March 21, 2025 • 51 mins
Sandra interviews Clinical Psychologist Tom Nehmy about induced After-Death Communication Therapy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. They invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with Chase of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:42):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi,
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, will discuss the reasons we now know
(01:02):
that our loved ones have survived physical death and so
will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. What if
I told you there was a grief therapy that could
greatly reduce the pain of your grief In only two
ninety minute reasonably priced sessions with a licensed therapist that
you could do in person or you could do on zoom.
(01:24):
And what if I told you that seventy five percent
of people here feel or see their deceased loved ones
during that process. Today you'll hear from award winning clinical
psychologist doctor Tom Nemi, whose innovative work has reached more
than fifty thousand people worldwide now believe it or not,
(01:47):
Doctor Tom first heard about induced after death communication therapy
on one of my earliest podcast episodes. He's the author
of the brand new book in spa Fired Life, Beautiful Death,
Healing Grief, Overcoming fear of death and living a Spiritual life.
His journey is fascinating and I know you'll love to
(02:11):
hear his words today. You can find out more on
his website, Healing Grief with IADC dot com. Here's doctor
Tom Neimi from Adelaide, Australia.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Thank you, Sandra. I've been so looking forward to this
and I've already said I'm a big fan. I've been
listening to your show for years and to now be
on your show is very exciting for me. I'm in
the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. That's where I live
and work. It's a lovely part of the world. So Sandra,
I was a curious child and I grew up had
(02:46):
a what I would call a reasonably normal kind of childhood.
People are very interested in the fact that I'm a triplet.
I have two brothers the same age. People find that
a little bit unusual, but it's normal for me life.
Growing up, I had a loving family. I was always
curious about the world around me, and I suppose that's
part of what led me down this path of thinking
(03:07):
about the afterlife and ending up as a psychologist and
ending up as an IDC therapist, which we'll get into
a due course, But for me, one of the early
parts of me going down this path was I developed
a bit of a fear of death. I remember being
at seven or eight and I realized for the first
(03:27):
time that everyone dies, and this was a little bit
concerning to me. I was just still figuring out the world,
but it made me feel really nervous. I didn't know
what it meant. And one day I was talking to
my grandmother. I was very very close to my nana,
and I remember this distinctly. I was eight years old.
She was putting some washing into our washing machine, and
(03:49):
she would visit our house all the time, and her
thing was she'd always do the washing to help my
mum out. And I was contemplating death and I was
feeling anxious, so I said to Nana, Nana, what happens
when we die? And she got this kind of look
at her face, like, oh, okay. She sort of then
thought about it for a moment, and then she went
(04:10):
back to just putting the washing into the washing machine
and she said, Tommy dear, it's just like going to sleep,
but you don't wake up. And this was Nana's attempt
to kind of comfort me. I suppose to just give
me a concise answer that my eight year old brain
could accept, but it didn't really comfort me. I thought,
what would that be like to go to sleep and
(04:31):
not wake up? And it just didn't fit right for me,
and I thought, well, does that mean everyone else I
know is just going to go to sleep and not
wake up? And what would that feel like? And it
really just made me more anxious, But it started me
asking more questions because I didn't intuitively feel that that
was the right answer. But over time, as I got older,
I would ask my parents to take me to metaphysical bookstores.
(04:54):
And this was pre the Internet and Amazon or whatever.
So I begged my mum to drive me to a
metaphysical bookstore so I could buy books and learn more.
And it was this gradual kind of awakening to different ideas,
different possibilities, even the idea that there is such a
thing as life after death, which I have to say
resonated with my soul on some level even as a child.
(05:18):
It also made me open to different experiences. So I
remember falling asleep as a kid and feeling energy running
through my body. I remember feeling comforted, almost like having
hands placed on my body, really comforting energy going into
my body as I fell asleep. I certainly wasn't one
of these people. And I know you've had some guests
(05:39):
who say, well, I was born with great intuition or
I always was so connected to tell us I I
feel like I'm a regular kind of person. But eventually
I developed a few experiences and a few little intuitions
that were evidence for me that there is life after death.
And in fact, one of those was directly relating to
my manner. She took care of me, She was really
(06:01):
my best friend growing up. She was just a very
very special person in my life. But as I got older,
I realized our connection went beyond just a loving family connection.
I would get this feeling whenever something was wrong with her.
At first I had no idea what this meant. One
example was I was driving home from university I just
(06:23):
started studying psychology, and I had this incredible feeling that
I needed to go to Nana. I had seen her
fairly recently. She seemed fine, but it was like an itch,
do you have to scratch? I had to go to her.
And as I arrived at Nana's house, she greeted me cheerfully,
as she always did. I went inside and I thought,
I she seems fine. What was I worried about? But
(06:46):
when I sat down, I smelled gas. I smelled the
overwhelming odor of lots of gas in the room. And
she had turned on her guess Berno to cook something
and not lit it. And if I hadn't got there,
I hate to think what would have happened. So some
of these early experiences of my otherwise regular childhood really
got me curious about what it all means. A few
(07:07):
of those intuitions were also just starting to get me
attuned to this possibility that there is an afterlife, there
is a spiritual world, and this is something that one
day I might want to pursue. And it's actually funny, Sandra,
because my spiritual thinking and beliefs were very personal to me,
and I kept them kind of a little to the side.
(07:28):
It wasn't something I would always talk to people about.
And I think many of your listeners might be in
the same boat, you know, for a long time, death
and the afterlife. Well, it's kind of still a taboo,
isn't it. It's something we don't often talk about. But
I ended up in psychology because my first choice of
profession didn't work out. I actually wanted to be a
racing driver, and I had a deal with my parents
(07:50):
that I was going to do my darndest to try
to be a professional racing driver, but if it didn't
work out, my plan be was I had to go
to university and I had to study something. This was
the deal I made with my parents, and I spent
a year after high school trying to find sponsorship, testing
race cars, really trying to have a good go of it.
And I know you've been a cook for race teams,
(08:12):
and you've done a lot of cheffing for race drivers
over the years, so it's a funny connection there. But unfortunately,
at the time, I was devastated my dream wasn't going
to come true. I didn't become a race car driver,
and that's what led me down the path of psychology.
So I studied psychology. I became a clinical psychologist, and
for many years I was doing what you'd call regular
psychological work. I was a therapist. I was helping people
(08:35):
with their anxiety and depression. Very interested in this side
of us that is spiritual in nature, but keeping that
kind of separate. All of that changed though. When I
was walking my dog, I was listening to an interview
with doctor Alan Botkin, and of course, doctor Alan Botkins,
many of your listeners may be aware, was the founder
(08:57):
of induced after death communication therapy, this amazing therapy that
was derived out of what is now a standard approach
to trauma called EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. When
I was doing my clinical training twenty years ago, people
thought EMDR was pretty weird. Oh, you move your eyes
back and forth and you feel better, and academics would
(09:19):
sometimes laugh at it a little bit, but it's now
the gold standard therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. It's
quite amazing. Well, Alan Bodkin I heard him talking about
being an early adopter of EMDR but working in a
Veterans Administration hospital with war veterans who were experiencing trauma.
But he adapted this standard EMDR protocol for dealing with
(09:44):
grief and loss because many of these traumas that these
veterans had been through involved loss. They involved death, either
combatants or their colleagues and comrades in a war zone.
And so he said, at the heart of these traumas
is loss, and he started focusing instead of just doing
aspects of the trauma that were fearful in the standard
(10:06):
kind of EMDR way, he would focus on sadness. And
he found that if he focused on sadness, the anger,
the fear of the guilt, all these other peripheral emotions
would just resolve, and it worked faster, it was more effective.
One day, he was doing this what he called core
focus to MDR with a patient and the patient spontaneously
(10:28):
reported that they saw the deceased person and they had
this really comforting message. And this patient who was hospitalized
because their post traumatic stress was so severe, recovered very
quickly and almost to a degree that doctor Botkin thought
was impossible. So when I heard you interviewing him, and
I subsequently read his book and I learned more about this.
(10:50):
I mean, at first it sounded too good to be true,
but this was the first time that my twin passions
of psychology when spirituality came together. I thought, well, if
this is true and it's not too good to be true,
and it can help people, then I simply must pursue this.
(11:11):
And so I thank you for that opportunity to learn
about that work because it was a pivotal turning point
in my life. I did my training in EMDR solely
for the purpose of hopefully becoming an IDC therapist. The
EMDR training was for people who are already registered mental
(11:31):
health professionals. It's like a three day long weekend intensive
training to get the level one EMDR. So I did
that just prior to COVID because I knew it was
a prerequisite to doing IADC. And then I had to
put everyone pause. I actually had this turns out erroneous
belief that I would need to fly to the States
(11:53):
in order to be trained in IDC. I later learned
that wasn't true. But I was kind of biding my
time until I'd be able to fly and pursue this.
But then actually something happened that really spurred me along
and got me to kick in to gear and find
out that I could be trained online. I watched the
movie Life with Ghosts by Stephen Berkeley, featuring Jan Holden
(12:15):
and Alan Botkin and Graham Maxi, and the fabulous documentary
that I know you've had on your show before. When
I watched this, it was like it pushed a button
in me. He was like, no, I'm not going to
wait any longer. If I have to fly to Chicago
or fly to Chicago, I'll do whatever it takes. And
then and there I emailed Alan Botkin and I said
I'm ready, Please tell me how I can be trained.
(12:37):
He wrote back and said he had just retired, but
I could train with Cessa Valdez in Michigan, who's one
of his IDC protegeatees. Only a month or so later,
I was trained. We did it over a couple of
days from Australia. We broke it up a little bit.
