#325 - British Actor Jason Riddington's First Interview About His NDE

0:00 I had intense fear and panic because we were obviously crashing. Out of my heart came the thought, oh god help, I'm going to die. From the time that they pronounced me dead was a good 45 minutes. It's determined that I was not breathing for 20 minutes. They cut my clothes and then they paddled my heart, my heart had stopped. And I could see people screaming and crying, but I didn't realise that was actually my physical body because I was somewhere else. By which you went to the past far, in the afternoon, by half past seven I was dead, clinically dead, four minutes. And they were crying because I was dead and I was trying to tell them no, I'm not dead, I'm just fine, I'm okay.

0:45 I was greeted by people I'd known in the past. I started to feel like I was surrounded by all this warm, loving, beautiful, soothing, loving energy. I'm back with God again. I just felt this all in my two breath of these, like, wow, I'm back. I'm back home again. Incredibly safe and felt at home. I'd come back home. It was a very strong feeling that I've come back home. The only thing that I could feel, if you could imagine, absolute love and peace, there wasn't anything else to be felt. And light is literally emitting from him. And I could feel that that tremendous amount of love was coming through him as well. They were brighter than everybody else. And I just knew who they were.

1:34 Welcome to Roundtrip Death, everybody. And I'd like to welcome to the show today a very special guest because we don't get celebrities very often. Jason Rittington from Buckinghamshire in England. Oh, I hope I said that close. Absolutely fine. Yeah, it's like Buckingham without the palace and then Shaw. Yeah, I'm looking at Shaw. Okay. Believe me, you're allowed to correct my American accent. It is. No, no, no, I wouldn't dream of it. I wouldn't dream of it. No offense here. For those that don't know Jason, I'm going to just read a couple of things from his resume. It is long, long, long, long. He has been doing all kinds of acting for years. You may have seen him in films like Death of an Author, Once Upon a Time in London, Lucid, Motherhood, Weathering Heights, King Lear on TV, and things like Doctors, EastEnders, Luther on stage, etc., etc. Jason, wow, it's an honor.

2:45 It's an honor to meet you. It really is. Thank you for having me on your show. Now, of those things that I mentioned, do you happen to have any favorites? I guess, yeah, Wuthering Heights would be probably my favorite for a few reasons. The first is that was my first ever kind of gig. I was acting with Ray Fiennes and Juliet Benoche. Juliet Benoche was really established even back then. I was kind of like, oh my goodness me. I was kind of just given a real consumer lesson in film acting from Juliet Benoche.

3:29 It was also the time that I learned to ride. Riding is a really big part of my life. I actually have a horse in common with Kevin Costner because I rode this white stallion called Chico in Wuthering Heights. I was told to ride on Chico in Wuthering Heights by the stunt coordinator, the riding stunt coordinator, Steve Dent. Steve had just finished filming Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner. If you know the bit where my friend Brian blesses in that movie with him as well, which is weird, but anyway, there's a bit where he jumps on the back of this white horse, wax it with his sword, and then gallops off.

4:19 Well, that's Chico. I'm like, yay. Wow. I like that. Do you want to tell us anything about who Jason really is, where you came from, what you do when you're not acting? You know, that's a hard question in a way because since my brain injury, that's a tough one to really answer. I mean, I don't know about me and an acting now. I guess that's why I've kind of gone full bell into the writing side of things because it's a creative outlet and it allows me to have that kind of self-expression. But I struggled with so many things since my brain injury.

5:15 All right. We're going to dive deeper into that in just a minute as a lead up to your NDE. But let me tease your book right now. It's called Life, Death, Tai Chi, and Me. And I think we're going to find out why in the next few minutes. Yeah. Okay. So tell us a little bit about what happened leading up to your near-death experience. Did you have any indication before the actual day of? Well, yes, I did, but I didn't think I had. I had basically, I'd been out cycling and I've done lots of cycling in my life and I'd done lots of cycling up big mountains in France. And I'd kind of had altitude sickness before from doing that kind of training. So I was like, I thought that when I did this bit of cycling at home and I got this really terrible headache and I was sick and all the rest of it, I thought, it's altitude sickness.

