The light...
...at the end of the tunnel.
What's our vision?
NDE UK was started in July 2014 by one lonely and lost NDE survivor Gigi Strehler. This is where she started and what she envisions for the future...
History
I had my NDE in November 2011 and in the weeks, months and years that followed, I went mad, and I mean absolutely lost the plot. I was one of only 5% of experiencers that went to “The Void”, went through an agonising “judgement” process and completely detached from my physical form to a fully conscious but Limbo-land existence that I thought must be akin to purgatory. Nothing could have prepared me for what my mind and soul was to go through over the next three years. I went to the Buddhist Monk, the Jewish Rabbi, the Christian Priest, the Muslim Imam, read the writings of ancient Greek philosophers right through to contemporary psychologists – NO ONE had any tangible or credible answer as to where I went and what happened to me. Only morsels and tidbits from their various earnest philosophies and theologies, that although gave me partial, loving and well meaning comfort in various ways – nothing was in complete alignment with my experience. Nothing was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing was my truth. My heart shattered and my mind melted. Gigi was gone, and although my body had been successfully resuscitated and was still here, that Gigi prior to my NDE was never coming back.
After some initial research (still dribbling on meds) I found Dr. Penny Sartori and her incredible work, research papers and books. I was starting to understand that my experience was not unique and that there were thousands of people who were having NDEs and reporting them. The trouble is, they were being ignored, weren't taken seriously or, like me, just went round the bend. I told Penny that I was going to start a support group for this incredibly unique and shunned quota of people being turfed out of British hospitals on a daily basis. I was going to make sure that no one else went through the complete crisis I went through. I would save them all. But not quite yet. It would take another couple of years until I was able to do so, but Penny said that it was a vital need in the UK for such a support group and that when I was ready I should pick up the torch and boldly light the way.
NDE UK was initially started as an online community, the website was built and contacts started to slowly pool together as I put people in touch with each other geographically. This had its limits as I realised that what was needed was several NDEers in one space at one time, exchanging their lessons and learnings. I hired a hall and organized my first meeting in Hoxton near my flat. I'll never forget walking down Hoxton Market, about to meet other NDEers for the first time, not knowing what to expect or if it would work. I was about half an hour early to set up – out of the corner of my eye I saw a jet black motorbike park up a few metres away. A Herculian sized man, head to toe in black leather biker gear pulled off his blacked out bike helmet. I was momentarily mesmerised. From underneath flowed these long blonde greying locks and face that had life experience etched into its history. I remember thinking in my childish way “Wow - that guy looks like a Pagan-Druid-Shaman-Wizard-Man from the future – I wish he was coming to my meeting!” but it was market day and the street was pretty busy and the pubs were starting to fill up for the afternoon football match. I rushed to go and buy some fruit, refreshments, snacks, teas and coffees, then made my way to the hall. I put out some tables, made a ring of chairs, said a little prayer, crossed my fingers and as it neared the arrival time, just hoped for the best.
There was a light tap at the door, this was it, I was going to meet my first NDE survivor in the flesh – I held my breath.
The Pagan-Druid-Shaman-Wizard-Man from the future stepped over the threshold. He said his name was Ray. He had both a well of pain and a spark in his eyes that told me he knew exactly what I knew.
I let out a very long, slow sigh. I knew I was on the right path...
The meetings ran on an adhoc basis for about 18 months. Rachel was doing her PHD on consciousness and came along. She lent her incredible mind and skills to all things tech and social media. She set up the Facebook page, managed the newsletter subscriptions for those outside of London and started our own NDE UK research and survey questionnaire. Haydee came along to one of the initial meetings and told us about her extraordinary experiences and started to encourage other experiencers to explore and harness some of the newfound gifts and skills they seemed to be returning with. I was also connecting with many people across the UK, even globally, one of which was Kelly who had a very clear mission and purpose following her suicide attempt and subsequent NDE. She agreed to become an NDE Ambassador, start meetings in Manchester and give love, encouragement and support. It was an amazing time and I think of it fondly. Even though I would still openly cry in every meeting and was in my infant stages of recovery, I was surrounded by people who knew and understood.