It's fairly intense, but then this was a certificate training
allowing me to start being an IADC practitioner.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
We'll be right back with more. You're listening to Shades
of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
AM Parinormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife.
(13:31):
I'm Sandra Champlain and we're here with clinical psychologist doctor
Tom Nemi, author of the book Inspired Life, Beautiful Death.
He was just saying that he completed his course in
IADC therapy, which stands for induced after death Communication. Let's continue.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
This was really the turning point. This was when I
started to pursue it. I started to help people in
grief using the IDC therapy protocol. It's worth saying that
I didn't think this was that far fetched because I
had actually had after death communications of my own. This
really ties into the relationship with Nana, because after Nana
(14:17):
passed away. She was eighty four when she died, and
it was sad, but she had had a full life.
And you know, we were so close, my Nana and I.
She was really this unconditionally loving person. It didn't matter
when I was young how much I stuffed up or
what I did. She always just loved me and spoiled me,
and so I remember thinking, if there is something out there,
(14:39):
if there is life after death, surely I'm going to
hear from my Nana. Well, months went by and there
was nothing. It made me question things, is this actually real?
But then it was eighteen months or two years after
she had died, and one morning I was coming out
of sleep. It was definitely not a dream, but I
(15:02):
saw her, and I saw her in full color, high definition.
I don't know where I was. My eyes were closed,
but Nana was there, and she looked about sixty years old,
she was younger. She had her urban curls, her blue
eyes and this bright red lipstick on it, and she
was smiling at me, and I had this absolute feeling
of love wash over me. I still get tingles when
(15:23):
I talk about it. I felt she was there. I
knew she was there. It only lasted a moment. And
when I opened my eyes and I was in bed
and it was morning, there were tears soaking the pillow.
I didn't realize I was crying, but it was just
obviously such an emotional thing to see Nana, and I
mentally said to her nanny, you look so good, you
seem so well. And she didn't say anything back, she
(15:45):
was just smiling. But this was an incredibly healing thing.
I thought, Wow, she is okay. I knew she was
okay because it wasn't a dream. I felt her presence.
You know that feeling when there's someone in the room
and you feel their presence. It's not a image, it's
actually something happening, right and now. Actually I had a
couple more experiences with her at critical junctures things were
(16:07):
going on in my life, and she was there again.
And then it happened again when my mum's dad passed away,
my grandpa, the same thing. Coming out of sleep, I
saw him. He looked about thirty years old and again
incredibly comforting. It wasn't a dream. And it happened a
third time, Sandra, it happened when my mum's mom passed
away just a few years ago at the age of
(16:28):
one hundred and three. My nanny had an incredible life
of good health and good fortune, and I hope I
got some of those genes, but igin it. That time,
it was about a week after she passed away. I
saw her, and this time she hugged me. Some people
have ADC's and they hear things or they see things.
I actually felt her embrace and she was so happy.
(16:52):
She was like she wanted me to know she was
happy and well. And again, this was just the most
comforting thing. So when I started exploring induce staff to
death communication as a therapy, I didn't need to be
convinced that ADCs exist, and in fact, they're extremely common,
extremely common. The most conservative estimates are that about thirty
(17:12):
percent of people will have had an after death communication,
and there's some research that says it's much higher than that.
So I'd had this button pushed inside of me. I'd
seen life with ghost I knew ADC's were real, and
I thought, this is part of my purpose. I need
to now pursue this. So that was really the beginning
of me becoming a grief therapist. And if someone had
(17:34):
said to me fifteen years ago, oh, Tom, you're going
to end up a grief therapist, I'd say, jump in
the lake. There's no way that's going to happen. Because
the truth is I was a scaredy cat of grief.
I didn't feel like I could help grieving people. I
felt helpless in the face of grief. So this is
a bit of a confession, really, because you think of therapists,
(17:55):
they've always got these tools to help their clients, right,
And if someone came to me with anxiety, if they
came to me with depression, I had tools. But when
people came to me and they're in deep grief, I
felt helpless. I was willing to sit with them, I
was willing to try to help them deal with their emotions,
but I didn't think I could fix anything. I couldn't
make a substantive difference to their sadness. And this is
(18:17):
the breakthrough that IDC is, because it dramatically reduces people's
sadness after somebody has died. I see it as a
breakthrough in psychotherapy, in fact, because part of now becoming
a grief therapist, and I have other psychological work that
I do, But part of what led me down this
(18:38):
path is I wanted to contribute to the scientific acceptance
of IDC therapy. It would be too easy for mainstream
scientists to say this sounds weird or to be dismissive
of it because it seems different, but it's very healing
and very natural. In fact, I see it as an
ethical obligation. You know, if a health practitioner comes across
(18:59):
something that can help people better than anything else to date,
we have a moral obligation to pursue that and to
disseminate that. So I, along with my colleague John Daniels
from Queensland here in Australia and I'm a visiting research
fellow at the University of Adelaide, we conducted a controlled
trial of IDC therapy. I wanted to be able to
(19:22):
put forward some research evidence with scientific credibility into hopefully
what we'll publish it in a mainstream scientific journal, to
help therapist realize, regardless of your beliefs about the afterlife,
this is very likely to be healing for people in grief,
and we have an ethical obligation to make it available
(19:43):
to people. It's not suitable for everyone, but for those
for whom it is suitable, we really need to put
this to them as an option because a lot of
people can benefit. And we saw forty three people in
this study. We had a one month control baseline period,
so we measured their grief at time one, we didn't
do anything for a month, we measured it again and
(20:04):
then we gave them these two ninety minute sessions. So
the IDC therapy protocol is incredibly brief. Two ninety minute
sessions is really the entirety of the intervention. And then
we measured their grief symptoms and their sadness a month later. Well,
what we found was that over the baseline period their
grief didn't change. We gave them these two sessions, and
(20:26):
then their sadness and their grief symptoms were significantly lower
a month later. And in fact, to put this into
terms that are kind of translating this science, we talk
about something called effect sizes in therapy research. It's like
a degree of the strength of the impact. Well, we
(20:48):
affect sizes that reduction in grief symptoms, reduction in sadness
is greater than almost two times greater in some cases
then your typical psychological therapies like cognitive behavior therapy for
anxiety and depression, and they might be doing it in ten,
twelve twenty sessions. We're doing it in two. That's how
(21:11):
strong this is. So the world needs to know about it.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
That's incredible, and each and every one of us who
has grieved the death of a loved one knows that
grief is the most painful thing that we go through.
I remember after my dad died, it felt like four
years before a dark cloud lifted from me. Even believing
(21:37):
in the afterlife, there's still sadness that you miss the person. Now,
you see, the therapy is not for everybody. Can you
just talk a little bit more about that, because I
know there's people that want to go see a medium.
This is way different. This is focusing on healing grief
and sadness and having a loved one come through. Shall
(22:00):
I say a side effect, something wonderful that happens, but
the main thrust really is for grief and sadness.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Correct, that's right, That's exactly right. And so we find
that this does affect people in different ways than seeing
a medium. Now, if people want to see mediums, that's
absolutely fine, and for some people that's going to be
very healing. But I think that IDC offers something different
and potentially more effective because what we do is target
(22:32):
the sadness and literally where that emotion is stored in
the brain by having people feel their sadness. And the
reason it's not suitable perhaps for everybody, is because it
can be a very intense therapy. We help reduce sadness
by applying what we call bilateral stimulation. We stimulate both
(22:52):
hemispheres of the brain alternately, and we can do that
through eye movement, having somebody follow your fingers from left
to right, or tapping alternately their shoulders, or the therapist
can lean in and tap the person's hands alternately left, right, left, right.
This is a healing mode that our brains have. It's
a very natural healing mode and one of the theories
(23:14):
around how it works is that when we sleep, we
go through a stage called rem rapid eye movement, where
our eyes naturally dart back and forth, and this seems
to be associated with processing of stored emotion healing. It's
one of the reasons why we feel better after we've slept.
It's not just that we're not tired anymore, so that
(23:37):
our brain has done this emotional processing work well. We
can put our brains into that healing state, that special
mode while we're awake by using bilateral stimulation. And what
idic therapy does is it has people experience bilateral stimulation
while they're feeling the most strong sadness that they can access.
(23:58):
So we will say to people what is the most
sad part of this person dying. And for some people
it's a really intense traumatic memory. It might be when
I got the phone call that they'd died, or for somebody,
it might be when the coffin was lowered into the ground. Also,
this sadness can be really general things I miss him
or she won't be there to see our daughter graduate,
(24:21):
or whatever the case may be. And we require people
to be willing to fully feel their emotions. We need
them to be able to step into that full burn
of that intensity, and then we apply this eye movement
or tapping, and it's by doing that through successive sets
of bilateral stimulation, might be one to two minutes at
(24:41):
a time, we notice that the sadness gradually increases. And
as doctor Botkin says, once we start, we don't stop.
If you were driving through a dark tunnel and you
felt uncomfortable, you wouldn't stop your car and get out.
You put your foot on the gas, right, And so
we say to people, you've got to keep your foot
on the gas. The therapist does the steering, but you've
got to put your foot on the gas. So it
(25:03):
is intense. It requires a willingness to feel that intensity
and an ability to really access those emotions. Now, this
is challenging sometimes because of course, grieving people spend every
day managing their emotions. They've got to go to work,
they go to the shops. They deal with trying to
function in their life, so they're used to pushing it
(25:24):
down or managing in some way.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It's time for a quick break and we'll be right back.
You'll discover some interesting stories from induced after death communication therapy.