6:20 I'm fine. So if anybody's listening and that happens to you, oh, too, you are. Straight away. It might be that it's altitude sickness, but equally, those are the telltale signs of a brain hemorrhage that has ruptured. So there were signs, but unbeknown to me. I cycle up a few mountains myself. I live in the mountains here in Utah. And I always feel lousy at the top of a mountain. It's hard work. So what's the difference? Tell me about it. Look, I went up this hill that we've got here called White Lip, right?

7:01 Now, if you've cycled up mountains or you follow the tour or whatever, I used to have an apartment on the Colder Beesk. So I used to do the Colder Beesk, the Colder Salaw, the Colder Maribelon, Colder Port-A-Lay, all in one hit. So for me, going up a big climb in inverted commas in Buckinghamshire is kind of like nothing for someone who's done that kind of cycling. Right. It's a little hill. How much vertical is it? I couldn't say. It's nothing like the kind of ramp up that you get. Well, no, it is. It's as steep as that, but it's just short, really, really short in comparison to a big climb like the obese called the Port-A-Lay or something like that.

7:52 And knowing it's short, I'm guessing you push real hard. Listen, I used to go up and down it five, 10 times just for training. Yeah, you don't have to pace yourself. So just push and next thing you know, you've got a great high intensity workout under your belt. Absolutely. And that was what I was going to go and do. I kind of hit the gradient and then I was, and this sounds sexist and it isn't sexist at all, but I was overtaken by a lady rider who asked me what happens. I hate when that happens. She asked me if I was okay and I was like, yeah, yeah, no, I'm fine. You know what I mean? I was like, just going for this. I was thinking, what is, what's going on? What's the matter? And I kind of felt okay. And then when I got to the top, I just, I really obviously didn't look okay because people were saying, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I'm fine.

8:51 I think, you know, my, my ego got the better. You know, I was like, yeah, no, no, I'm fine, fine. So I took off down the slope, got to the bottom of it. And that's when I started, did this horrendous headache and started throwing up. And I was like, okay, is, you know, I'm just, I'm just not very well. That's why I couldn't do the climb very well. I'm just not very well. My wife's a show jumper. So we've got horses, you know, so I was like, I need to go and sort the boys out. So I went to the stables and I kind of fed the horses. And again, I was, you know, it was, I felt ill, but I wasn't kind of like stopped in my tracks ill. And I thought, okay, well, it's flat. I'll just, I'll just cycle back home gently. And then, you know, take myself off to bed and try and try and get better. So I did that. And I kind of felt a bit better. And then the rest is kind of murky phase, the one that really knows the time scales of things. Apparently I, I, I took Phoebe to school and drove back. And this isn't because I was, I was not in the right state to drive.

10:12 This is because I can't remember things clearly after the brain. And it's okay to fill in with what Faye told you happened. Well, she told me so I drove, so I drove Phoebe, Phoebe back, I came home, got out the car and I, and I seemed completely fine. And then the next thing she heard was like a thud. And then apparently I'd kind of collapsed on the floor. I'd hit my lip on the, on the radiator. And I was out called she did CPR. Bless her the second time in her life that she's had to do this. She did that. She had a partner who she had to do this with and he didn't make it, you know. So she did CPR called the emergency services. And apparently everybody arrived like air ambulance, everyone gave me an adrenaline shot, put me into some kind of recovery. And then I was on my way to the hospital. And they put me in an induced coma to wait for, I think it was at the weekend. So they wanted to make sure they had their surgeons. They obviously stabilized me and everything. So they wanted to make sure that they had their surgeons to deal with what they knew was a burst aneurysm. And, and you

11:42 know, I have no memory of it. That's all. It's, it's kind of insane really. But you do have some memory, I believe of what happened in, was it in surgery or after where you felt like you left your body? I didn't feel like I left my body and I have no idea when it, whether it was in surgery or after, you know, I have no idea of what was actually happening to me at the time. I just know that the experience that, that I had was, was very visceral was like being in a, in a, in a place for an indeterminate kind of amount of time.

