Kundalini Awakening & Near-Death Experiences: A Yogic Perspective
Dr Yvonne Kason
Many NDE researchers including Ken Ring PhD. Bruce Greyson MD, and Yvonne Kason MD, have speculated about the possible relationship between Near-Death Experiences and Kundalini Awakenings as described in the yogic tradition. In this seminar Dr. Yvonne Kason, shares her conclusions from 40 years of kundalini and NDE research. She describes the classic symptoms of a kundalini/spiritual energy awakening: energy rising up the spine and body; inner sounds such as “OM” or the roar of a waterfall; and light sensations; all culminating in a mystical, psychic, or inspired creative experience. She describes the yogic model of consciousness, birth, and the death, which describes us all as souls/spiritual beings, encased in three “bodies”: our causal or consciousness body’’; our astral or energy/light body; and our physical body. Per Yogic theory, at death our soul encased in our astral and causal bodies leaves the physical body by ascending up the astral spine and leaving through the head. Souls then rest in the astral planes for a period of time between incarnations. At the time of conception, a soul encased in its astral body and causal body, is drawn to a human embryo, giving it life. Dr. Kason goes on to compare the progressive symptoms of a Near-Death Experience with the progressive experiences of a soul rising up the chakras of the astral spine as it withdraws from the body at the time of death. She also outlines the marked similarity in after-effects of a kundalini awakening and a white-light type of Near-Death Experience. Dr Kason shares how this led her to conclude that Near-Death Experiences may indeed sometimes awaken the kundalini/spiritual energy mechanism in experiencers. This kundalini awaking would greatly intensify the long term spiritually transformative after-effect of an NDE.
Dr. Yvonne Kason MD, MEd, CCFP, FCFP is the President and Co-Founder of Spiritual Awakenings International. She is an internationally renowned medical expert on Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs) who has had multiple STEs herself, including 5 Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). She is a retired family physician and transpersonal MD-psychotherapist, who previously taught at the University of Toronto. Propelled by a powerful Near-Death Experience in a 1979 airplane crash, she began to research NDEs, and in 1990 she became the first Canadian medical doctor to specialize their medical practice in the research and counseling of patients with NDEs and other STEs.
Dr. Kason is the Past-President and a previous board member of IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies. She is the Co-Leader and Co-Founder of Toronto Awakenings Sharing Group, and a member of ACISTE, the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences. Dr. Kason was also a Co-Founder of the Kundalini Research Network, the Canadian Coordinator of the Spiritual Emergence Network, and Co-Founder of the Spirituality in Health-Care Network.
Dr. Yvonne Kason currently lives in Toronto, Canada, and enjoys being a snowbird each winter in Encinitas, California. Yvonne is on demand as a keynote speaker and as a media resource, and was recently interviewed (2020) on the Dr. Oz Show and on Coast to Coast. She has five published books, her most recent is, Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences, (2019). https://www.amazon.ca/Touched-by-the-Light
Photo of Dr Yvonne Kason and Mehmet Cengiz Öz on the set of the Dr. Oz Show, 2020
Photo of book cover of "Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences" by Yvonne Kason MD