You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back
(26:00):
to Sheads of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue
with doctor Tom Nemi and induced after death Communication therapy.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It is intense. It requires a willingness to feel that
intensity and an ability to really access those emotions. Now,
this is challenging sometimes because of course, grieving people spend
every day managing their emotions. They've got to go to work,
they go to the shops. They deal with trying to
function in their life, so they're used to pushing it
(26:32):
down or managing it in some way. But when we
have a client sit in front of us in ITDC.
We say, I don't want you to manage it, I
don't want you to push it down. I want you
to feel it. So it can be quite an intense therapy,
and we always screen people to make sure that they're
willing to fully access it. And of course the good
news is this is such a rapidly acting therapy that
(26:56):
we see people sadness no matter how intense it is,
even if they say it's ten out of ten and
they're very distressed, we see eventually that sadness reducing. People
start saying I feel peaceful, I feel calm. I mean,
this is incredible. I wouldn't expect with any other therapy
to have a client on the start of their first
appointment so distressed that it's ten out of ten in intensity,
(27:18):
and at the end of the second appointment say it's
zero or it's a one, or I'm feeling good. And
that's what we notice. That's why this is so remarkable.
And the cherry on top is maybe about three quarters
of people will say they perceive the presence of their
loved one in some way, three quarters of the people,
(27:38):
three quarters.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That's amazing. Do I need to see a therapist in
person or can any of this be done via zoom?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Well, this was precisely one of the research questions we
had in our University of Adelaide's study. We did a
bunch of these sessions over zoom, we did a bunch
of them in person, and we analyze the data to
see is there any difference. And the good news is
there was basically no difference. So people can tune in
(28:08):
from anywhere in the world literally over zoomed from the
comfort of their own home, and they can expect to
have a very similar level of effectiveness as if you
were in the room with the therapist.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
That is beyond good news. And yes, you have a
moral responsibility to share this as far as you can,
and I will help you as best as I can.
Could you talk about some of the experiences people have.
Do they literally feel the presence? Do they get a
visual sometimes hear a voice? Sometimes? What kind of things
(28:39):
could happen?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
This is the part that people are very intrigued about,
and it's fascinating. It's worth mentioning that if people are
in that quarter where they don't have an ADC, that's
not a problem. I mean, generally, our objective is to
reduce sadness, and it's well over ninety percent of people.
We're reducing sadness. So if people don't have an ADC,
sometimes they'll be a bit disappointed. But I try to
(29:02):
downplay the likelihood of that because when people are yearning
for it and they're grasping for it and they're just
so focused on that, it gets in the way of
reducing the sadness. And I always say to people, our
job number one is to help you to feel better
and to feel less sad so that you can function
in your life, to give you some peace and acceptance.
And if we do that, we've succeeded. If you have
(29:23):
an ABC, it's a cherry on top, it's a bonus.
So we see a whole range of different experiences. It
can range from quite subtle to very elaborate and intense.
It can access a whole range of sensory modalities. For
some people it's visual. They'll say, I'm just seeing this
(29:44):
scene play out in my mind's eye. I've written about
nine of these case studies in my book. If people
want to read them in detail, so we go to
a lot of detail, and I've got permission from those
people to share their stories and I've given them pseudonyms.
One client who are refer is Sheena. In the book,
her son had died. They thought it was probably from
a drug overdose. And there are a lot of traumas
(30:07):
that had happened in his life and her life, trying
to keep him safe from drugs and crime and all
sorts of things. But one of her questions was she
wanted to know is he alone or is he there
with other people? Is he loved? And she asked this
question at the point that her sadness was already reducing.
She was reporting that she felt an atmosphere change in
(30:28):
the room. She just spontaneously said, I'm feeling there's like
an energy in the room. There's an atmosphere here. And
she said, I feel like someone's just tapped me on
the leg. I feel like someone just put the hand
on my shoulder. She was getting these sensory tactile phenomena,
which is not unusual, doesn't happen for everyone. And then
she asked that question, is he there with someone else?
Is he loved? Does he have company where he is?
(30:51):
She closed her eyes after we did some more bilateral stimulation,
and she saw a vision of her son quite clearly
on a grass verge, surrounded by other people. So his
best friend was there who had died, and she described
that he waved his arm around as if to say, look,
of course, I'm not alone. I've got all these people
(31:13):
with me. And she described this movement that he made.
But not only that, in that moment she saw the
dog who had died, the auntie had died. She said,
I'm seeing all of these people who have passed, and
they're looking younger, and he's smiling at me. So, you know,
for her, this was her ADC and it was so reassuring.
(31:33):
It answered her question perfectly that he wasn't alone, and
he was loved and he was very content, and he
wanted her to know that. We see a whole range
of these experiences. I had one young lady whose grandmother
had passed, and she had almost every sensory experience you
can imagine. She said, I feel like I've just been hugged.
(31:56):
She said, I can hear her, I can smell something,
I can see her. This is not typical, but she
had all these different types of ADC elements very much
in her two sessions. So yeah, it's quite a range
of phenomena. That we observe and we don't impose any
interpretation on people. I always so, what does it mean
(32:17):
to you that you just noticed this, And in particular,
how does it feel. IDC is a very emotion driven therapy,
and when people are having that experience, they say, I
feel incredible peace or incredible love, or I now feel
very accepting of this. That's part of why it's life changing.
It just adds to the therapeutic effect.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
There is something tom to go from a belief to
a knowing. So to have that experience with your loved one,
you can start living your life again knowing that they're okay.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
And that's what people say. They say, I was waking
up every day thinking, oh gosh, I'm still here, and
they didn't want to still be here. They were so
struck down by their grief and sadness. To them saying
I wake up and I feel ready to get on
with my day. And people say you look different, you
feel different, you sound different. They will literally say this
(33:10):
is life changing, or I've got my life back, or
I'm back to my old self. And for some people,
they have been stuck in grief for months and years
and it's almost like We've flicked a switch somehow and
they can now cope much better. It doesn't remove the
devastating fact that their loved one died, but that intense
(33:32):
sadness is markedly reduced. They feel more accepting, they feel
more at peace, and very often they report that they
feel an ongoing sense of connection with the person. So
in our research we ask people, you know, if you
had any ADCs since your therapy sessions, and a number
of people said, yes, I have, or I feel them
(33:53):
close to me, or I've been having more dreams of them,
and yeah. It seems to just open a door for
some people where they have that sense of an ongoing
presence and a continuing bond, which we know from grief
research is really healthy for people. It helps them adapt
and it helps them be able to live and to
regain their quality of life.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Does this therapy tom, Is it specifically for someone who
has lost a loved one or I know people who
have been devastated by the breakup of a relationship or
have been given a life threatening disease and are going
through that anticipatory grief. Can it help in other ways?
If someone were to meet.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
With you, I think it is likely to help them.
The difference is that when somebody is bereaved because of
a death, that's where there's that ADC component, that sense
of an after death communication. But I sense that the
method itself is very likely to be helpful for those
other things as well. And it's a great question because
(34:56):
this is a field that warrants a lot more research.
I know Jan Holden did a study at the University
of North Texas and that's in the documentary Life with Guys.
But I hope that it isn't just down to Jan
and me. I hope there's more researchers and more people
maybe seeking out grant funding and doing bigger studies, because
certainly the potential here is really significant.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Well, it's funny. I heard a story not too long
ago about gentlemen listening to my podcast who did the
research and now he's got a book and now he's
helping people, and he's now being interviewed by me right now.
So we're going to trust that these words are going
to land to more people who will continue on with this,
(35:36):
even some therapists who may not know that they can
learn this as well and make a difference with people.
I love it. How can people best find out about it,
talk a little bit about somebody would like to book
a session with you. Isn't there a questionnaire that you
have for people as well to make sure they're fit.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, So I have a pre screening set of questions
on my website, Healing Grief with IADC dot com. And
I'm calling this my virtual private practice because it's the
means through which I can reach people anywhere in the
world and facilitate these sessions over zoom. So if people
go to that website, they can click on the pre
(36:18):
screening button and it will give them five or six
questions that will help them figure out if they're likely
to be a good fit or if the therapy is
likely to be a good fit for them. There's also
some information about what to expect and what's involved, so
they're welcome to read through that, and then if they
think it is something they might like to proceed with,
(36:38):
they can book in a screening call, which is just
a twenty five minute chat over zoom where I would
ask them some specific questions. It's absolutely free of charge.
It's no obligation at all, but it's just to find
out if it's a good fit and we go through
that set of screening questions in about twenty five minutes,
and then I can answer any questions a person has
(36:58):
and they can figure out then if collectively we decide
if it's right for them and we can book it in.
So yeah, there's quite a bit of information out there.
Don't forget. Alan Botkin wrote his fabulous book which was
now twenty years ago, interestingly enough, Induced after Death Communication.