12:25 And there was no sensation of leaving my body or of, or of, or of being different to me. So did this feel like just a regular dream or somehow different? No, it was completely different because the first thing that was different was at the start of it. Have you, have you ever had the, the falling dream? Yes. Okay. So you know, in the falling dream, you wake up and you've got that feeling in the pit of your stomach. Yeah. So I had the falling dream four times in rapid succession. And then I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. So the main sensation that I had was that feeling, the feeling of, of, I've, I've just fallen. But unlike the dream, I was there. Next to me was to begin with it was black all around me. Then it was kind of an, aic sort of white. And then I somehow was looking to my side, but also above at the same time. And don't ask me how, but that's kind of what the, what the visual image was. I wasn't seeing myself. I was literally seeing through my eyes. It was happening to me. So I wasn't witnessing anything other than I was, I was experiencing it. And then the person entity that was next to me was,

14:02 was kind of almost sort of cheerfully comic in the most surreal and bizarre way. Because he had on this kind of, it's like, if you, if you were going to go to a fantasy dress costume and you thought, well, I'm going to dress like a crow. And I'm going to look like Robert Smith from the cure underneath this crow's outfit. That's kind of what you'd look like, which sounds ridiculous. But there he was lying there. And I could see all the details of like the little feathers on the, on the beak, because the beak had kind of feathers to it. It wasn't a different color. It was black, had little feathers that wafted in the wind. And then all of these big feathers, I couldn't really see it clearly. Couldn't see the whole figure or the whole of the, the costume for one of a better word, but it wasn't because it was, it was him. It's just the only way that I can describe it.

15:06 And he was kind of lying there with this, this countenance of like just a sort of semi smile. So he was lying. He wasn't upright next to you. Oh, he was lying horizontal, just lying there, floating. This is interesting. So unusual for a near death experience. Keep going. Tell me about it. I've Googled it. I've done everything possible. I can't figure it out. So there he is, horizontally lying there, just kind of like with this expression of fineness beneath this, this beak. And so I could only really see kind of his, his jaw line and the, and the lips. So what happened then is, is all stuff to do with me. So I kind of straightened myself up and he was still lying there. And I became aware of my granddaughter, Layla, who was yet to be born. So the first time this happened was the 29th of June, 2021. And Layla was born on 12th of July. So I became aware of, of, of Emily and her. And I just said, no, I want to meet her. I didn't shout. I didn't scream. There was no, there was no sense of conflict. There was no sense of panic or worry. But I heard

16:42 myself say it. And you did say the word no. Does that mean, does that mean you were not going to come back, but through this communication, whatever we want to call it, maybe you were allowed to? I genuinely don't know. I mean, I literally, I'm just saying verbatim what, what happened. My interpretation of it, I don't know because I genuinely would be kind of, I guess, making assertions that it meant this or it meant that or it meant the other. I don't know what it meant. I equally don't know why in that, in that situation I started to then do the simplest of Tai Chi, Chi Gong moves with him lying there. And now I'm kind of upright, floating, doing this and I can see him sort of, I see my hands in front of me and then I can see him in the background. I do this maybe four or five times, this simple Tai Chi move and then boom, I'm back and Mr. Pujaro, who was one of the three brain surgeons I had. So we, we nearly lost you. I guess what, I guess what I would say, I suppose one of the reasons that I don't have a kind of interpretation of it is because it's so different to anything

18:16 that I'd kind of heard of before or thought of before that I'm just, I just kind of, I let it, I let it sit where it is really. If someone had, you know, at that point, I guess I would have been totally cool and fine and would have forgotten about it. I'd have put it down to the medication, I'd have put it down to, you know, the surgery, I'd have put it down to all of the, all of the stuff that was, that was going on except that what happened with me is I had a, I had a raft of complications and I had a seizure and then on the 10th of July, I experienced it again, identical down to the last millisecond, the exact same thing.

19:13 So it's because of that that I'm like, whoa, this, this is like, this is different. This is, this is something that I can't put down to the chemicals or the, you know, this is, this was like a massive, massive mammoth thing. Yeah. These weren't dreams. These were real experiences. And Jason, it's only been two years. It's not even that. It was July. Yeah. I mean, 21. Yeah. It's been just under two years and you've had a lot of healing to do over that time. Yeah.

19:53 With your, your brain and everything. You might find over the next few years that it comes a little bit more clearly into view. In other words, you may be able to interpret it a little bit or maybe not. You know, I don't know. And this show isn't about, you know, interpreting these things for you, but just to find out what happened to you. But I have a feeling you're going to understand it better as time goes on. Have you had a chance to talk to other people that have had near death experiences? Not really. No. The thing that I found is that people, people are quite reticent about mortality. So no, it's not been something that I've kind of broached with people.

