The Life Review is a common occurrence in the Near-Death Experience/NDE (or what some also call Near End of Life Events and Death Bed Visions) at the moment of ‘dying’, when "our whole life flashes before our eyes." Many of those who undergo the Life Review across the world share how a life is "reviewed" in a very short amount of time.

The Life Review is one of the most common events in the innerdance processes in which people either witness a condensation of events flashing just before their eyes or  begin to remember aspects of their own story long forgotten - aspects of the body-mind that need to be reviewed, seen and healed.

From light to dark and without distinguishing the end from the beginning, our linear perception of time shifts into a vast understanding of how story is written in the body.

Although experiences might vary, some patterns such as seeing bright lights, entering a void, communicating with other beings and even a sense of connectedness with nature are common to those who experience the NDE and the innerdance process. 

The way music is conducted plays a significant role to the experience, since the overlayered sounds seem to act as stimuli to the body-mind that is lying down in the corpse position. The slow heart beat and accelerated brain activity in the brain followed by the release of a cocktail of neurotransmitters (like dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin) enable the start of remembrance. Suddenly, deep memories are recovered from the depths of the hippocampus. The body is then simulating death while being very much alive. 

Having the chance to experience memories while in these altered state allows us to create different neuropathways to deal with all that we have experienced. What in the past might have been felt as a threat or a stressful moment - which would release different chemicals in the body - is now being seen while exposing ourselves to pleasurable sensations.

In the Life Review, seeing becomes healing in the most physiological and spiritual ways possible. 

becoming our children

Celine from Singapore shares a deeply touching Life Review from her first innerdance experience in 2014:

I saw a child sitting on the ground, knees hugged to chest and head rested on her knees while her face looks down. I couldn't tell if the child was asleep or crying or just sitting.

I started crying quite hard in the innerdance after I realised I was this child after an important incident that later had major consequences in my life.

I knew I wasn't in the body of my 4-year-old self who I was visiting in "the past" and that I was currently in my adult body lying on the floor of Amber's living room –and yet, I was also this child simultaneously across time space and I was in both bodies, which were somehow also the same body.

If I remember the sequence correctly, I eventually turned onto my side and started releasing deep energies as if vomiting.

​Then the music changed and I might have fallen asleep for a bit, I'm not sure exactly, but everything was still and I don't recall seeing anything or feeling any emotions. At some point, I noticed that I was again seeing my 4-year-old self – only this time, she/I was a luminous, fluorescent blue, cartoon-animation line drawing. As I watched, the child - me - started moving: looking up from my knees, pushing slowly up to standing and finally dancing in joy. And this time it felt like the child-me was here in the same time plane as the adult-me, dancing me through the frozen years. "

A BODY OF MANY PORTALS

In my innerdances, many early childhood memories awake; particularly, there's this image of a house at the end of my street which often is shown from a distance. Last week in a process, I remembered a woman I met there, maybe only once. It was quite a simple memory but everything from that day was so rich in detail - her porch, the flowers. I felt there was something special shared between us that day, some feeling of kindness. Yesterday, I found myself wandering through my childhood home (pre-3yrs old). I have always had memories of this house but this time i felt like I was almost mechanically able to move room to room with much clarity on spacial aspects, floor plan, fittings like bathroom tiles and carpet. I felt like I was able to experience great detail about the house. I had a few flashbacks of games my older sisters would play, hiding my dads keys once when he needed to go to work. But the experience was like a virtual reality. There was no emotion or nostalgia or dreaminess. I felt quite clear and awake, just intrigued that memory could be accessed in such a way. I had not gone looking for it yet it came - a little parcel of reflection. I am left wondering how many portals in space and time lay neatly packaged into our bodies. 
​

Kitti - innerdance Australia

the body remembers

After several innerdance sessions in Palawan, for days, I would see insects coming out of my body whenever lying down to sleep. I started seeing shadows around me, in the trees of the land, on the walls of my bedroom and on my left foot, draining something out of me. One night, before going to bed, I had the strong feeling I needed to place an amethyst crystal on my chest. After that, more and more crystals were placed on my body. My womb started to perform this slow movement and my mind started to journey inside a very old and abandoned house. After finding this circular metal stairs, I went down, deeper and deeper within my body, reaching a room of dark red cave-like walls. Inside, my heart was on a table, chained. I’ve placed the amethyst in my heart and suddenly I was walking on this very thin path into dark woods. I saw myself from the back, wearing white shoes and dress, playing along the way, making the long dark hair swing around. A couple of minutes minutes later, memories of a sexual abuse that happened when I was a toddler started to come into surface. Something my conscious mind had hid pretty well up until that moment.

