Leading Cancer Dr.'s Shared Death Experience Radically Changes How She Views Healing (Katie Deming)
And why she had to leave western medicine
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Major shifts in consciousness can turn your life upside down.
Once the veil has been lifted from your eyes, you can’t unsee something. Today’s guest knows this all too well.
Katie Deming was a leading radiation oncologist (cancer doctor) who for all intensive purposes was at the top of her field.
She studied at Duke, practiced traditional western medicine for 16 years, and spent many years as leader in the broader healthcare system, designing cancer programs in the Northwestern United States.
In 2020, her life shifted in a dramatic way after a shared death experience (SDE).
A shared death experience is a phenomenon where a person who is not dying reports experiencing some aspects of the death process along with a person who is actually dying.
I had never heard of an SDE until connecting with Katie, but apparently it can be common for people in the healthcare field.
In our conversation, Katie shares what happened during this experience and how it changed her perspective in ways she never anticipated. She realized that she could no longer practice western oncology (cancer treatment) and that the western medical system had many things wrong about how people heal.
Leaving it all is a pretty big deal considering she had spent many years studying, establishing her career, and creating a certain lifestyle for herself. This decision created lots of upheaval in her life that we discuss in our conversation.
One thing I found fascinating is that Katie feels like the shared death experience catalyzed a major shift in consciousness. She described it as having her system tuned to a higher frequency. She feels like this changed her on a fundamental level. One of the major developments that followed was access to intuitive information. Since then, the wisdom she began to receive has helped her become aware of how human bodies actually heal.
Apparently shifts in consciousness accompanying near and shared death experiences is very common. I had no idea, but I’m not surprised.
According to Katie, the way that the western medical system trains people how to heal people is incorrect. She says it fails to understand how to create a healing environment which supports the body's innate capacity for healing. As a reminder, Katie spent over 20 years studying and working in the system as a firm believer.
Katie now works with patients in a holistic way that approaches healing from the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental dimensions. At the center of it all is consciousness which is why she calls her new practice “conscious oncology.”
I personally think the integration of consciousness as part of a more whole person perspective is the future of healthcare.
The body is an expression of consciousness. How could we leave it out?
Ironically, humans have historically taken a more whole-person approach to healing until recently. When I asked Katie what happened, she shared that she believes we’ve conditioned to move away from this holistic view in order to perpetuate a medical industrial complex. I found it interesting to hear this perspective coming from someone who had been “on the inside” for so long.
Other interesting parts of our conversation:
The most ubiquitous advice Katie heard from dying patients while working in hospice and how it gave her the courage to leave her former profession
Why it's imperative to take into account both the physical and emotional/spiritual dimension of healing
How our higher selves use the functioning of the body to communicate with us. TLDR your body is trying to get you to pay attention
Formative books and influences for Katie’s updated perspective
Katie’s hypothesis on the unraveling of our broken medical system
Right now a lot of people are waking up. It’s exciting.
One thing that really excites me is people who are distinguished in their field within broken industries waking up, like Katie.
I think people with traditional credibility can shift perception in ways that people who’ve just been living in spiritual land may have difficulty doing.
I think Katie is one of those people and I’m a huge fan of the message she’s putting out in the world.
- ❤️ Scott
If you liked reading or listening to this, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏
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Episode Transcript
Show notes:
00:00 - Introduction and Background
03:02 - Leaving Western Medicine
10:22 - The Shift and the Shared Death Experience
26:59 - Conscious Oncology: The Six Pillars of Healing
30:05 - Treatment-Agnostic Approach and Healing Without Conventional Therapy
33:22 - Illness as a Communication and Opportunity for Self-Reflection
39:03 - Techniques for Processing and Releasing Emotional Trauma
50:55 - Reconnecting with Nature and Living in Alignment
55:36 - The Crumbling of the Healthcare System and the Shift towards Holistic Healing
This was a great podcast, thank you!
Love the concept of illness as a communicator, rather than an obstacle.