When Brianna Lafferty stopped breathing for eight minutes in a Texas hospital, she didn’t just come back to life — she returned with a message.
‘Death is an illusion, and our time on Earth isn’t the end,’ she told the Daily Mail.
Her extraordinary brush with death came at just 25.
But rather than being a traumatic experience, she left with a profound sense of peace, purpose, and a transformed relationship with life itself.
She said: ‘It changed the course of my life – what I feared no longer had power over me and what I used to chase didn’t seem important anymore.
‘I came back with a sense of mission and deep reverence for both life and death.’
She had only been absent for eight minutes, yet to her, it seemed like she had been away for months. She can vividly remember hearing a voice questioning if she was ‘prepared’ to embrace death. It was a crucial moment that she believes determined whether she would return or not.
Brianna, a resident of Colorado, had been fighting a unique genetic disorder affecting her brain called myoclonus dystonia since she was a child. This condition caused excruciating muscle spasms and nerve pain, making tasks like sleeping and simply living a challenging ordeal.
But it was in 2017 when things got so bad her body gave out.
At the age of 25, Brianna Lafferty believed her time to depart had arrived after struggling with a rare neurological illness since her youth. She ultimately accepted death willingly.
She had been suffering from extreme insomnia, sometimes going four days without a single minute of sleep, and had come down with the flu.
Her sodium levels plummeted to a critically low 115 milliequivalents per liter (normal range is 135–145).
When someone’s organs start failing, their ability to regulate fluids and electrolytes, leading to sodium imbalances.
‘My body had basically just given out. I was incompatible with life.’
Lying in a Texas hospital bed with her mother by her side, Brianna stopped breathing. Her heart stopped. But eight minutes later, ‘miraculously,’ it began to beat again.
What happened in between, she says, changed everything.
As she lost consciousness, Brianna heard a voice ask if she was ‘ready.’ When she said yes, she slipped into what she calls ‘complete darkness.’
Instead of panic, there was clarity.
‘I was completely still, yet I felt fully alive, aware and more myself than ever before.
‘There was no pain, just a deep sense of peace and clarity.’
In this other realm, she no longer remembered her human self.
She was weightless, detached from her physical form — and aware that what we experience on Earth is fleeting and fragile.
‘Everything happens at once there, as if time doesn’t exist, yet there was perfect order.’
Brianna found herself traveling through a bright blue tunnel ‘filled with ones and zeros,’ which she believes was symbolic of the universe’s mathematical structure.
That tunnel opened into a white room with no doors or windows — just more numbers — before she entered a series of vivid, surreal landscapes.
In one scene, beings she didn’t recognize (but felt deeply connected to) were sliding down snow-covered trees.
Brianna, who is based out of Colorado , started suffering from poor health at the age of 10, with some of her debilitating symptoms including painful muscle spasms, nerve pain, anxiety, depression, and insomnia. For many years her condition left doctors puzzled, until she was finally diagnosed with myoclonus dystonia
While in a Texas hospital with her mother, Brianna says she stopped breathing for eight minutes before her heart ‘miraculously’ started beating again
When she thought about how she disliked snow, the scene immediately shifted into a lush, spring-like setting.
At one point, she learned to fly — only to hurl herself into a pole and lose an arm.
But unlike when she was alive on Earth, Brianna did not experience pain when she was injured and she was fascinated to watch as her bloodied limb grew back.
Her journey eventually brought her to a barbed wire fence. On the other side stood a mountain, a farm, and a house.
The other beings passed through the fence — but Brianna couldn’t follow.
Her final stop was a room where a scroll was presented to her by seven powerful beings. But before she could unravel its contents, her ego returned — and so did her consciousness.
Back in her body, it felt like she had been gone for months. But in reality, just eight minutes had passed.
‘It changed the course of my life.’
The years leading up to her near-death experience had been defined by chronic illness, confusion, and pain.
From the age of 10, Brianna experienced severe muscle spasms, nerve pain, anxiety, depression, and crushing insomnia. For years, doctors were baffled.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with myoclonus dystonia, a rare neurological movement disorder caused by a genetic mutation.
Fewer than 5,000 people in the U.S. are thought to be affected.
Although the condition itself isn’t typically fatal, the physical and mental toll it took on Brianna’s body left her vulnerable to life-threatening complications.
Her recovery after the near-death experience was long — physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
‘I had to relearn how to walk and talk,’ she said.
‘I had been given another chance at life, but the adjustment was real.’
Today, Brianna works as a death and spiritual guide, helping others navigate the emotional, physical, and existential complexities of chronic illness, dying, and spiritual transformation.
Brianna underwent an experimental brain surgery for her myoclonus dystonia called ‘deep brain stimulation’ in 2022 which she said was ‘hugely successful’ and helped lessen her symptoms
Her experience, she says, is not a story about dying — it’s a story about awakening.
In 2022, she underwent an experimental brain surgery called deep brain stimulation to help manage her condition.
During the procedure, a battery-powered stimulator — essentially a brain pacemaker — was implanted in her chest, with wires sending signals to the part of her brain responsible for her symptoms.
She calls the procedure ‘hugely successful,’ and it has significantly lessened the severity of her condition.
Looking back, she sees everything with new eyes.
‘All the suffering I went through — it’s crystal clear now why it happened. I don’t resist life anymore. Even the hard parts. Especially the hard parts.’
Though she admits she’s a little fearful of having another near-death experience (‘the recovery is tough’), she trusts that whatever is meant to happen, will. ‘I live with a heart full of gratitude instead of anger now.’
‘Here’s to the power of hope, resilience, and the quantum leap that transformed my life,’ she said.
