Dr. Yvonne Kason MD, MEd, CCFP, FCFP, is the President and Co-Founder of Spiritual Awakenings International. She is a family physician and transpersonal psychotherapist [retired], previously on faculty at the University of Toronto. She is an internationally renowned medical expert on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) and other Spiritually Transformative Experiences (STEs), with 40 years experience counseling and researching persons with NDEs and other STEs. Propelled by a powerful kundalini awakening in 1976, and a Near-Death Experience in a 1979 medevac plane crash, she began to research NDEs and other spiritual experiences. In 1990 she became the first Canadian medical doctor to specialize her medical practice in the research and counseling of patients with diverse types of STEs. Dr. Kason is the person who first coined the phrase “Spiritually Transformative Experiences” in 1994, in her book, A Farther Shore. She has had five Near-Death Experiences herself, two in her childhood and three in her adult life, as well as multiple STEs.

Dr. Yvonne Kason is the Past-President of IANDS, the International Association for Near-Death Studies (2019-2020) and a former IANDS Board member. She is the Co-Leader and Co-Founder (2019) of Toronto Awakenings Sharing Group, and is a member of ACISTE, the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.

Dr. Kason has been a pioneer in the field of Spiritually Transformative Experiences for over 40 years. In 1990 Dr. Kason was a Co-Founder and later a long time Board member of the Kundalini Research Network. She was also the Canadian Coordinator of the Spiritual Emergence Network, and in 1992 the Founder of the Spiritual Emergence Research and Referral Clinic in Toronto. In 2000 she Co-Founded the Spirituality in Health-Care Network, and in 2002 she was Chair of the University of Toronto’s first ever conference on Spirituality and Health-Care.

Dr. Yvonne Kason has five published books, her most recent, Touched by the Light: Exploring Spiritually Transformative Experiences, (2019). Dr. Kason has extensive media and public speaking experience worldwide. She has been a keynote speaker at conferences internationally, and has made over 100 professional presentations. She was a Keynote speaker at IANDS Vancouver conference 1999, and a plenary speaker at IANDS Philadelphia conference 2019. Dr. Kason has been an invited guest on many TV talk shows including: The Dr Oz Show (2020), and radio shows including Coast to Coast (2020). Her 1979 plane crash Near-Death Experience was re-enacted on Sightings and in two documentaries. Dr. Kason retired from the practice of medicine in 2006 for health reasons after being incapacitated for twelve years and following a dramatic brain healing in 2016, a “miracle of brain neuroplasticity”, Dr. Kason has now resumed writing, public speaking, and giving media interviews about NDEs and STEs. Yvonne Kason lives in Toronto, Canada, and enjoys “snowbirding” during the winter months, in Encinitas, CA. Dr. Yvonne Kason has been honored for her groundbreaking STE work as an honoree on the Spiritual Awakenings International Circle of Honor.

In the mid seventies I had no explanations for the missing time periods. I pretended they didn’t happen. For some reasons, homicides were happening around me. I was employed by a Defense Department Contractor. The last two homicides, had me run to hide in the Navy.

Surveillance was constant from wire taps to the obsessives vehicle surveillance. Every where I went. At first I thought they wanted to kill me. In time it became evident they were just watching. I stopped fearing them and accepted them. (Continuous to this day with computer mintoring.)