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Speaker 1: research into near death experiences. She's published a number of books,

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Speaker 1: including The Wisdom of Near Death Experiences. Her latest is

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Speaker 1: a collaboration co authored by Kelly Walsh called The Transformative

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Speaker 1: Power of Near Death Experiences. Dr sartorily teaches a couple

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Speaker 1: modules of the part time degree in Humanities at Swansea

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Speaker 1: University entitled Science, Spirituality and Health and Exploring the Mind

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Speaker 1: and the Consciousness. Dr Penny Sartory with us on Coast

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Speaker 1: to Coast. Hello Penny, good morning to you. Hi George,

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Speaker 1: good morning looking forward to this. Tell me a little

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Speaker 1: bit about your nurse experience and how you made this transition. Well,

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Speaker 1: I used to work as a nurse in the I

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Speaker 1: c U. And I loved my job. And when I

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Speaker 1: first started there, I thought it was fantastic and I

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Speaker 1: felt like I was really saving lives and it felt great.

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Speaker 1: I loved the buzz and the emergency situations. But it

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Speaker 1: was working on a night shift when I was looking

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Speaker 1: after a man who was clearly dying changed everything for me.

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Speaker 1: That night. This man was in extreme pain and he

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Speaker 1: knew he was dying, and he was connected to the

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Speaker 1: ventilator so we couldn't talk to me. But I can

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Speaker 1: remember as I adjusted the bed to put the head

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Speaker 1: flat because I was going to wash him, this man

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Speaker 1: nearly jumped out of bed in agony, and our eyes

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Speaker 1: connected at that point, and I felt like I had

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Speaker 1: swapped places with him, and I could feel everything that

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Speaker 1: he was going through, and he kept mouthing to me,

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Speaker 1: let me die. Let me die in peace. And that

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Speaker 1: had a profound effect on me because it made me think,

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Speaker 1: what happens when we die. You know, this man is

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Speaker 1: clearly dying, and we're doing all that we can to

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Speaker 1: keep him alive. Now, when I went home from work

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Speaker 1: that day, I couldn't sleep because this man was on

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Speaker 1: my mind. It really did upset me. So I called

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Speaker 1: back into the intensive care unit and I asked the

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Speaker 1: nurse what had happened to this man, how he was doing,

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Speaker 1: and she said he actually died two hours after I

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Speaker 1: had left my shift that day. So that's sort of

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Speaker 1: set me off on a quest really to understand death more.

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Speaker 1: And I started reading about death and that's when I

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Speaker 1: came across near death experiences, and you know, they really

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Speaker 1: did grab my attention because these people were saying that

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Speaker 1: death is nothing to be afraid of, and that it's

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Speaker 1: a very peaceful and pleasant experience. But I think because

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Speaker 1: my training training as a nurse was very scientific, I

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Speaker 1: was still a little bit skeptical about this. But the

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Speaker 1: more I read about these experiences, the more curious I became.

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Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I'm just working in that perfect

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Speaker 1: place where I can undertake my own research study and

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Speaker 1: I can learn about this in more depths, And so

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Speaker 1: that's what I did. I did a research project there

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Speaker 1: and it took five years to interview the patients and

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Speaker 1: gather all of the data. And it took a further

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Speaker 1: three years to analyze that data and to write it

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Speaker 1: up and make sense of it. And it took about

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Speaker 1: another five years to kind of recover and get over

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Speaker 1: that because it was a lot of intense work. You know,

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Speaker 1: you've witnessed many deaths, have you not? Yes, I have.

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Speaker 1: I've probably over the years thousands of death Would you

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Speaker 1: say that they're all similar or are they different? They

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Speaker 1: can be different. It depends really on the context in

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Speaker 1: which they are they occur. So it could be that

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Speaker 1: some deaths take place just on the ward where it's

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Speaker 1: an expected death, so the patient is at the end

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Speaker 1: of their life and having palliative treatment, and very often

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Speaker 1: in those sorts of circumstances, or you tend to see

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Speaker 1: is that some patients appear to be communicating with someone

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Speaker 1: that we can't see. Now. That has happened in my

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Speaker 1: own family, and I can remember nursing my grandfather at home,

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Speaker 1: and this is before I undertook my research and in

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Speaker 1: the days before my grandfather died, he was in the

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Speaker 1: bedroom and he would point to the doorway and he'd say, look,