Then everything came to a gradual halt. I was trying to personally fund the room hire, website domain, refreshments, respond to distressed people across the world, co-ordinate groups outside of London and it became clear that the whole thing, although my idea and baby, was not sustainable by one person alone. I couldn't do everything. I couldn't help everyone. I failed epically. And all went dark.
I spent a long time still trying to come to terms with my NDE in counselling and musing over what I had wanted from the support group. Ray kept a little ray of light glowing by keeping the Facebook page going. He was my knight in shining armour. Whilst I was looking into structures of other non-profit charities and organisations, meeting with people who had business know-how, watching website construction tutorials and videos on marketing, email lists and data protection laws – he was quietly kindling the flame and responding stoically and gently to every member on Facebook. I went to conferences, associations and spoke to charities and lawyers. I formulated a plan, had a meeting with the bank manager to set up a non-profit community account and worked out a game plan of how to re-launch NDE UK and make it self-sustainable and in effect capable of being powered by the NDE community itself. By now Ray was fanning the growing flames of Facebook and reaching out in incredible ways to so many NDEers. In that year we spoke regularly about my vision for NDE UK (enlightening conversations written below!) as he was completing his training to become one of the UK's first trained counsellor in the NDE field as an NDEer himself. In that year I really began to own my NDE and understand what I really wanted NDE UK to be. I wanted it to be everything that I didn't have. I wanted it to be everything I needed at the time of my experience. And all the key members who were there at its fledgling start continue to be on board in bigger, better and more extraordinary ways, like the book Penny & Kelly wrote that I contributed a chapter to. They're all there on the “Community” page. So, the foundations are now set. It's ready to go. It's now up to the NDE community to come together and make it exactly what they want it to be with my love and blessings. Light your own torch. And run with it.
Gigi xXx
Conversations With Ray
I really wanted to share some home truths, nuggets of wisdom and realisations that myself and Ray came to during our year long conversations. I made notes of every single one in a journal and they shaped both the direction I was taking NDE UK and Ray's development of a practical working model for therapy specifically for NDE survivors. Every year there is an overwhelming increase in numbers of survivors who are reporting the most extraordinary things and it's all pretty much the same stuff. With medical advancements as they are, we're literally pulling people back from the jaws of death by the scruff of their necks in their hoards. Surely we can learn from that, if all these people are dying and saying the same thing? Surely medics, leaders of faith, people interested in consciousness and the mind would be clambering over themselves to chart and explore all these accounts, data and information? Nope. Apparently not. The NHS is on it's knees and can only tell you take some pills, pull your socks up, go home and get on with it. Dying as it turns out is the easy part. Surviving is much harder.
You might ask yourself why I refer to us as NDE survivors rather than experiencers in this section; Ray rightly pointed out “many of us can't find happiness here any more - very little lights our fire – it's the morbidity of the event - nobody told me it would be like this - we need to develop emotional resilience - we are survivors not victims.”
It became apparent very early on that no one else could understand a survivor's trauma other than other survivors. Despite having extensive counselling myself with a wonderful professional counsellor and initially talking about my experience non-stop to family and friends, I eventually shut down and went so far inside myself. I speculated as to why I felt such relief when I started to meet people at those initial gatherings. Ray's course was gifting us the psychology behind both of our actions: “It's normal to get rid of friends – to feel isolated or have suicidal thoughts - it's important to talk with those that know - sit in front of someone who's seen it, done it, been there – that's worth more than 10,000 hours of counselling” said Ray, “you can't talk to anyone else other than another survivor - going to wrong or inexperienced counsellors can actually be damaging – we must turn to other experiencers.”
The realisation that NDE UK really had to become a peer-to-peer support group was solidifying in my mind. How could we really expect to provide counselling to members, not only from a financial point of view, but also with that level of expertise? There are no NDE specialist counsellors who are survivors themselves – Ray was literally going to qualify as one of the first ones in the entire country. I on the other hand felt vastly under-qualified to meet members' needs on a professional level. Ray was swift to re-iterate that it is my experience itself is that qualifies me and that it's OK to be honest and say “I don't have all the answers but I'm working it out and I know enough now to answer your question “what's happening to me?”. Ray felt strongly that we all have a life script which is shattered after the fall out of an NDE and we should share how it touches us: “It doesn't matter if you haven't got it all together - you don't know what you don't know – it's always a blossoming experience – the knowledge has to come from somewhere - it has to come from us – I'm not telling you how to run your life, just the honest truth of how it effected me.”
