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Home > News > Brainkind’s Pieter du Toit shares insight into the power of coma experiences
Keenan Acton, a gym owner from Wrexham collapsed during hyrox training and spent more than four weeks in an induced coma.
However, while unconscious, Keenan said he was still living life through his dreams – he believed he was living in a big glass house with his wife and their twins.
In an astonishing prediction, Keenan’s wife Olivia is currently pregnant with twins. Keenan’s dream became reality.
Keenan felt that everything he experienced in his dreams was real but wanted to know why this was the case.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: “It was real, I wasn’t watching it happen, I was doing it, I was living it.”
In a bid to better understand Keenan’s memories of being in a coma, the BBC approached Brainkind’s Pieter du Toit. A consultant clinical psychologist and clinical director at the charity, Pieter happily shared his expertise on what these experiences mean for someone like Keenan.
He told Keenan: “When you were in your induced coma your brain wasn’t shut down,”
“It wasn’t the switch was flicked off, but there was a lot going on.”
Keenan spoke about how there was no history of twins in either side of the family and believed it to be too much of a coincidence not to believe that his coma was a ‘look into the future.’
Pieter said that although it was likely just a coincidence, science cannot explain everything.
Pieter said: “Our dreams and our experiences in a coma, or the ones we remember, are the things that are important to us,”
“Our minds are always creating a narrative, a story, a whole.”
On Keenan’s prediction, Pieter added: “Science would say…it’s probably just coincidence,
“What I would say about our scientific understanding is that there are limitations,
“It’s all about what makes sense to the person, what’s helpful to us, rather than being right about something.”