20:41 Yeah. Well, and times are changing. And I don't know how it is in England. I know how it is here in the States. And that is that, you know, if you had an experience like this 30, 40, 50 years ago, people just thought you were crazy. But it's being much, much more accepted now, not only by the general population, but also by the medical field. Yeah. They're realizing there is something happening because we're hearing this often. And these people are not crazy. These people are completely lucid. They know what's going on. Exactly. And I guess it's kind of like when people have asked me to explain it to them.

21:22 So imagine that, imagine there is a metro, right? And there's all these different stations, say in New York or in London, right? And I don't know whether you've been to Piccadilly Circus, let's say, or you've been to... Yes, I have. You have. And I'm familiar with your underground. All right. So supposing you've been to Piccadilly Circus. So you can picture Piccadilly Circus. You can visualize Piccadilly Circus. So all of the things that you're thinking at the moment, all of the thoughts that you're having, everything is framed within your physical experience of having been to Piccadilly Circus. Now, my physical experience of this near-death experience is the equivalent of you've never, let's say you've never been to Manchin House, right? But you imagine now in your mind the Tube Station Manchin House and you're basing it on Piccadilly Circus. But what if Manchin House was completely different outside of what you have experienced? If it was an entirely different concept, you would still infer Piccadilly Circus upon Manchin House, even if it's totally, totally, totally, completely and utterly outside

22:58 of that realm. And I guess one of the reasons I haven't really talked about it is because it's very, very difficult to find words to express if going to Manchin House meant going to a different realm of space and time and trusting me and believing me that that's what would happen to you if you got out of Manchin House. It's a really difficult subject to be able to speak about when you've actually experienced it because you would not accept having been to Piccadilly Circus. You'd be, wait a second, Manchin House is not going to differ that much from Piccadilly Circus. This guy is a lunatic. This guy is being ridiculous.

23:47 He's telling me that Manchin House is like, is this entirely different world? And I'm saying, yes, Piccadilly Circus is dreams. Manchin House is a near-death experience. They're completely miles apart in terms of what they are from my human experience. And maybe that's why I've been reticent about talking about it until speaking to you, which is a relief. It's so nice to be asked to talk about something that is so profound and so life-changing to actually be encouraged and wanted to speak about it is in many ways a relief.

24:40 Well, I'm glad. I want you to know that I believe you what you're telling me. And our audience in our show is completely non-judgmental. We're not in this to say, oh, you're making this up or something. I do a little bit of that before I put people on the show and they don't get on if it doesn't seem real to me. But maybe that's not fair. But anyway, that's besides the point. It's interesting what you were just saying. I think one of the things that I have found in interviewing so many people that have had these experiences and the fact that they are all different, one of the questions that constantly comes to my mind, are they different because people are different? Are they different because their spiritual experience just was different? Do we interpret it different? Are we presented with something different? One of the conclusions I've come to is that people are put in a situation that they're comfortable with. For example, some people that you would say are very religious and pray a lot and all those kinds of things have experiences where they feel like they were very close to God, not all of them, some of them. Some feel like they've even seen and talked to Him. Others, it's more of a blur. It's more of a just a wonderful, loving

26:15 feeling and I saw lights and things like that. I don't know if it's because some people are prepared for this and some people prepared for the other. And I have no idea at all why you saw someone in a black crow kind of costume. That's very unusual and that doesn't mean it's not real. And I don't know what it means. I think you'll figure that out someday because why would you have been given this gift of this experience if it was never going to mean anything to you? What's the point of that? I certainly think that that figure has kind of had meaning to me since. At first, he was a figure of terror. When I came home from the hospital and the security of the hospital, just my wife and I trying to deal with this guy who's just barely able to kind of move.

27:18 I couldn't see, I couldn't hear very well. I had this kind of terror that what I'd experienced was that when I said no, that I should have said yes, that he was there to kind of get me. And so I had this whole thing where I thought to myself, he's going to come and he's going to come and get me and everything is going to go wrong. So I got paranoid about every single thing. Then I had this, I had this idea that, well, I'm going to have to get used to this somehow. And I'm going to have to deal with this somehow. So I did this, I did this, you do a lot of meditation in Tai Chi. And I thought, okay, I'm going to meditate myself with him all night long. So I'm going to see myself do the whole of Tai Chi to go all the way through with him. If he comes and he gets me and I don't survive, then I don't survive. But if I do survive, then it's okay. He's not there to kind of take me away. Now, the first thing is I had no idea whether that would, whether I'd be

28:50 able to do that, to kind of see myself with him. And I was pretty scared of doing it. I was terrified of doing it. But I did. And I guess I was able to really kind of find a way for us to sort of be friends in a weird kind of way. Sort of like facing fear in other times in life. Yeah, I guess. You know, sometimes when we face it head on and go, okay, I'm afraid of this and I'm going to do this anyway, then we gain all kinds of power from it. Did you have an, would you say an unusual, unusually high fear of death before this experience happened?