It's a great book. And of course there's nine detailed
case studies in my book which will give people a
(37:19):
feel for what it looks like and feels like to
be in a session.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Tell us more about your book and what else we
can find in it, because certainly there's got to be
some spiritual lessons or something that you've gleaned from all
this investigation.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
There are, there are, So it's a funny book. I
think it's a bit of a cross genre thing. It's
part memoir, it's part psychology, it's part spirituality. But aside
from my personal journey from being this cowardly grief therapist
who didn't want to deal with grief and felt helpless,
to being someone who was really seeking out grieving clients
(37:54):
and these really amazing case studies that people have given
me permission graciously to share.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
We'll be right back with some more empowering words from
doctor Tom Nemi. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife
on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
(38:30):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and doctor Tom Nemi was just about to tell us
about his book, Inspired Life, Beautiful Death, Healing Grief, overcoming
fear of death and living a spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
It's part memoir, it's part psychology, it's part spirituality. But
aside from my personal journey from being this cowardly grief
therapist who didn't want to deal with grief and felt
helpless to being someone who really seeking out grieving clients
and these really amazing case studies that people have given
(39:06):
me permission graciously to share. But there's also a lot
of spiritual lessons because when we accept it as facts
that we don't die, and that there is a spiritual world,
and that our bonds are not broken with death and
we're still connected to our loved ones, there are implications
of that for how we live. I spent a lot
(39:26):
of time exploring the testimony of near death experiences and
learning more about the life review. I mean, this is
one of the most common features that we hear from
near death experiences is that I saw this review of
my life. But it's of course not just like watching
a movie. They feel their interactions with other people, they
(39:48):
feel the consequences of their influence in their life. And
when people come back from that, it's just this extraordinary
set of contrary beliefs about what matters. Because in our
physical world we're so caught up in status and achievement
and assets and money and celebrity. We've got this whole
(40:08):
materialist world around us that tells us this is what
you should judge yourself by. Well, none of that matters
a dot in the afterlife. This is the lesson. None
of that matters. What matters is did you love with
your life? For you an influence of kindness, and did
you leave people better than you found them? See. The
(40:29):
good news is that if anyone out there listening thinks
I want to be a spiritual person, but I don't
know how, the good news is anyone can be spiritual
in their life by thinking about their actions day to
day and their influence on others. For me, that's what
spirituality is. Sure, you can do your meditations and you
can do all other things, but real spirituality is about
(40:53):
our influence on others every day of the week. And
as soon as I heard about the life of you,
and I read so many different accounts of it, I thought,
how can I apply this now? Because Okay, I accept
that I'm going to have a life review when I die.
I'm hoping that's a long way away. I can't bank
on that. But we could have this kind of calmic procrastination. Well,
(41:13):
I guess I'll face that when the time comes. But
I thought, how do we remember this reality day to day?
And so I started doing something I call the day review,
not in the life review, the day review. And I
do this every day. Occasionally I fall asleep if I'm
really tired before I finish this, but I do it
when I get into bed, and anyone can do this.
It just takes a few minutes. A day review involves
(41:36):
thinking back on your day from the moment you got
up to the moment you got into bed, and thinking
about all of the main interactions you had with other people,
and just thinking did I act from a position of
a loving intent, because we know intentions matter. It's not
just about how do you make someone feel, it's about
(41:57):
your intention, It's about influence on somebody else. And the
strangest thing happened because I didn't want to wait to
the end of my life to figure out am I
living in this way that the spiritual world is going
to view as beneficial? But I started realizing there were
a lot of times where I was impulsive, short tempered,
(42:19):
didn't really consider the other person moment, so I would
be selfish, and it brought this into full view. And
then doing it regularly, something strange happened. I started thinking
about my day review during the day, and so I
would be in the midst of an interaction with someone
and I'd have this moment where I'd think, just take
(42:40):
a breath, or can your word this differently? Or what
does your body language say? It made me be more
present with other people. It made me be more thoughtful,
It made me be more kind, and that is transformative
because these are the things that we know the spiritual
world is going to show us at the end of
our life, So why not start now and live a
(43:04):
spiritual life in this very practical everyday kind of way.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Absolutely. How about showing kindness to yourself? Is that part
of the review?
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Definitely? So you know, self compassion is part of being compassionate,
and it's funny. In my other psychological work, I do
a lot of work on the prevention of anxiety and depression.
Our research in that area found that self compassion treating
yourself kindly is one of the most protective things that
you can do for your well being. It reduces your
(43:33):
risk for anxiety and depression. And I'm absolutely certain that
for people in grief, treating themselves kindly is also going
to help mitigate the distress from that grief and that
judgment of why aren't I functioning at my best when
I'm in grief? Why aren't I able to do X,
Y or Z. Self compassion is absolutely critical, and I
had to be kind to myself when I noticed myself
(43:57):
being impulsive and impatient. I had to say, well, hang on,
I'm doing my best, and so it was a prompt
for me to apply self compassion there too.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Those are good words. I know that there's thoughts in
our mind that we have about ourselves that we would
never voice to another person. I don't know why we're
so tough aut ourselves. It's part of a human being
this So I think to have that day review in
catching yourself in the act we human beings. I'm convinced
we're doing the best we can with what we've got,
(44:28):
and to spend our day thinking oh I should have
done that, or having the guilt or having the fear
to catch ourselves like, we're doing the best we can
and we're not alone.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
If you catch yeah, and if you catch yourself in
that moment of harsh self judgment, as I think we
both have from time to time, we're both happy to
fess up to. That is to now be able to say, well,
if that was my dearest friend who had just said
that about themselves, if that was someone I'm really close to,
who was judging themselves harshly and deriding themselves, what would
(44:59):
I say to them and what would I do that
actually helps them? If we can apply that kindness to ourselves,
that self compassion in action.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Thank you for that. Tom. I happen to notice on
your website you have another book, Apples for the Mind,
creating emotional balance, peak performance and lifelong well being.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Can you tell us what that is? Sure? That book
came out of my work in preventive psychology and developing
a program. We call it the Healthy Minds Program, and
we run that in schools around Australia and we go
into companies where we teach people the psychological skills that
help you to have a healthy emotional life. And in
fact we prove that you can prevent the onset of
(45:40):
symptoms of anxiety and depression, you can reduce risk for
eating disorders, and you can do it by teaching people
these psychological skills of how to have a healthy mind.
And so I put a lot of that into my
first book, which came out about six years ago, and
that's kind of a personal development book talking about these
psychological skills.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I'm so proud of you and the work that you've
done and that you will continue to do speaking engagements.
I know you are open for interviews. Are you speaking anywhere?
I believe there's an IM's which is our friends at
International Association for Near Death Studies coming up in Chicago
in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Correct, there is, And I'm absolutely thrilled that I'll be
presenting at the Chicago IONS conference in late August. Thrilled
to have been invited to be part of a panel
presentation with Professor Jan Holden and Graham Maxi, who I
think you've had on your show as well, and doctor
Noel Saint Jermain Sair as well, who is a co
(46:41):
executive director of IDC. So I was just really so
humbled and excited when I got invited to be on
that panel and present my research and be part of
that discussion. So yes, I'll be in Chicago in late August,
and I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Incredible conferences the folks at IMS puts on Iams dot
org is their website. Even if you don't attend a conference,
they have so many things, and if you're interested in
near death experiences, they have a treasure trove of thousands
of experiences you can read. They have chapters all over
the world, and you can join these days by zoom.
(47:18):
Very very good people. I know you'll really enjoy that, Tom.
What else would you like to share with our time
together or is there any closing words? What do we
need to hear?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
What else we could go on forever we could? I
think just a couple of things that came out from
my studies and research and my own personal journey through
all of this is the dying is beautiful. And that
sounds like a strange thing to say, but I've read
so many NDE testimonies, and that's the title of a
chapter in my book. Part of the distress of grief
(47:51):
is those questions where are they and what happened and
what did they experience? But we now have this enormous
body of evidence from near death experience. We can collectively
take all these different anecdotal accounts and regarded as scientific evidence,
because if everybody's reporting this stuff, it's valid and it's
worth paying attention to. So just the fact that dying
(48:14):
generally is not distressing, that's not what people report. When
people die suddenly, they often say, well, I left my
body before the accident or whatever may have happened. And
sometimes when people are resuscitated and they talk about their
near death experiences, they're annoyed. They didn't necessarily want to
come back because they felt so good. And so these
are some really comforting lessons, really comforting realizations for people
(48:38):
who are in grief. And so I've just feel so
lucky and grateful to have been directed down this path
to meet you and learn about Alan Botkin and hear
about all of these amazing things that so many people
are doing, and to then gain these insights that have
brought me a lot of comfort, and I think can
bring a lot of other people comfort as well. So
(48:59):
there's a lot of good. It's about the reality of
life after death, the fact that we can heal grief,
and we're not just healing it a little bit. People
are feeling a lot better after IDC therapy, and I'm
just so excited about what the future holds because there's
lots more work to be done and certainly I'm going
to keep doing it. So I really appreciate you letting
(49:21):
me share that story with everybody, And yeah, there'll be
exciting things to come, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I'm so excited for you and for the world. I
tell you, I said it before grief. I would never
wish it on anyone. It's horrible, but the more we love,
the more pain there is. And so on one respect,
you say, I really have a big capacity for love
based on how I'm feeling, and I do think part
(49:47):
of being human, the biggest parts are learning how to love,
to forgive, and being of service to others. So we're
like minded in that way. Tom, thank you so much
for being our guest today.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
It's been an amazing pleasure.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Thank you, Sandra, and I loved it as well. Don't
forget to visit Tom's website, Healing Grief with ia DC
dot com. And while you're on the internet, come visit
me at We Don'tdie dot com. Be sure to enter
your name and email address at the bottom of the page,
(50:21):
and I've got some wonderful surprises for you there. I'm
Sandra Champlain and from the bottom of my heart, thank
you for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
And you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thanks for choosing the iHeartRadio and Coast to Ghost Day
and Paranormal Podcast Network. Your quest for podcasts of the paranormal, supernatural,
and the unexplained ends here. They invite you to enjoy
all our shows we have on this network, and right now,
let's start with Chase of the Afterlife with Sandra Champlain.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
opinions expressed by the host are their thoughts and opinions
only and do not reflect those of iHeartMedia, iHeartRadio, Coast
to Coast AM employees of Premiere Networks, or their sponsors
and associates. We would like to encourage you to do
(00:42):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself. Hi,
I'm Sandra Champlain. For over twenty five years, I've been
on a journey to prove the existence of life after death.
