Barbara Bartolome: Founder/Director
Barbara is a two time NDEr. Her first NDE resulted from a childhood illness at 18 months of age, when a high fever caused her to go into convulsions and stop breathing, which resulted in cardiac arrest. As the ambulance arrived outside their home, her parents and older siblings witnessed her spontaneously regain consciousness, after an 8-10 minute period without heart or lung activity. She was not informed of this early-life event until her siblings finally disclosed it, when she was 53 years old.
Her second NDE occurred when she went into cardiac arrest due to a radiology technician's error during a pre-surgery diagnostic procedure in 1987, at St. Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara. Finding herself above the x-ray table, she watched the medical team's resuscitation efforts and experienced the presence of a magnificent spiritual being. After being successfully resuscitated, she accurately recounted to the astonished medical team their individual comments and actions during the resuscitation, which was quite alarming to the team. Because her medical team and the hospital staff then strictly avoided discussing her experience with her, she rarely spoke about it for over twenty years, until she found the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (www.nderf.org) in 2007 and the IANDS organization (www.iands.org) in 2009. These organizations helped to connect her to others who had experienced NDEs and they expanded her understanding of death and the survival of consciousness beyond death, allowing her to finally assimilate her experiences, as well as to understand their impact upon her life and worldview. She considers her NDEs as incredible gifts, deeply feeling that it is her life purpose to share what they teach with others.
Barbara founded IANDS Santa Barbara in August 2011 and is strongly committed to the IANDS organization's purpose in promoting responsible, multi-disciplinary exploration of near-death and similar experiences, examining their effects on people’s lives, and their implications for the change to our beliefs about life, death, afterlife, consciousness, and human purpose. She serves as the IANDS designated Group Mentor to all IANDS groups in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, and Hawaii. Barbara has talked about her NDE experiences in videos, documentaries, podcasts, radio and TV shows, and at conferences, symposiums, hospitals, hospices, colleges, churches, and at various groups all over the country, and beyond! Anthony Chene created a wonderful documentary about Barbara's NDE in 2016 and it can be viewed on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg3HnkSg38s. More videos can viewed on our media page.
Her second NDE occurred when she went into cardiac arrest due to a radiology technician's error during a pre-surgery diagnostic procedure in 1987, at St. Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara. Finding herself above the x-ray table, she watched the medical team's resuscitation efforts and experienced the presence of a magnificent spiritual being. After being successfully resuscitated, she accurately recounted to the astonished medical team their individual comments and actions during the resuscitation, which was quite alarming to the team. Because her medical team and the hospital staff then strictly avoided discussing her experience with her, she rarely spoke about it for over twenty years, until she found the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (www.nderf.org) in 2007 and the IANDS organization (www.iands.org) in 2009. These organizations helped to connect her to others who had experienced NDEs and they expanded her understanding of death and the survival of consciousness beyond death, allowing her to finally assimilate her experiences, as well as to understand their impact upon her life and worldview. She considers her NDEs as incredible gifts, deeply feeling that it is her life purpose to share what they teach with others.
Barbara founded IANDS Santa Barbara in August 2011 and is strongly committed to the IANDS organization's purpose in promoting responsible, multi-disciplinary exploration of near-death and similar experiences, examining their effects on people’s lives, and their implications for the change to our beliefs about life, death, afterlife, consciousness, and human purpose. She serves as the IANDS designated Group Mentor to all IANDS groups in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada, and Hawaii. Barbara has talked about her NDE experiences in videos, documentaries, podcasts, radio and TV shows, and at conferences, symposiums, hospitals, hospices, colleges, churches, and at various groups all over the country, and beyond! Anthony Chene created a wonderful documentary about Barbara's NDE in 2016 and it can be viewed on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg3HnkSg38s. More videos can viewed on our media page.