29:32 No. Do you have less or more fear of death now? I have zero fear of death now. If I had a shilling for every time that someone has told me that on this show. Really? Yeah, I hear that every day. Really? Yeah. Yeah, the fear of death usually nearly always completely goes away after an experience like this. Totally gone. Yeah. Completely gone. And that doesn't mean you want to die today. No, there's great things to live for. But when it's my time, that's okay. I don't need to be afraid of it. Yeah. I did want to point out one thing. It seems like you came back for your granddaughter.

30:16 You really wanted to meet your soon to be born granddaughter, right? Yes. And yes, I think so. But it wasn't like a massive, emotive thing. That's the bizarre thing about it. It didn't contain, because people have said to me, oh, you fought for your life. Like, who was I going to fight against? I did Tai Chi. Yeah, fight is definitely the wrong word. You know what I mean? Yeah. And in terms of like all of the emotions that I was feeling, of course I wanted to meet Layla. But I equally wanted to be there with everyone all kind of at the same time. I think it's just, I just said it.

31:11 Yeah. Some people that have near death experiences are given a chance, their opportunity. Do you want to stay there? Do you want to go back to your body? Some people are not given a chance to make that decision. Of those that are given the opportunity to decide, quite often the decision is based on, I just really feel like either I need to get back to someone or I want so badly to get back to someone. And I just kind of feel like yours falls a little bit into that category where, yeah, it wasn't a fight. This was a conscious, almost discussion where it was like, I want to go meet Layla. So let's do that.

31:56 Possibly. But it wasn't that conscious. It wasn't that narrative. I just happened to say it. But it was probably the most profoundly peaceful experiences I've ever had. Can you describe that more? Profoundly peaceful. What else did you feel? I felt like there was no kind of time. The thing I felt more than anything was this, was the falling in the pit of my stomach. I had this physical, visceral feeling still with me while all of this other stuff was going on, which I guess is the thing that made it so absolutely kind of like real both times was that, you know, was preceded with this falling backwards thing four times. And they were like proper, you know, the proper falling treatment. It wasn't just like, oh, I'm closing back. It was like proper bang, bang, bang, bang. Got your attention. That's for sure.

33:07 Yeah. And but I have no idea of the time it took. I've no idea of any of those kind of qualities other than those were the events that I can pinpoint within the context of that whole kind of experience. So let's talk a little bit about what's happened since then. How has it changed your life? I mean, physical trauma, but what else has happened? I have a lot of difficulty with fitting back into society with my brain injury. You know, people with brain injuries don't do well with background noise, fluorescent lighting. It's over stimulation.

34:04 Yeah, everything is just all comes at once. Brain fatigue. I think it's I think it's made me kind of quite feel I've described it as feeling like an alien being or in a foreign land. It's very difficult to have those points of connection with with people. Those points of understanding. I don't know whether it's because I don't have that sort of sense of community anymore. I think that I've become really connected with with that realm and with that place. And in a way, it's like sometimes the world of potential death or the world of otherness is so much easier than our world. I think I've gained a lot of foresight into like the human condition. I think that's what this experience has given me. See, I used to I used to think I think like most of us think in very binary terms, good, bad, right, wrong, black, white, life, death. But I think this has taught me that my experience of like

35:39 near death experience and people facing extreme things is that none of that is actually true. What is really true is that we're we are, I believe we live on an astral plane, a spiritual plane, and that everything that is contained within that astral plane, we have an indomitable spirit to adapt and overcome. And that we therefore can create, we can build, we can have the incredible medical science that saved my life and all of those aspects of life that is so extraordinary and so unique to the to the to the human experience. It's also the indomitable spirit is also the thing that makes war possible. The indomitable spirit is the very thing that, you know, the greatest thing for us is the biggest thing against us in many ways, I think. It made me aware of of people under those circumstances. Because I think what tends to happen is people think, you know, this sort of stuff is what happens to other people. And it's not. It's a cosmic blink away for every single one of us. It's