​gra - innerdance Maia

the Panoramic Life Review

I literally relived my life in 360 degrees panorama. I saw everything that has ever happened. I even saw how many leaves were on the tree when I was six years old playing in the dirt in the front yard. I literally re-lived it. Next I watched my life from a second person's point of view. In this life I was taught to be sympathetic toward others. But from the second person's point of view, I felt empathy, not sympathy. After that, I literally became every person that I've ever encountered. I felt what it feels like to be that person and I felt the direct results of my interaction between me and that person.​

Dannion Brinkley

the ultimate birth

In an innerdance, I had a very vivid experience of going backward in time to my land ‘Egypt’ before the pyramids. That was the mere beginning. I kept going backward to what I can call the Big Bang, then I kept going beyond this to the point before it all existed. I saw the Void, an empty place where nothing existed yet that void held the full potentiality of all that exists. I entered this void and watched how creation restarted all over again - everywhere within this void, we are all one earth consciousness remembering itself through us.
There was a deep joyous and happy feeling that accompanies this deep birthing experience, yet also terror. I had to watch my entire life reviewed in front of me as I am asked to embrace changes that accompanies the intense knowing of all that I have lived through, all that I remember now.
​

Noha - innerdance Cairo

across time

The day I lost my ability to speak and went into aphasia, I woke up with movements once again. After electricity traveled through my body and charged my brain into an epilepsy-like state for some time, there was a brief long moment of stillness that brought up another bundle of memories: there were a lot of violet flashes of light, followed by memories of different lives in different timelines and dimensionalities. At first, I saw myself in outer space, preparing to come here. After that, many flashlights of memories came through: I was this very old lady living in the countryside of a place that felt like western Europe in the 1930’s and sending kids away into spaceships. I jumped forward in time and saw many different lives in which I was carrying out different tasks, holding up to different personalities, being in different countries. I saw myself being burned and decapitated multiple times. But I also saw how more than once I had been the one pulling the trigger . I saw many of my deaths over and over again, reliving all those feelings, until I finally got to witness my mother giving birth to me on this timeline. It was as if watching it all from the inside out: being the fetus and sensing the purest sense of peace while witnessing her pain as she gave birth. It was not the first nor the last time I revisited that moment but every time it happens, I feel that unconditional love and care… something that has helped me heal the wounds of  separation from the Earth herself. 

​gra - innerdance Maia

​up in the green

A life changing experience – when time elapsed into no time… and boundaries collapsed…. 

It was unexpected,  This session was about birth.  Isa told us to close our eyes and respond.

Then I heard wailing, moaning, cries of pain, sounds coming from all over, sounds coming from deep within the women in the circle

I was contracting, shrinking, into an abyss – it was deafening… 
I was cringing in fear….
I was hurting from within….
I was remembering…
I was living in a time beyond now…
Their voices became her voice
She was pushing… with all her strength
But I was losing her …..
She was slipping away….  
I was going to be born
She was going to die
My heart was engulfed with guilt
My heart became a well of grief
My birth, her death

I opened my eyes and found comfort
in the loving eyes and arms of the women 
who accompanied and embraced me 
in this surrender…

And then I had to shift
to speak to death not from within 
But through the surrender of the brave warrior
lying in the center to give voice to death

Wanting to understand 
Why I lived, and why she died
I asked Death if it held my hand
He said “No, I am not God.”

And then Rebecca whispered
“You gave her life…”

​

Maite - innerdance Manila

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