On each episode, will discuss the reasons we now know
(01:02):
that our loved ones have survived physical death and so
will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. What if
I told you there was a grief therapy that could
greatly reduce the pain of your grief In only two
ninety minute reasonably priced sessions with a licensed therapist that
you could do in person or you could do on zoom.
(01:24):
And what if I told you that seventy five percent
of people here feel or see their deceased loved ones
during that process. Today you'll hear from award winning clinical
psychologist doctor Tom Nemi, whose innovative work has reached more
than fifty thousand people worldwide now believe it or not,
(01:47):
Doctor Tom first heard about induced after death communication therapy
on one of my earliest podcast episodes. He's the author
of the brand new book in spa Fired Life, Beautiful Death,
Healing Grief, Overcoming fear of death and living a Spiritual life.
His journey is fascinating and I know you'll love to
(02:11):
hear his words today. You can find out more on
his website, Healing Grief with IADC dot com. Here's doctor
Tom Neimi from Adelaide, Australia.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Thank you, Sandra. I've been so looking forward to this
and I've already said I'm a big fan. I've been
listening to your show for years and to now be
on your show is very exciting for me. I'm in
the Adelaide Hills of South Australia. That's where I live
and work. It's a lovely part of the world. So Sandra,
I was a curious child and I grew up had
(02:46):
a what I would call a reasonably normal kind of childhood.
People are very interested in the fact that I'm a triplet.
I have two brothers the same age. People find that
a little bit unusual, but it's normal for me life.
Growing up, I had a loving family. I was always
curious about the world around me, and I suppose that's
part of what led me down this path of thinking
(03:07):
about the afterlife and ending up as a psychologist and
ending up as an IDC therapist, which we'll get into
a due course, But for me, one of the early
parts of me going down this path was I developed
a bit of a fear of death. I remember being
at seven or eight and I realized for the first
(03:27):
time that everyone dies, and this was a little bit
concerning to me. I was just still figuring out the world,
but it made me feel really nervous. I didn't know
what it meant. And one day I was talking to
my grandmother. I was very very close to my nana,
and I remember this distinctly. I was eight years old.
She was putting some washing into our washing machine, and
(03:49):
she would visit our house all the time, and her
thing was she'd always do the washing to help my
mum out. And I was contemplating death and I was
feeling anxious, so I said to Nana, Nana, what happens
when we die? And she got this kind of look
at her face, like, oh, okay. She sort of then
thought about it for a moment, and then she went
(04:10):
back to just putting the washing into the washing machine
and she said, Tommy dear, it's just like going to sleep,
but you don't wake up. And this was Nana's attempt
to kind of comfort me. I suppose to just give
me a concise answer that my eight year old brain
could accept, but it didn't really comfort me. I thought,
what would that be like to go to sleep and
(04:31):
not wake up? And it just didn't fit right for me,
and I thought, well, does that mean everyone else I
know is just going to go to sleep and not
wake up? And what would that feel like? And it
really just made me more anxious, But it started me
asking more questions because I didn't intuitively feel that that
was the right answer. But over time, as I got older,
I would ask my parents to take me to metaphysical bookstores.
(04:54):
And this was pre the Internet and Amazon or whatever.
So I begged my mum to drive me to a
metaphysical bookstore so I could buy books and learn more.
And it was this gradual kind of awakening to different ideas,
different possibilities, even the idea that there is such a
thing as life after death, which I have to say
resonated with my soul on some level even as a child.
(05:18):
It also made me open to different experiences. So I
remember falling asleep as a kid and feeling energy running
through my body. I remember feeling comforted, almost like having
hands placed on my body, really comforting energy going into
my body as I fell asleep. I certainly wasn't one
of these people. And I know you've had some guests
(05:39):
who say, well, I was born with great intuition or
I always was so connected to tell us I I
feel like I'm a regular kind of person. But eventually
I developed a few experiences and a few little intuitions
that were evidence for me that there is life after death.
And in fact, one of those was directly relating to
my manner. She took care of me, She was really
(06:01):
my best friend growing up. She was just a very
very special person in my life. But as I got older,
I realized our connection went beyond just a loving family connection.
I would get this feeling whenever something was wrong with her.
At first I had no idea what this meant. One
example was I was driving home from university I just
(06:23):
started studying psychology, and I had this incredible feeling that
I needed to go to Nana. I had seen her
fairly recently. She seemed fine, but it was like an itch,
do you have to scratch? I had to go to her.
And as I arrived at Nana's house, she greeted me cheerfully,
as she always did. I went inside and I thought,
I she seems fine. What was I worried about? But
(06:46):
when I sat down, I smelled gas. I smelled the
overwhelming odor of lots of gas in the room. And
she had turned on her guess Berno to cook something
and not lit it. And if I hadn't got there,
I hate to think what would have happened. So some
of these early experiences of my otherwise regular childhood really
got me curious about what it all means. A few
(07:07):
of those intuitions were also just starting to get me
attuned to this possibility that there is an afterlife, there
is a spiritual world, and this is something that one
day I might want to pursue. And it's actually funny, Sandra,
because my spiritual thinking and beliefs were very personal to me,
and I kept them kind of a little to the side.
(07:28):
It wasn't something I would always talk to people about.
And I think many of your listeners might be in
the same boat, you know, for a long time, death
and the afterlife. Well, it's kind of still a taboo,
isn't it. It's something we don't often talk about. But
I ended up in psychology because my first choice of
profession didn't work out. I actually wanted to be a
racing driver, and I had a deal with my parents
(07:50):
that I was going to do my darndest to try
to be a professional racing driver, but if it didn't
work out, my plan be was I had to go
to university and I had to study something. This was
the deal I made with my parents, and I spent
a year after high school trying to find sponsorship, testing
race cars, really trying to have a good go of it.
And I know you've been a cook for race teams,
(08:12):
and you've done a lot of cheffing for race drivers
over the years, so it's a funny connection there. But unfortunately,
at the time, I was devastated my dream wasn't going
to come true. I didn't become a race car driver,
and that's what led me down the path of psychology.
So I studied psychology. I became a clinical psychologist, and
for many years I was doing what you'd call regular
psychological work. I was a therapist. I was helping people
(08:35):
with their anxiety and depression. Very interested in this side
of us that is spiritual in nature, but keeping that
kind of separate. All of that changed though. When I
was walking my dog, I was listening to an interview
with doctor Alan Botkin, and of course, doctor Alan Botkins,
many of your listeners may be aware, was the founder
(08:57):
of induced after death communication therapy, this amazing therapy that
was derived out of what is now a standard approach
to trauma called EMDR eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. When
I was doing my clinical training twenty years ago, people
thought EMDR was pretty weird. Oh, you move your eyes
back and forth and you feel better, and academics would
(09:19):
sometimes laugh at it a little bit, but it's now
the gold standard therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. It's
quite amazing. Well, Alan Bodkin I heard him talking about
being an early adopter of EMDR but working in a
Veterans Administration hospital with war veterans who were experiencing trauma.
But he adapted this standard EMDR protocol for dealing with
(09:44):
grief and loss because many of these traumas that these
veterans had been through involved loss. They involved death, either
combatants or their colleagues and comrades in a war zone.
And so he said, at the heart of these traumas
is loss, and he started focusing instead of just doing
aspects of the trauma that were fearful in the standard
(10:06):
kind of EMDR way, he would focus on sadness. And
he found that if he focused on sadness, the anger,
the fear of the guilt, all these other peripheral emotions
would just resolve, and it worked faster, it was more effective.
One day, he was doing this what he called core
focus to MDR with a patient and the patient spontaneously
(10:28):
reported that they saw the deceased person and they had
this really comforting message. And this patient who was hospitalized
because their post traumatic stress was so severe, recovered very
quickly and almost to a degree that doctor Botkin thought
was impossible. So when I heard you interviewing him, and
I subsequently read his book and I learned more about this.
(10:50):
I mean, at first it sounded too good to be true,
but this was the first time that my twin passions
of psychology when spirituality came together. I thought, well, if
this is true and it's not too good to be true,
and it can help people, then I simply must pursue this.
(11:11):
And so I thank you for that opportunity to learn
about that work because it was a pivotal turning point
in my life. I did my training in EMDR solely
for the purpose of hopefully becoming an IDC therapist. The
EMDR training was for people who are already registered mental
(11:31):
health professionals. It's like a three day long weekend intensive
training to get the level one EMDR. So I did
that just prior to COVID because I knew it was
a prerequisite to doing IADC. And then I had to
put everyone pause. I actually had this turns out erroneous
belief that I would need to fly to the States
(11:53):
in order to be trained in IDC. I later learned
that wasn't true. But I was kind of biding my
time until I'd be able to fly and pursue this.
But then actually something happened that really spurred me along
and got me to kick in to gear and find
out that I could be trained online. I watched the
movie Life with Ghosts by Stephen Berkeley, featuring Jan Holden
(12:15):
and Alan Botkin and Graham Maxi, and the fabulous documentary
that I know you've had on your show before. When
I watched this, it was like it pushed a button
in me. He was like, no, I'm not going to
wait any longer. If I have to fly to Chicago
or fly to Chicago, I'll do whatever it takes. And
then and there I emailed Alan Botkin and I said
I'm ready, Please tell me how I can be trained.
(12:37):
He wrote back and said he had just retired, but
I could train with Cessa Valdez in Michigan, who's one
of his IDC protegeatees. Only a month or so later,
I was trained. We did it over a couple of
days from Australia. We broke it up a little bit.