With all this new fangled online communication and technology it was easy to swap around a few email addresses and although the Facebook page was growing a lovely community there, it wasn't a patch on the initial face-to-face meets. Ray said “It's therapeutic speaking to each other about our challenges, experiences and how to cope. You know how it turned your life around and don't fool anyone with answers, just relate.” Members clearly needed human contact as we were doing, so I had to reassess how I could get meetings to happen nearer to where people lived. And more importantly, how to fund it. I went severely into debt the first time around, I couldn't do that to myself again.
OK, so now we'd established that it's good to talk and preferably face-to-face, I decided that the easiest way was to make the meetings ticketed. They could then, in theory, run themselves. So we moved onto conversations about how to speak to those in the medical profession and first point of contact with survivors. How do we go about resolving this issue about after care for survivors in general and the extreme trauma. After all, there are cases of people being sectioned as a result of their traumatising experience. We both concluded that it's important as a community to come together at these meetings and as Ray said “brainstorm how an NDE affects you in order to translate it to others - what you would want from a counsellor - there's nothing out there for us - where would we go to get help? - we can't go to “Mind”... - people don't know enough - people can't help you”. So I began to realise that we have to gather information, gather accounts, gather data, gather momentum and literally go and drop off “NDE Awareness” leaflets at the NHS' door. We had to go and tell the people who were heroically saving our lives and bringing us back, who were exploring mind and consciousness, who were in every aspect of the medical profession and make them aware of the serious psychological effects post NDE and draw the parallels ourselves with PTSD. I thought that if people charted their after effects at these group meetings, they could be collated and delivered to the right people in the medical field and maybe an NDE would be recognised by the NHS as a trigger for PTSD and the standard free six week counselling could be offered through GP referral. At this point I got very excited and hopeful. Ray was 100% on board and like Penny had spoken at many medical conferences to various associations. He reminded me that the medical world needed a more grounded approach: “You need to keep the clinical POV in mind - present medical research we can apply to quantifiable survivors – think about what we are bringing to the medical profession” and he was right because I realised in a “Eureka!” moment that we were trying to delicately juggle two things here, in essence: the “science of spirit”. Ray as always was on the same page as me. His counselling training was kicking in and he noted “superfluous therapies of CBT, doesn't touch the mantle – we have to look at science, spirituality and mental health - look at the clinical side and address the psychological and spiritual side - develop different therapies - care workers should be trained to see and recognise the signs – they should attend a basic counselling course for death survivors.”
So I started thinking about how to raise the profile of NDEs and one obvious way was through the press, however both myself and Ray had distinct reservations about that. These are very personal and painful things we're being asked to reveal. I myself got burnt. Bad. And in a major tabloid newspaper. Not only was it written in the first person rather than third person reported speech, but the writer and editor actually made stuff up. Despite having email evidence of the editor asking for clarification and my clear responses they still completely fabricated things and printed whatever they wanted regardless, whatever they thought would “sell the story” best. It was a tragedy in itself. It cut me to the core, and that's why I'm so protective of our members' right to anonimity. It was something Ray also felt strongly about: “it is an emotive and spectacular experience to ask of people, recounting an NDE - survivors are initially naive, and it robs us of something - NDEs are sensationalised for entertainment - telling our story comes at a cost to us NDEers – it's opening up Pandora’s box with the press - you have to think “why do they want to know?” - be careful about what we share - regarding your story, if you don't want it to get out, don't say it at all – it shouldn't be sensationalised or entertaining – we need reverence around the topic.”
Reverence. That's it. Through all of this I knew that my NDE was to be revered. And so were the Near Death Experiences of many, many others. I had started those initial gatherings with reverence and want to keep setting up meetings across the UK to offer survivors a safe and supportive place to talk about their experiences and challenges with those that compassionately understand. It is with that same reverence that we will keep marching forward on our journey with ourselves, with each other, and the entire NDE UK community hand in hand. There is no other option but to choose the light.