37:13 a cosmic blink. Not if but when this stuff happens. You realize that I don't have to summon up the courage to overcome my fear that there is no fear instinct. There is no flight instinct within human beings. We have an indomitable spirit. Our instinct is to adapt and overcome. That's what we do. And that I think is what I've become like super aware of since this experience is the and I feel sometimes like I just want to I just want to get the world to listen to just say, look, if you could just understand that all of this binary stuff is just stuff that you're being fed. Wars cannot be fought by people that are overcoming an instinct. It's an impossibility. They can only be fought by people who actually don't have that instinct, but you're made to believe all the time in the binary world, not in the world that is the astral plane. I'll give you an example. So let's take your

38:45 microphone, for example, that's in front of you. So that microphone is in existence. There it is. We you and I can both see that might we can touch it. We can feel it. Now for some of that Mike's life, it existed on the astral plane. It existed in the mind of its creator. It existed in the mind of the manufacturers. It existed as a design. It was then put together and it became manifest. And that's what we do stuff that's in the astral plane. We create we create whatever is kind of going on in that astral plane. And I think that the whole coming back from that world, coming back from that place, coming back from wherever it was.

39:47 That made me realize that there wasn't anything special about me. You know, it wasn't that I'm brave, although the people of Ukraine are brave or the people in hospital there isn't bravery about it at all. It's just part of who we are to adapt to overcome to make to create to believe in something. You have to believe in the microphone in order for it to become a microphone. You've got to believe in it. If you have a thesis, you've got to believe in the potential outcome of that that that thesis. When I think about the black and white way of thinking that is required in order to get a kind of tribalistic reaction in people to control people, I just get a profound sense that it's so far removed from who we actually are and what we actually do.

41:02 And I just add something to that. And that is that who we actually are is so much more than just what I'm seeing of you and you're seeing of me right here. Right? Yeah. There's more before, there's more after, there's more that we don't understand. There's all kinds of more going on here. Okay, let me ask you a few other questions. Yeah. Based on the last just under two years now, how, you know, I feel like this has changed you. Do you have interest in picking up your acting career again if you felt physically and mentally able to do it? Or do you want to stick with writing and other things?

41:50 That's a really, really difficult question. The problem with picking up an acting career is that it's like, yeah, if someone were to just hand it to me, then yeah, no problem. But, you know, acting careers take a lot of fighting for and certainly in the moment, I'm not recovered enough to Take on that fight. Yeah, or confident enough. Right. I mean, I would do to do that. Whereas with the writing, I mean, it's partly a good way of dealing with insomnia, you know, but Well, you can also do writing more on your own and at your own speed and pace.

42:36 Yeah, exactly. I mean, for me, that would be the coolest thing. You know, if this book were to do well, you know, and I could then, because I've written a second book called The Art of Letting Go. And if that could be made to work, then that would be an amazing creative outlet. I don't think I would need the acting side of things. Okay. How has what happened to you changed your relationships or has it with people that you love, your family, for example?

43:20 I think it's been incredibly hard on my family, especially on Fay and my wife. You know, she's always she's always worried about me. She's always got something to worry about. I mean, I'm not in any way kind of out of the woods as far as brain injury is concerned. And, you know, the ill effects of that. I mean, I'm sure you can hear I struggle formulating words sometimes I struggle, you know, with what it is I'm trying to express. Just going to the supermarket is like a nightmare sometimes.

44:09 Making decisions. Are they difficult? It's just the physical thing. I literally I will just start crying and blubbering in the middle of a supermarket and because it I'm overwhelmed. Yeah. Have you been able to get back on your bike? No, I got rid of it. I got rid of it completely. I've been like a Shaolin monk in terms of Tai Chi. Tell us about that. I see that you're teaching some how are you spreading goodness with Tai Chi? Yeah, I'm I'm I'm teaching Tai Chi twice a week. And I'm teaching in a local college in Henley three days a week. And you know, I'm I'm I'm managing I'm managing it. And the Tai Chi is is a lovely experience because I have these I have groups of people or I have individual clients who come to me. And you know, they they really want to they really want it. They really want to know about it.