It's fairly intense, but then this was a certificate training
allowing me to start being an IADC practitioner.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
We'll be right back with more. You're listening to Shades
of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
AM Parinormal Podcast Network. Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife.
(13:31):
I'm Sandra Champlain and we're here with clinical psychologist doctor
Tom Nemi, author of the book Inspired Life, Beautiful Death.
He was just saying that he completed his course in
IADC therapy, which stands for induced after death Communication. Let's continue.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
This was really the turning point. This was when I
started to pursue it. I started to help people in
grief using the IDC therapy protocol. It's worth saying that
I didn't think this was that far fetched because I
had actually had after death communications of my own. This
really ties into the relationship with Nana, because after Nana
(14:17):
passed away. She was eighty four when she died, and
it was sad, but she had had a full life.
And you know, we were so close, my Nana and I.
She was really this unconditionally loving person. It didn't matter
when I was young how much I stuffed up or
what I did. She always just loved me and spoiled me,
and so I remember thinking, if there is something out there,
(14:39):
if there is life after death, surely I'm going to
hear from my Nana. Well, months went by and there
was nothing. It made me question things, is this actually real?
But then it was eighteen months or two years after
she had died, and one morning I was coming out
of sleep. It was definitely not a dream, but I
(15:02):
saw her, and I saw her in full color, high definition.
I don't know where I was. My eyes were closed,
but Nana was there, and she looked about sixty years old,
she was younger. She had her urban curls, her blue
eyes and this bright red lipstick on it, and she
was smiling at me, and I had this absolute feeling
of love wash over me. I still get tingles when
(15:23):
I talk about it. I felt she was there. I
knew she was there. It only lasted a moment. And
when I opened my eyes and I was in bed
and it was morning, there were tears soaking the pillow.
I didn't realize I was crying, but it was just
obviously such an emotional thing to see Nana, and I
mentally said to her nanny, you look so good, you
seem so well. And she didn't say anything back, she
(15:45):
was just smiling. But this was an incredibly healing thing.
I thought, Wow, she is okay. I knew she was
okay because it wasn't a dream. I felt her presence.
You know that feeling when there's someone in the room
and you feel their presence. It's not a image, it's
actually something happening, right and now. Actually I had a
couple more experiences with her at critical junctures things were
(16:07):
going on in my life, and she was there again.
And then it happened again when my mum's dad passed away,
my grandpa, the same thing. Coming out of sleep, I
saw him. He looked about thirty years old and again
incredibly comforting. It wasn't a dream. And it happened a
third time, Sandra, it happened when my mum's mom passed
away just a few years ago at the age of
(16:28):
one hundred and three. My nanny had an incredible life
of good health and good fortune, and I hope I
got some of those genes, but igin it. That time,
it was about a week after she passed away. I
saw her, and this time she hugged me. Some people
have ADC's and they hear things or they see things.
I actually felt her embrace and she was so happy.
(16:52):
She was like she wanted me to know she was
happy and well. And again, this was just the most
comforting thing. So when I started exploring induce staff to
death communication as a therapy, I didn't need to be
convinced that ADCs exist, and in fact, they're extremely common,
extremely common. The most conservative estimates are that about thirty
(17:12):
percent of people will have had an after death communication,
and there's some research that says it's much higher than that.
So I'd had this button pushed inside of me. I'd
seen life with ghost I knew ADC's were real, and
I thought, this is part of my purpose. I need
to now pursue this. So that was really the beginning
of me becoming a grief therapist. And if someone had
(17:34):
said to me fifteen years ago, oh, Tom, you're going
to end up a grief therapist, I'd say, jump in
the lake. There's no way that's going to happen. Because
the truth is I was a scaredy cat of grief.
I didn't feel like I could help grieving people. I
felt helpless in the face of grief. So this is
a bit of a confession, really, because you think of therapists,
(17:55):
they've always got these tools to help their clients, right,
And if someone came to me with anxiety, if they
came to me with depression, I had tools. But when
people came to me and they're in deep grief, I
felt helpless. I was willing to sit with them, I
was willing to try to help them deal with their emotions,
but I didn't think I could fix anything. I couldn't
make a substantive difference to their sadness. And this is
(18:17):
the breakthrough that IDC is, because it dramatically reduces people's
sadness after somebody has died. I see it as a
breakthrough in psychotherapy, in fact, because part of now becoming
a grief therapist, and I have other psychological work that
I do, But part of what led me down this
(18:38):
path is I wanted to contribute to the scientific acceptance
of IDC therapy. It would be too easy for mainstream
scientists to say this sounds weird or to be dismissive
of it because it seems different, but it's very healing
and very natural. In fact, I see it as an
ethical obligation. You know, if a health practitioner comes across
(18:59):
something that can help people better than anything else to date,
we have a moral obligation to pursue that and to
disseminate that. So I, along with my colleague John Daniels
from Queensland here in Australia and I'm a visiting research
fellow at the University of Adelaide, we conducted a controlled
trial of IDC therapy. I wanted to be able to
(19:22):
put forward some research evidence with scientific credibility into hopefully
what we'll publish it in a mainstream scientific journal, to
help therapist realize, regardless of your beliefs about the afterlife,
this is very likely to be healing for people in grief,
and we have an ethical obligation to make it available
(19:43):
to people. It's not suitable for everyone, but for those
for whom it is suitable, we really need to put
this to them as an option because a lot of
people can benefit. And we saw forty three people in
this study. We had a one month control baseline period,
so we measured their grief at time one, we didn't
do anything for a month, we measured it again and
(20:04):
then we gave them these two ninety minute sessions. So
the IDC therapy protocol is incredibly brief. Two ninety minute
sessions is really the entirety of the intervention. And then
we measured their grief symptoms and their sadness a month later. Well,
what we found was that over the baseline period their
grief didn't change. We gave them these two sessions, and
(20:26):
then their sadness and their grief symptoms were significantly lower
a month later. And in fact, to put this into
terms that are kind of translating this science, we talk
about something called effect sizes in therapy research. It's like
a degree of the strength of the impact. Well, we
(20:48):
affect sizes that reduction in grief symptoms, reduction in sadness
is greater than almost two times greater in some cases
then your typical psychological therapies like cognitive behavior therapy for
anxiety and depression, and they might be doing it in ten,
twelve twenty sessions. We're doing it in two. That's how
(21:11):
strong this is. So the world needs to know about it.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
That's incredible, and each and every one of us who
has grieved the death of a loved one knows that
grief is the most painful thing that we go through.
I remember after my dad died, it felt like four
years before a dark cloud lifted from me. Even believing
(21:37):
in the afterlife, there's still sadness that you miss the person. Now,
you see, the therapy is not for everybody. Can you
just talk a little bit more about that, because I
know there's people that want to go see a medium.
This is way different. This is focusing on healing grief
and sadness and having a loved one come through. Shall
(22:00):
I say a side effect, something wonderful that happens, but
the main thrust really is for grief and sadness.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Correct, that's right, That's exactly right. And so we find
that this does affect people in different ways than seeing
a medium. Now, if people want to see mediums, that's
absolutely fine, and for some people that's going to be
very healing. But I think that IDC offers something different
and potentially more effective because what we do is target
(22:32):
the sadness and literally where that emotion is stored in
the brain by having people feel their sadness. And the
reason it's not suitable perhaps for everybody, is because it
can be a very intense therapy. We help reduce sadness
by applying what we call bilateral stimulation. We stimulate both
(22:52):
hemispheres of the brain alternately, and we can do that
through eye movement, having somebody follow your fingers from left
to right, or tapping alternately their shoulders, or the therapist
can lean in and tap the person's hands alternately left, right, left, right.
This is a healing mode that our brains have. It's
a very natural healing mode and one of the theories
(23:14):
around how it works is that when we sleep, we
go through a stage called rem rapid eye movement, where
our eyes naturally dart back and forth, and this seems
to be associated with processing of stored emotion healing. It's
one of the reasons why we feel better after we've slept.
It's not just that we're not tired anymore, so that
(23:37):
our brain has done this emotional processing work well. We
can put our brains into that healing state, that special
mode while we're awake by using bilateral stimulation. And what
idic therapy does is it has people experience bilateral stimulation
while they're feeling the most strong sadness that they can access.
(23:58):
So we will say to people what is the most
sad part of this person dying. And for some people
it's a really intense traumatic memory. It might be when
I got the phone call that they'd died, or for somebody,
it might be when the coffin was lowered into the ground. Also,
this sadness can be really general things I miss him
or she won't be there to see our daughter graduate,
(24:21):
or whatever the case may be. And we require people
to be willing to fully feel their emotions. We need
them to be able to step into that full burn
of that intensity, and then we apply this eye movement
or tapping, and it's by doing that through successive sets
of bilateral stimulation, might be one to two minutes at
(24:41):
a time, we notice that the sadness gradually increases. And
as doctor Botkin says, once we start, we don't stop.
If you were driving through a dark tunnel and you
felt uncomfortable, you wouldn't stop your car and get out.
You put your foot on the gas, right, And so
we say to people, you've got to keep your foot
on the gas. The therapist does the steering, but you've
got to put your foot on the gas. So it
(25:03):
is intense. It requires a willingness to feel that intensity
and an ability to really access those emotions. Now, this
is challenging sometimes because of course, grieving people spend every
day managing their emotions. They've got to go to work,
they go to the shops. They deal with trying to
function in their life, so they're used to pushing it
(25:24):
down or managing in some way.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
It's time for a quick break and we'll be right back.