Join us.
NDE UK was started in July 2014 by one lonely and lost NDE survivor Gigi Strehler. This is where she started and what she envisions for the future...
History
I had my NDE in November 2011 and in the weeks, months and years that followed, I went mad, and I mean absolutely lost the plot. I was one of only 5% of experiencers that went to “The Void”, went through an agonising “judgement” process and completely detached from my physical form to a fully conscious but Limbo-land existence that I thought must be akin to purgatory. Nothing could have prepared me for what my mind and soul was to go through over the next three years. I went to the Buddhist Monk, the Jewish Rabbi, the Christian Priest, the Muslim Imam, read the writings of ancient Greek philosophers right through to contemporary psychologists – NO ONE had any tangible or credible answer as to where I went and what happened to me. Only morsels and tidbits from their various earnest philosophies and theologies, that although gave me partial, loving and well meaning comfort in various ways – nothing was in complete alignment with my experience. Nothing was the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing was my truth. My heart shattered and my mind melted. Gigi was gone, and although my body had been successfully resuscitated and was still here, that Gigi prior to my NDE was never coming back.
After some initial research (still dribbling on meds) I found Dr. Penny Sartori and her incredible work, research papers and books. I was starting to understand that my experience was not unique and that there were thousands of people who were having NDEs and reporting them. The trouble is, they were being ignored, weren't taken seriously or, like me, just went round the bend. I told Penny that I was going to start a support group for this incredibly unique and shunned quota of people being turfed out of British hospitals on a daily basis. I was going to make sure that no one else went through the complete crisis I went through. I would save them all. But not quite yet. It would take another couple of years until I was able to do so, but Penny said that it was a vital need in the UK for such a support group and that when I was ready I should pick up the torch and boldly light the way.
NDE UK was initially started as an online community, the website was built and contacts started to slowly pool together as I put people in touch with each other geographically. This had its limits as I realised that what was needed was several NDEers in one space at one time, exchanging their lessons and learnings. I hired a hall and organized my first meeting in Hoxton near my flat. I'll never forget walking down Hoxton Market, about to meet other NDEers for the first time, not knowing what to expect or if it would work. I was about half an hour early to set up – out of the corner of my eye I saw a jet black motorbike park up a few metres away. A Herculian sized man, head to toe in black leather biker gear pulled off his blacked out bike helmet. I was momentarily mesmerised. From underneath flowed these long blonde greying locks and face that had life experience etched into its history. I remember thinking in my childish way “Wow - that guy looks like a Pagan-Druid-Shaman-Wizard-Man from the future – I wish he was coming to my meeting!” but it was market day and the street was pretty busy and the pubs were starting to fill up for the afternoon football match. I rushed to go and buy some fruit, refreshments, snacks, teas and coffees, then made my way to the hall. I put out some tables, made a ring of chairs, said a little prayer, crossed my fingers and as it neared the arrival time, just hoped for the best.
There was a light tap at the door, this was it, I was going to meet my first NDE survivor in the flesh – I held my breath.
The Pagan-Druid-Shaman-Wizard-Man from the future stepped over the threshold. He said his name was Ray. He had both a well of pain and a spark in his eyes that told me he knew exactly what I knew.
I let out a very long, slow sigh. I knew I was on the right path...
The meetings ran on an adhoc basis for about 18 months. Rachel was doing her PHD on consciousness and came along. She lent her incredible mind and skills to all things tech and social media. She set up the Facebook page, managed the newsletter subscriptions for those outside of London and started our own NDE UK research and survey questionnaire. Haydee came along to one of the initial meetings and told us about her extraordinary experiences and started to encourage other experiencers to explore and harness some of the newfound gifts and skills they seemed to be returning with. I was also connecting with many people across the UK, even globally, one of which was Kelly who had a very clear mission and purpose following her suicide attempt and subsequent NDE. She agreed to become an NDE Ambassador, start meetings in Manchester and give love, encouragement and support. It was an amazing time and I think of it fondly. Even though I would still openly cry in every meeting and was in my infant stages of recovery, I was surrounded by people who knew and understood.