45:24 It's great in a way because I'm just like the Tai Chi messenger. You know, it's just literally like, come along and and follow me and and and and here we are. And this is it. The difficulty I have is because my long term memory loss. You know, I don't remember learning like I don't so much in my life. I don't remember. It's like being dropped into a black ocean. So everything from the hospital until now, I remember with absolute clarity.

46:06 But from before the hospital, it's not very much. No, I think it's pretty amazing to have written two books in less than two years since that traumatic of a brain injury. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it's it was a lot of it was was my friend Brian Blassett, who was like, you know, you're going to write this book. It's like, okay, Brian, yeah. And and then I think a lot of it was a kind of therapy in a way to do with also being so heavily involved with with with Tai Chi with with the doing of Tai Chi. You know, it's some the doing of Tai Chi and the teaching of Tai Chi. It's become something that is like supremely important and part of like a daily ritual almost this like this is this is who I am now and if I if I don't do it, I won't be all right. I do it all the time.

47:13 Sounds like it's been very healing for you in many different ways. I think so. You know, they I've been told by numerous kind of medics and so on, but there's not many people that come back from the first thing that happened. And it's almost always the second infection meningitis in my case and seizure and all of that. The virtually nobody kind of comes back. Nobody survives it. And I guess I feel like it's been possibly something to do with the residual physical strength of Tai Chi, possibly the residual mental strength, although it doesn't feel like it often, but some but I guess the repetitive nature has a real healing quality to it. Perhaps it helps with the reformation of neural pathways that have been damaged because I had a lot to repair. I was blind in one I couldn't really see couldn't hear had some paralysis I had, you know, various things I had to kind of overcome. I think that I think there's a there's a fair group of people that feel that that Tai Chi has had a very positive and influential effect upon that kind of healing. And I guess

48:44 the thing and I guess the you know, the thing about the book is that, you know, there was a big part of me that wasn't going to include it at all. That I was just going to I was going to talk about, I don't know, I mean, I wasn't going to write a book, I wasn't going to talk about this. But it's been so there's been so many people. And Brian blessed was the was the kind of biggest voice for this who said, But Jason, this is this is so helpful to so many people. It's not just about coming back from where you've come back from. It's such a helpful thing for people. And it's such a positive thing. And it's such a spiritual thing. I guess I was persuaded to to share in that sense.

49:36 So if you could summarize the message of hope in that book into a very brief statement, what would you say? I want our listeners to get something from all of this today. And I know you have a message to share. What is it? I guess I would say that the message of the of the book is that there are principles contained within Tai Chi that I think connect with near death experience and connect with who we really are deep down inside the kind of energy that drives us, the kind of people that we truly are. My hope is that that that the book kind of unlocks that to an extent, the people will kind of get those connections. And we'll sort of see from the book that it's it's a kind of there is in in in practice is practical. I guess the other thing I would say is that no belief is required in terms of what is Tai Chi. All you have to do is kind of just do it. It's a physical, visceral experience that enables people to have a kind of meditative, physical experience. I think there's a I think there's a big hour within that. And the potential

51:08 is for kind of everyone to experience to experience that to taste that that sort of hour is hard to explain because it's connected to the near death experiences I had is connected to the crow man and all of that. All right, last question. Yeah, tell me about Leila. Is this your first grandchild? Yeah. All right. When we're done, we're going to compare grandkids photos. Okay, we'll do that off air. How's Leila? Leila's great. Leila's doing brilliant.

51:49 Emily sent me a little video of Leila just chatting away. And yeah, she's fantastic. All right. Thanks a lot for being on the show today, Jason. I appreciate it. Thank you. And I apologize that I'm not perhaps as fast as I once would have been. You know, it seems like we often speak before we think in this life. We have so much that we need to get in or somebody's going to cut us off or something that I find it refreshing to watch your brain go and think before you say something. I liked it. Oh, thank you. Thanks. That means a lot.

52:31 Thank you. Thanks again for listening and remember to share this podcast to be notified when the next episode goes live. Follow us on your podcasting app or click over to roundtripdeath.com and sign up for our email newsletter. One last thing, we are continually trying to improve this podcast and we value your feedback. If you have a comment about what you like or what we can do better or a near death experiencer that we should have on the show, send an email to Eric at roundtripdeath.com and that's Eric with a C. Until then, I wish you everything good that you're looking for in this life and the next.