You'll discover some interesting stories from induced after death communication therapy.
You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio
and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. Welcome back
(26:00):
to Sheads of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain. Let's continue
with doctor Tom Nemi and induced after death Communication therapy.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
It is intense. It requires a willingness to feel that
intensity and an ability to really access those emotions. Now,
this is challenging sometimes because of course, grieving people spend
every day managing their emotions. They've got to go to work,
they go to the shops. They deal with trying to
function in their life, so they're used to pushing it
(26:32):
down or managing it in some way. But when we
have a client sit in front of us in ITDC.
We say, I don't want you to manage it, I
don't want you to push it down. I want you
to feel it. So it can be quite an intense therapy,
and we always screen people to make sure that they're
willing to fully access it. And of course the good
news is this is such a rapidly acting therapy that
(26:56):
we see people sadness no matter how intense it is,
even if they say it's ten out of ten and
they're very distressed, we see eventually that sadness reducing. People
start saying I feel peaceful, I feel calm. I mean,
this is incredible. I wouldn't expect with any other therapy
to have a client on the start of their first
appointment so distressed that it's ten out of ten in intensity,
(27:18):
and at the end of the second appointment say it's
zero or it's a one, or I'm feeling good. And
that's what we notice. That's why this is so remarkable.
And the cherry on top is maybe about three quarters
of people will say they perceive the presence of their
loved one in some way, three quarters of the people,
(27:38):
three quarters.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
That's amazing. Do I need to see a therapist in
person or can any of this be done via zoom?
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Well, this was precisely one of the research questions we
had in our University of Adelaide's study. We did a
bunch of these sessions over zoom, we did a bunch
of them in person, and we analyze the data to
see is there any difference. And the good news is
there was basically no difference. So people can tune in
(28:08):
from anywhere in the world literally over zoomed from the
comfort of their own home, and they can expect to
have a very similar level of effectiveness as if you
were in the room with the therapist.
Speaker 3 (28:19):
That is beyond good news. And yes, you have a
moral responsibility to share this as far as you can,
and I will help you as best as I can.
Could you talk about some of the experiences people have.
Do they literally feel the presence? Do they get a
visual sometimes hear a voice? Sometimes? What kind of things
(28:39):
could happen?
Speaker 1 (28:40):
This is the part that people are very intrigued about,
and it's fascinating. It's worth mentioning that if people are
in that quarter where they don't have an ADC, that's
not a problem. I mean, generally, our objective is to
reduce sadness, and it's well over ninety percent of people.
We're reducing sadness. So if people don't have an ADC,
sometimes they'll be a bit disappointed. But I try to
(29:02):
downplay the likelihood of that because when people are yearning
for it and they're grasping for it and they're just
so focused on that, it gets in the way of
reducing the sadness. And I always say to people, our
job number one is to help you to feel better
and to feel less sad so that you can function
in your life, to give you some peace and acceptance.
And if we do that, we've succeeded. If you have
(29:23):
an ABC, it's a cherry on top, it's a bonus.
So we see a whole range of different experiences. It
can range from quite subtle to very elaborate and intense.
It can access a whole range of sensory modalities. For
some people it's visual. They'll say, I'm just seeing this
(29:44):
scene play out in my mind's eye. I've written about
nine of these case studies in my book. If people
want to read them in detail, so we go to
a lot of detail, and I've got permission from those
people to share their stories and I've given them pseudonyms.
One client who are refer is Sheena. In the book,
her son had died. They thought it was probably from
a drug overdose. And there are a lot of traumas
(30:07):
that had happened in his life and her life, trying
to keep him safe from drugs and crime and all
sorts of things. But one of her questions was she
wanted to know is he alone or is he there
with other people? Is he loved? And she asked this
question at the point that her sadness was already reducing.
She was reporting that she felt an atmosphere change in
(30:28):
the room. She just spontaneously said, I'm feeling there's like
an energy in the room. There's an atmosphere here. And
she said, I feel like someone's just tapped me on
the leg. I feel like someone just put the hand
on my shoulder. She was getting these sensory tactile phenomena,
which is not unusual, doesn't happen for everyone. And then
she asked that question, is he there with someone else?
Is he loved? Does he have company where he is?
(30:51):
She closed her eyes after we did some more bilateral stimulation,
and she saw a vision of her son quite clearly
on a grass verge, surrounded by other people. So his
best friend was there who had died, and she described
that he waved his arm around as if to say, look,
of course, I'm not alone. I've got all these people
(31:13):
with me. And she described this movement that he made.
But not only that, in that moment she saw the
dog who had died, the auntie had died. She said,
I'm seeing all of these people who have passed, and
they're looking younger, and he's smiling at me. So, you know,
for her, this was her ADC and it was so reassuring.
(31:33):
It answered her question perfectly that he wasn't alone, and
he was loved and he was very content, and he
wanted her to know that. We see a whole range
of these experiences. I had one young lady whose grandmother
had passed, and she had almost every sensory experience you
can imagine. She said, I feel like I've just been hugged.
(31:56):
She said, I can hear her, I can smell something,
I can see her. This is not typical, but she
had all these different types of ADC elements very much
in her two sessions. So yeah, it's quite a range
of phenomena. That we observe and we don't impose any
interpretation on people. I always so, what does it mean
(32:17):
to you that you just noticed this, And in particular,
how does it feel. IDC is a very emotion driven therapy,
and when people are having that experience, they say, I
feel incredible peace or incredible love, or I now feel
very accepting of this. That's part of why it's life changing.
It just adds to the therapeutic effect.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
There is something tom to go from a belief to
a knowing. So to have that experience with your loved one,
you can start living your life again knowing that they're okay.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
And that's what people say. They say, I was waking
up every day thinking, oh gosh, I'm still here, and
they didn't want to still be here. They were so
struck down by their grief and sadness. To them saying
I wake up and I feel ready to get on
with my day. And people say you look different, you
feel different, you sound different. They will literally say this
(33:10):
is life changing, or I've got my life back, or
I'm back to my old self. And for some people,
they have been stuck in grief for months and years
and it's almost like We've flicked a switch somehow and
they can now cope much better. It doesn't remove the
devastating fact that their loved one died, but that intense
(33:32):
sadness is markedly reduced. They feel more accepting, they feel
more at peace, and very often they report that they
feel an ongoing sense of connection with the person. So
in our research we ask people, you know, if you
had any ADCs since your therapy sessions, and a number
of people said, yes, I have, or I feel them
(33:53):
close to me, or I've been having more dreams of them,
and yeah. It seems to just open a door for
some people where they have that sense of an ongoing
presence and a continuing bond, which we know from grief
research is really healthy for people. It helps them adapt
and it helps them be able to live and to
regain their quality of life.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
Does this therapy tom, Is it specifically for someone who
has lost a loved one or I know people who
have been devastated by the breakup of a relationship or
have been given a life threatening disease and are going
through that anticipatory grief. Can it help in other ways?
If someone were to meet.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
With you, I think it is likely to help them.
The difference is that when somebody is bereaved because of
a death, that's where there's that ADC component, that sense
of an after death communication. But I sense that the
method itself is very likely to be helpful for those
other things as well. And it's a great question because
(34:56):
this is a field that warrants a lot more research.
I know Jan Holden did a study at the University
of North Texas and that's in the documentary Life with Guys.
But I hope that it isn't just down to Jan
and me. I hope there's more researchers and more people
maybe seeking out grant funding and doing bigger studies, because
certainly the potential here is really significant.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
Well, it's funny. I heard a story not too long
ago about gentlemen listening to my podcast who did the
research and now he's got a book and now he's
helping people, and he's now being interviewed by me right now.
So we're going to trust that these words are going
to land to more people who will continue on with this,
(35:36):
even some therapists who may not know that they can
learn this as well and make a difference with people.
I love it. How can people best find out about it,
talk a little bit about somebody would like to book
a session with you. Isn't there a questionnaire that you
have for people as well to make sure they're fit.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Yeah, So I have a pre screening set of questions
on my website, Healing Grief with IADC dot com. And
I'm calling this my virtual private practice because it's the
means through which I can reach people anywhere in the
world and facilitate these sessions over zoom. So if people
go to that website, they can click on the pre
(36:18):
screening button and it will give them five or six
questions that will help them figure out if they're likely
to be a good fit or if the therapy is
likely to be a good fit for them. There's also
some information about what to expect and what's involved, so
they're welcome to read through that, and then if they
think it is something they might like to proceed with,
(36:38):
they can book in a screening call, which is just
a twenty five minute chat over zoom where I would
ask them some specific questions. It's absolutely free of charge.
It's no obligation at all, but it's just to find
out if it's a good fit and we go through
that set of screening questions in about twenty five minutes,
and then I can answer any questions a person has
(36:58):
and they can figure out then if collectively we decide
if it's right for them and we can book it in.
So yeah, there's quite a bit of information out there.
Don't forget. Alan Botkin wrote his fabulous book which was
now twenty years ago, interestingly enough, Induced after Death Communication.
It's a great book. And of course there's nine detailed
case studies in my book which will give people a
(37:19):
feel for what it looks like and feels like to
be in a session.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Tell us more about your book and what else we
can find in it, because certainly there's got to be
some spiritual lessons or something that you've gleaned from all
this investigation.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
There are, there are, So it's a funny book. I
think it's a bit of a cross genre thing. It's
part memoir, it's part psychology, it's part spirituality. But aside
from my personal journey from being this cowardly grief therapist
who didn't want to deal with grief and felt helpless,
to being someone who was really seeking out grieving clients
(37:54):
and these really amazing case studies that people have given
me permission graciously to share.