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Speaker 1: who's there in the doorway. Well, when I turned round,

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Speaker 1: there was no one there at all. Because I hadn't

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Speaker 1: had an impress in these experiences, I was unaware of them, really,

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Speaker 1: and so I didn't question him further, and I just

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Speaker 1: kind of ignored it. But when my nursing career began

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Speaker 1: and I started looking after patients who were dying in

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Speaker 1: this is a very common theme. Those who were dyeing

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Speaker 1: used to point ahead or they would communicate with people

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Speaker 1: I couldn't see, and very often they would gesture towards

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Speaker 1: them and they would they would smile, and sometimes they

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Speaker 1: would open out their arms as if welcome, welcoming them

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Speaker 1: into an embrace. And so when these visions started to happen,

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Speaker 1: the patients usually died within about a week of those visions.

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Speaker 1: That first, yes, yes, now you undertook a long term

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Speaker 1: study of near death experiences in the United may have

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Speaker 1: been the first one right in well in the Youth

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Speaker 1: in the United Kingdom. Yes, it was a smaller one

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Speaker 1: undertaken by Dr Sampania. His was over a year but

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Speaker 1: mine lasted for five years. Five years, that's a long

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Speaker 1: time for a study. Yes, yes, it was, and it

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Speaker 1: was very intense because I wasn't allowed any kind of

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Speaker 1: steadily from my work, so I had to do this

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Speaker 1: alongside my nursing role. So what I would do is

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Speaker 1: I would go in early before my shift began so

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Speaker 1: I could go and have a chat with patients, and

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Speaker 1: then sometimes I'd have to stay behind my after my

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Speaker 1: shifted finish so I could follow up with the patients.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes I would come in on my days off

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Speaker 1: so that I didn't miss any patients who were discharged

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Speaker 1: from the unit. So I did that for five years

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Speaker 1: and I got a lot of interesting data from that

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Speaker 1: as well. You know, how did you structure the study, Penny, Well,

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Speaker 1: basically what I did for the first year, I wanted

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Speaker 1: to interview every single person who survived their admission to

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Speaker 1: the intensive care unit. So I approached their bed area

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Speaker 1: when they were recovered and when they were not confused

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Speaker 1: and when they were kind of in a position to

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Speaker 1: to talk to me. And because I worked as a

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Speaker 1: nurse in the intensive care unit, that was really quite

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Speaker 1: an easy thing to do because they recognized me as

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Speaker 1: being a nurse, and so what I would do is

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Speaker 1: simply say to them, while you were unconscious, did you

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Speaker 1: have any memories at all? Now, most patients didn't remember

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Speaker 1: anything at all, but there were a few people who

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Speaker 1: would say, oh, why do you ask, And I just say,

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Speaker 1: I'm very interested in people's memories. And then once they

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Speaker 1: realized I was interested in this, a few people would

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Speaker 1: start to open up to me and say, well, I

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Speaker 1: had this experience. I'm not sure whether it was a

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Speaker 1: dream or something more, but this happened to me. And

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Speaker 1: some people would describe I can out of body experience

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Speaker 1: where they would leave the body and look down on

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Speaker 1: themselves from above, and some people described a more intricate

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Speaker 1: or elaborate experience of actually going into another realm where

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Speaker 1: they went towards the light and met deceased relatives. Now,

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Speaker 1: what I found after the first year was that because

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Speaker 1: not all of these patients had come close to death,

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Speaker 1: some of them were just there for monitoring after routine operations.

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Speaker 1: What I found is I was spending a lot of

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Speaker 1: time in the hospital, in fact, more time in the

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Speaker 1: hospitals than I was at home. So I decided to

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Speaker 1: modify my research. So after the for the following four years,

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Speaker 1: I interviewed only those patients who had undergone a cardiac arrest,

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Speaker 1: and what I found is that the sample was a

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Speaker 1: lot smaller. In fact, there were thirty nine patients in

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Speaker 1: the cardiac arrest group. Out of those page thirty nine patients,

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Speaker 1: seven of them reported a near death experience. That's huge, Yes,

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Speaker 1: it is. It's that's eighteen percent. So you know, there's

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Speaker 1: quite a lot of patients who do have these experiences.