Then everything came to a gradual halt. I was trying to personally fund the room hire, website domain, refreshments, respond to distressed people across the world, co-ordinate groups outside of London and it became clear that the whole thing, although my idea and baby, was not sustainable by one person alone. I couldn't do everything. I couldn't help everyone. I failed epically. And all went dark.
I spent a long time still trying to come to terms with my NDE in counselling and musing over what I had wanted from the support group. Ray kept a little ray of light glowing by keeping the Facebook page going. He was my knight in shining armour. Whilst I was looking into structures of other non-profit charities and organisations, meeting with people who had business know-how, watching website construction tutorials and videos on marketing, email lists and data protection laws – he was quietly kindling the flame and responding stoically and gently to every member on Facebook. I went to conferences, associations and spoke to charities and lawyers. I formulated a plan, had a meeting with the bank manager to set up a non-profit community account and worked out a game plan of how to re-launch NDE UK and make it self-sustainable and in effect capable of being powered by the NDE community itself. By now Ray was fanning the growing flames of Facebook and reaching out in incredible ways to so many NDEers. In that year we spoke regularly about my vision for NDE UK (enlightening conversations written below!) as he was completing his training to become one of the UK's first trained counsellor in the NDE field as an NDEer himself. In that year I really began to own my NDE and understand what I really wanted NDE UK to be. I wanted it to be everything that I didn't have. I wanted it to be everything I needed at the time of my experience. And all the key members who were there at its fledgling start continue to be on board in bigger, better and more extraordinary ways, like the book Penny & Kelly wrote that I contributed a chapter to. They're all there on the “Community” page. So, the foundations are now set. It's ready to go. It's now up to the NDE community to come together and make it exactly what they want it to be with my love and blessings. Light your own torch. And run with it.
Gigi xXx
Conversations With Ray
I really wanted to share some home truths, nuggets of wisdom and realisations that myself and Ray came to during our year long conversations. I made notes of every single one in a journal and they shaped both the direction I was taking NDE UK and Ray's development of a practical working model for therapy specifically for NDE survivors. Every year there is an overwhelming increase in numbers of survivors who are reporting the most extraordinary things and it's all pretty much the same stuff. With medical advancements as they are, we're literally pulling people back from the jaws of death by the scruff of their necks in their hoards. Surely we can learn from that, if all these people are dying and saying the same thing? Surely medics, leaders of faith, people interested in consciousness and the mind would be clambering over themselves to chart and explore all these accounts, data and information? Nope. Apparently not. The NHS is on it's knees and can only tell you take some pills, pull your socks up, go home and get on with it. Dying as it turns out is the easy part. Surviving is much harder.
You might ask yourself why I refer to us as NDE survivors rather than experiencers in this section; Ray rightly pointed out “many of us can't find happiness here any more - very little lights our fire – it's the morbidity of the event - nobody told me it would be like this - we need to develop emotional resilience - we are survivors not victims.”
It became apparent very early on that no one else could understand a survivor's trauma other than other survivors. Despite having extensive counselling myself with a wonderful professional counsellor and initially talking about my experience non-stop to family and friends, I eventually shut down and went so far inside myself. I speculated as to why I felt such relief when I started to meet people at those initial gatherings. Ray's course was gifting us the psychology behind both of our actions: “It's normal to get rid of friends – to feel isolated or have suicidal thoughts - it's important to talk with those that know - sit in front of someone who's seen it, done it, been there – that's worth more than 10,000 hours of counselling” said Ray, “you can't talk to anyone else other than another survivor - going to wrong or inexperienced counsellors can actually be damaging – we must turn to other experiencers.”
The realisation that NDE UK really had to become a peer-to-peer support group was solidifying in my mind. How could we really expect to provide counselling to members, not only from a financial point of view, but also with that level of expertise? There are no NDE specialist counsellors who are survivors themselves – Ray was literally going to qualify as one of the first ones in the entire country. I on the other hand felt vastly under-qualified to meet members' needs on a professional level. Ray was swift to re-iterate that it is my experience itself is that qualifies me and that it's OK to be honest and say “I don't have all the answers but I'm working it out and I know enough now to answer your question “what's happening to me?”. Ray felt strongly that we all have a life script which is shattered after the fall out of an NDE and we should share how it touches us: “It doesn't matter if you haven't got it all together - you don't know what you don't know – it's always a blossoming experience – the knowledge has to come from somewhere - it has to come from us – I'm not telling you how to run your life, just the honest truth of how it effected me.”