Speaker 3 (38:00):
We'll be right back with some more empowering words from
doctor Tom Nemi. You're listening to Shades of the Afterlife
on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
(38:30):
Welcome back to Shades of the Afterlife. I'm Sandra Champlain
and doctor Tom Nemi was just about to tell us
about his book, Inspired Life, Beautiful Death, Healing Grief, overcoming
fear of death and living a spiritual life.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
It's part memoir, it's part psychology, it's part spirituality. But
aside from my personal journey from being this cowardly grief
therapist who didn't want to deal with grief and felt
helpless to being someone who really seeking out grieving clients
and these really amazing case studies that people have given
(39:06):
me permission graciously to share. But there's also a lot
of spiritual lessons because when we accept it as facts
that we don't die, and that there is a spiritual world,
and that our bonds are not broken with death and
we're still connected to our loved ones, there are implications
of that for how we live. I spent a lot
(39:26):
of time exploring the testimony of near death experiences and
learning more about the life review. I mean, this is
one of the most common features that we hear from
near death experiences is that I saw this review of
my life. But it's of course not just like watching
a movie. They feel their interactions with other people, they
(39:48):
feel the consequences of their influence in their life. And
when people come back from that, it's just this extraordinary
set of contrary beliefs about what matters. Because in our
physical world we're so caught up in status and achievement
and assets and money and celebrity. We've got this whole
(40:08):
materialist world around us that tells us this is what
you should judge yourself by. Well, none of that matters
a dot in the afterlife. This is the lesson. None
of that matters. What matters is did you love with
your life? For you an influence of kindness, and did
you leave people better than you found them? See. The
(40:29):
good news is that if anyone out there listening thinks
I want to be a spiritual person, but I don't
know how, the good news is anyone can be spiritual
in their life by thinking about their actions day to
day and their influence on others. For me, that's what
spirituality is. Sure, you can do your meditations and you
can do all other things, but real spirituality is about
(40:53):
our influence on others every day of the week. And
as soon as I heard about the life of you,
and I read so many different accounts of it, I thought,
how can I apply this now? Because Okay, I accept
that I'm going to have a life review when I die.
I'm hoping that's a long way away. I can't bank
on that. But we could have this kind of calmic procrastination. Well,
(41:13):
I guess I'll face that when the time comes. But
I thought, how do we remember this reality day to day?
And so I started doing something I call the day review,
not in the life review, the day review. And I
do this every day. Occasionally I fall asleep if I'm
really tired before I finish this, but I do it
when I get into bed, and anyone can do this.
It just takes a few minutes. A day review involves
(41:36):
thinking back on your day from the moment you got
up to the moment you got into bed, and thinking
about all of the main interactions you had with other people,
and just thinking did I act from a position of
a loving intent, because we know intentions matter. It's not
just about how do you make someone feel, it's about
(41:57):
your intention, It's about influence on somebody else. And the
strangest thing happened because I didn't want to wait to
the end of my life to figure out am I
living in this way that the spiritual world is going
to view as beneficial? But I started realizing there were
a lot of times where I was impulsive, short tempered,
(42:19):
didn't really consider the other person moment, so I would
be selfish, and it brought this into full view. And
then doing it regularly, something strange happened. I started thinking
about my day review during the day, and so I
would be in the midst of an interaction with someone
and I'd have this moment where I'd think, just take
(42:40):
a breath, or can your word this differently? Or what
does your body language say? It made me be more
present with other people. It made me be more thoughtful,
It made me be more kind, and that is transformative
because these are the things that we know the spiritual
world is going to show us at the end of
our life, So why not start now and live a
(43:04):
spiritual life in this very practical everyday kind of way.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Absolutely. How about showing kindness to yourself? Is that part
of the review?
Speaker 1 (43:13):
Definitely? So you know, self compassion is part of being compassionate,
and it's funny. In my other psychological work, I do
a lot of work on the prevention of anxiety and depression.
Our research in that area found that self compassion treating
yourself kindly is one of the most protective things that
you can do for your well being. It reduces your
(43:33):
risk for anxiety and depression. And I'm absolutely certain that
for people in grief, treating themselves kindly is also going
to help mitigate the distress from that grief and that
judgment of why aren't I functioning at my best when
I'm in grief? Why aren't I able to do X,
Y or Z. Self compassion is absolutely critical, and I
had to be kind to myself when I noticed myself
(43:57):
being impulsive and impatient. I had to say, well, hang on,
I'm doing my best, and so it was a prompt
for me to apply self compassion there too.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Those are good words. I know that there's thoughts in
our mind that we have about ourselves that we would
never voice to another person. I don't know why we're
so tough aut ourselves. It's part of a human being
this So I think to have that day review in
catching yourself in the act we human beings. I'm convinced
we're doing the best we can with what we've got,
(44:28):
and to spend our day thinking oh I should have
done that, or having the guilt or having the fear
to catch ourselves like, we're doing the best we can
and we're not alone.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
If you catch yeah, and if you catch yourself in
that moment of harsh self judgment, as I think we
both have from time to time, we're both happy to
fess up to. That is to now be able to say, well,
if that was my dearest friend who had just said
that about themselves, if that was someone I'm really close to,
who was judging themselves harshly and deriding themselves, what would
(44:59):
I say to them and what would I do that
actually helps them? If we can apply that kindness to ourselves,
that self compassion in action.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Thank you for that. Tom. I happen to notice on
your website you have another book, Apples for the Mind,
creating emotional balance, peak performance and lifelong well being.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Can you tell us what that is? Sure? That book
came out of my work in preventive psychology and developing
a program. We call it the Healthy Minds Program, and
we run that in schools around Australia and we go
into companies where we teach people the psychological skills that
help you to have a healthy emotional life. And in
fact we prove that you can prevent the onset of
(45:40):
symptoms of anxiety and depression, you can reduce risk for
eating disorders, and you can do it by teaching people
these psychological skills of how to have a healthy mind.
And so I put a lot of that into my
first book, which came out about six years ago, and
that's kind of a personal development book talking about these
psychological skills.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I'm so proud of you and the work that you've
done and that you will continue to do speaking engagements.
I know you are open for interviews. Are you speaking anywhere?
I believe there's an IM's which is our friends at
International Association for Near Death Studies coming up in Chicago
in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Correct, there is, And I'm absolutely thrilled that I'll be
presenting at the Chicago IONS conference in late August. Thrilled
to have been invited to be part of a panel
presentation with Professor Jan Holden and Graham Maxi, who I
think you've had on your show as well, and doctor
Noel Saint Jermain Sair as well, who is a co
(46:41):
executive director of IDC. So I was just really so
humbled and excited when I got invited to be on
that panel and present my research and be part of
that discussion. So yes, I'll be in Chicago in late August,
and I can't wait.
Speaker 3 (46:55):
Incredible conferences the folks at IMS puts on Iams dot
org is their website. Even if you don't attend a conference,
they have so many things, and if you're interested in
near death experiences, they have a treasure trove of thousands
of experiences you can read. They have chapters all over
the world, and you can join these days by zoom.
(47:18):
Very very good people. I know you'll really enjoy that, Tom.
What else would you like to share with our time
together or is there any closing words? What do we
need to hear?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
What else we could go on forever we could? I
think just a couple of things that came out from
my studies and research and my own personal journey through
all of this is the dying is beautiful. And that
sounds like a strange thing to say, but I've read
so many NDE testimonies, and that's the title of a
chapter in my book. Part of the distress of grief
(47:51):
is those questions where are they and what happened and
what did they experience? But we now have this enormous
body of evidence from near death experience. We can collectively
take all these different anecdotal accounts and regarded as scientific evidence,
because if everybody's reporting this stuff, it's valid and it's
worth paying attention to. So just the fact that dying
(48:14):
generally is not distressing, that's not what people report. When
people die suddenly, they often say, well, I left my
body before the accident or whatever may have happened. And
sometimes when people are resuscitated and they talk about their
near death experiences, they're annoyed. They didn't necessarily want to
come back because they felt so good. And so these
are some really comforting lessons, really comforting realizations for people
(48:38):
who are in grief. And so I've just feel so
lucky and grateful to have been directed down this path
to meet you and learn about Alan Botkin and hear
about all of these amazing things that so many people
are doing, and to then gain these insights that have
brought me a lot of comfort, and I think can
bring a lot of other people comfort as well. So
(48:59):
there's a lot of good. It's about the reality of
life after death, the fact that we can heal grief,
and we're not just healing it a little bit. People
are feeling a lot better after IDC therapy, and I'm
just so excited about what the future holds because there's
lots more work to be done and certainly I'm going
to keep doing it. So I really appreciate you letting
(49:21):
me share that story with everybody, And yeah, there'll be
exciting things to come, no doubt.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
I'm so excited for you and for the world. I
tell you, I said it before grief. I would never
wish it on anyone. It's horrible, but the more we love,
the more pain there is. And so on one respect,
you say, I really have a big capacity for love
based on how I'm feeling, and I do think part
(49:47):
of being human, the biggest parts are learning how to love,
to forgive, and being of service to others. So we're
like minded in that way. Tom, thank you so much
for being our guest today.
Speaker 1 (49:58):
It's been an amazing pleasure.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Thank you, Sandra, and I loved it as well. Don't
forget to visit Tom's website, Healing Grief with ia DC
dot com. And while you're on the internet, come visit
me at We Don'tdie dot com. Be sure to enter
your name and email address at the bottom of the page,
(50:21):
and I've got some wonderful surprises for you there. I'm
Sandra Champlain and from the bottom of my heart, thank
you for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the
iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com.
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