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Speaker 1: And the thing is, you know, a lot of patients

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Speaker 1: would never talk about these experiences had I not approached

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Speaker 1: their bedside. In fact, during the whole of the five

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Speaker 1: years of my data collection, I came across fifteen patients

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Speaker 1: who had had an ear death experience. Do they even

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Speaker 1: know that they had one? No, that's the thing. They

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Speaker 1: didn't realize what it was. They didn't understand it at all.

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Speaker 1: They didn't know how to make sense of it. So

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Speaker 1: the fact then that I interviewed them and then they

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Speaker 1: expressed what they had experienced, I was then able to

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Speaker 1: say to them, well, I was able to validate it

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Speaker 1: for them, and I'd say, well, actually, what you've experienced

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Speaker 1: is quite common, and it's called a near death experience

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Speaker 1: and these sorts of things happen, and I was also

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Speaker 1: able to kind of tell them about the things that

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Speaker 1: might happen in the future as a result of an

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Speaker 1: after effect of these experiences. So I think that benefited

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Speaker 1: the patients because all of a sudden they were able

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Speaker 1: to start integrating and understanding their experience as well, because

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Speaker 1: that is a really difficult thing for people to do.

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Speaker 1: If they have an ear death experience and no one

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Speaker 1: explains it to them, sometimes it can lead to isolation.

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Speaker 1: You know, a lot of people are afraid to talk

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Speaker 1: about these experiences because they're not sure how people are

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Speaker 1: going to receive them. So you know, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people fear that if they mention it, they think that

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Speaker 1: they're going crazy or that they will be laughed at.

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Speaker 1: So I think it's really important that people are aware

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Speaker 1: of near death experiences so people who have them can

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Speaker 1: be supported as they're recovering. Any Most people when they

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Speaker 1: have had these experiences have always said that they see

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Speaker 1: a light at like the end of the tunnel. Do

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Speaker 1: you find that there are similarities with people with the ease, Yes,

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Speaker 1: there are. They all follow this particular pattern. So and

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Speaker 1: these components that are experienced. They don't occur in any

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Speaker 1: particular order. So for example, it might start with having

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Speaker 1: an out of body experience where they view the emergency

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Speaker 1: situation from above. And then they may travel through a

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Speaker 1: period of darkness or some people would call it a tunnel,

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Speaker 1: others would just say perhaps a dark path, and they

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Speaker 1: travel towards this bright light, and that bright light, although

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Speaker 1: it's bright, it doesn't hurt their eyes, and sometimes they

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Speaker 1: feel as if they're magnetically drawn towards this light. Then

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Speaker 1: once they get into the light, they find themselves in

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Speaker 1: a beautiful realm, which could be a garden with very

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Speaker 1: vividly colored flowers and less green grass. Sometimes there's a

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Speaker 1: stream in the background. And then sometimes they will meet

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Speaker 1: deceased relatives or friends, and these relatives or friends look radiant,

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Speaker 1: they look younger than what they did when they died,

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Speaker 1: and they look very happy. And sometimes there may even

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Speaker 1: be a religious figure, and that is usually associated with

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Speaker 1: a person's culture. So, for example, people in the West

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Speaker 1: are more likely to see images of Jesus Christ, whereas

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Speaker 1: in dear for example, they may see Yam as the

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Speaker 1: god of the dead. And another really important aspect of

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Speaker 1: the near death experience is the life review, because this

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Speaker 1: really does affect the person's life when they come back

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Speaker 1: to life afterwards. During the life review, they experience or

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Speaker 1: relive their life in great detail and very often is

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Speaker 1: I like seeing a movie of their life? Yes, now,

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Speaker 1: some people do describe it as looking at at a movie.

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Speaker 1: Other people describe it as being panoramic in that every

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Speaker 1: different aspect of their life is played around them, all

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Speaker 1: around them in succession or simultaneously. It's all going on

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Speaker 1: at the same time, but they are able to understand

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Speaker 1: it all at once. It's really an unusual phenomenon really,

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Speaker 1: but very often if they've interactive with people and they've

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Speaker 1: been unpleasant to someone, or they've been violent towards someone,

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Speaker 1: they can often feel what the impact of their actions

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Speaker 1: from that as a person's perspect active, so then when

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Speaker 1: they return to life, it gives them a whole different

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Speaker 1: view on how they interact with people. Listen to more

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Speaker 1: Coast to Coast a m every weeknight at one a m.

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Speaker 1: Eastern and go to Coast to Coast am dot com

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Speaker 1: for more