With all this new fangled online communication and technology it was easy to swap around a few email addresses and although the Facebook page was growing a lovely community there, it wasn't a patch on the initial face-to-face meets. Ray said “It's therapeutic speaking to each other about our challenges, experiences and how to cope. You know how it turned your life around and don't fool anyone with answers, just relate.” Members clearly needed human contact as we were doing, so I had to reassess how I could get meetings to happen nearer to where people lived. And more importantly, how to fund it. I went severely into debt the first time around, I couldn't do that to myself again.
OK, so now we'd established that it's good to talk and preferably face-to-face, I decided that the easiest way was to make the meetings ticketed. They could then, in theory, run themselves. So we moved onto conversations about how to speak to those in the medical profession and first point of contact with survivors. How do we go about resolving this issue about after care for survivors in general and the extreme trauma. After all, there are cases of people being sectioned as a result of their traumatising experience. We both concluded that it's important as a community to come together at these meetings and as Ray said “brainstorm how an NDE affects you in order to translate it to others - what you would want from a counsellor - there's nothing out there for us - where would we go to get help? - we can't go to “Mind”... - people don't know enough - people can't help you”. So I began to realise that we have to gather information, gather accounts, gather data, gather momentum and literally go and drop off “NDE Awareness” leaflets at the NHS' door. We had to go and tell the people who were heroically saving our lives and bringing us back, who were exploring mind and consciousness, who were in every aspect of the medical profession and make them aware of the serious psychological effects post NDE and draw the parallels ourselves with PTSD. I thought that if people charted their after effects at these group meetings, they could be collated and delivered to the right people in the medical field and maybe an NDE would be recognised by the NHS as a trigger for PTSD and the standard free six week counselling could be offered through GP referral. At this point I got very excited and hopeful. Ray was 100% on board and like Penny had spoken at many medical conferences to various associations. He reminded me that the medical world needed a more grounded approach: “You need to keep the clinical POV in mind - present medical research we can apply to quantifiable survivors – think about what we are bringing to the medical profession” and he was right because I realised in a “Eureka!” moment that we were trying to delicately juggle two things here, in essence: the “science of spirit”. Ray as always was on the same page as me. His counselling training was kicking in and he noted “superfluous therapies of CBT, doesn't touch the mantle – we have to look at science, spirituality and mental health - look at the clinical side and address the psychological and spiritual side - develop different therapies - care workers should be trained to see and recognise the signs – they should attend a basic counselling course for death survivors.”
So I started thinking about how to raise the profile of NDEs and one obvious way was through the press, however both myself and Ray had distinct reservations about that. These are very personal and painful things we're being asked to reveal. I myself got burnt. Bad. And in a major tabloid newspaper. Not only was it written in the first person rather than third person reported speech, but the writer and editor actually made stuff up. Despite having email evidence of the editor asking for clarification and my clear responses they still completely fabricated things and printed whatever they wanted regardless, whatever they thought would “sell the story” best. It was a tragedy in itself. It cut me to the core, and that's why I'm so protective of our members' right to anonimity. It was something Ray also felt strongly about: “it is an emotive and spectacular experience to ask of people, recounting an NDE - survivors are initially naive, and it robs us of something - NDEs are sensationalised for entertainment - telling our story comes at a cost to us NDEers – it's opening up Pandora’s box with the press - you have to think “why do they want to know?” - be careful about what we share - regarding your story, if you don't want it to get out, don't say it at all – it shouldn't be sensationalised or entertaining – we need reverence around the topic.”
Reverence. That's it. Through all of this I knew that my NDE was to be revered. And so were the Near Death Experiences of many, many others. I had started those initial gatherings with reverence and want to keep setting up meetings across the UK to offer survivors a safe and supportive place to talk about their experiences and challenges with those that compassionately understand. It is with that same reverence that we will keep marching forward on our journey with ourselves, with each other, and the entire NDE UK community hand in hand. There is no other option but to choose the light.
Join us.