The Shared Death Experience: Profound Healing and Transformation for the Dying and Their Loved Ones

Abstract

Explore the Shared Death Experience (SDE), a profound end-of-life phenomenon in which those attending to the dying report accompanying them to a world beyond this human life. This presentation will review the essential elements of the SDE, its transformative healing benefits, and methods that support experiencers through their process of integration. Highlighting the Shared Crossing Research Initiative’s work with over 200 case studies, this presentation will review current understandings of how SDEs occur and their potential for therapeutic growth. Professionals will gain an understanding of the SDE and other end-of-life experiences that will allow them to recognize these transformative experiences and assist others in receiving and processing them. Special attention will be given to addressing how the SDE reduces grief for surviving caregivers and loved ones. This presentation includes a review of the research, video case studies, a guided visualization, and discussion.

Presenter Bio

William Peters, M.A., M.Ed., is the founder of the Shared Crossing Project whose mission is to raise awareness and educate people about the profound and healing experiences that are possible for the dying and their loved ones. As the director of the Shared Crossing Research Initiative, William and his team collect and study extraordinary end-of-life experiences (shared crossings). He has developed methods to facilitate these shared crossings and to assist experiencers in meaningfully integrating their experiences. William conducts workshops and presents nationally on his research. He is a licensed psychotherapist at the Family Therapy Institute in Santa Barbara where he specializes in end-of-life counseling as a means toward psycho-spiritual evolution. William has worked as a Zen Hospice volunteer and his work is informed by his two near death experiences (SDEs) and a variety of shared death experiences as hospice worker.

Michael Kinsella, Ph.D. is the chief researcher for the Shared Crossing Testimonial Project. He is a lecturer of Religion at Central Michigan University, where he specializes in non-ordinary experiences and the religious dimensions of death and
dying. His most recent publications have appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and in Method and Theory in the Study of Religion. Michael is currently working on his second book, which explores the sociocultural influence of near-death experiences.