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I read some things and I made a hypothesis. What if the shared dreaming is a way to early communication between children and parents? For example: Some animal had dangerous situation and feel a lot of fear, and the end of a day go to sleep with animal family. The fear involved a dream of this situation. Some strong animal attack the dreamer. By shared dreaming the family know that the enemy animal is dangerous. In future someone from family can meet this strong animal and know that he need to keep he on distance to be safe. I thought it's something like MEM, but after read definition I'm not sure. I read also about research where people with broken some part of brain didn't had REM sleep and also lost the motivation. So shared dream involved by positive emotion will enhance motivation. I think like you that the strong emotions had the primary role in shared dreaming, because brain don't want to share boring stuff :P and share emotions to teaching. What you think?
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I would say that we dont need to prove the viability of shared dreams that the process of how and why is already out there the studies are just across different disciplines and in thousands of studies. I have been in the research stage for a documentary film on this very subject. the reason is genetic natural selection, the how is through bioelectromagnetic fields that we emit and hundreds of studies show this already. nrem states are generally for your daily grind while rem states are usually fear based and are designed for survival which depending on the type and severity will mark you genetically to be handed down to help the species survive. I personally believe the basis of animals in dreams is how we are helping each other to propel all of our species genetically though there is no study i have ever read regarding that.
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I think the best evidence (outside of one's personal experience) can be found in the work of Dr. Allan Botkin and his Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) therapy for PTSD. For those unfamiliar with it just search his name, he's written a book about it. There's also a good introduction chapter on it in Fringe-ology which I reviewed in the book reviews thread. The therapy is an offshoot of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) psychotherapy which involves a patient recounting a traumatic experience while the therapist directs their eye movements left to right. This bilateral stimulation simulates the brains memory processing and integration function normally performed during REM sleep. IADC takes it a step further and induces a lucid dream state in which the patient is reunited with a deceased relative or friend (the same as lucid dreamers are able to do in my opinion). In one session Botkin's assistant sat in and also performed the eye movements along with the patient. The assistant was able to see the same visions as the patient. Other colleagues were able to do this with their patients in the same way. You can hear an interview with Botkin here: Internet Talk Radio | Seek Reality – Induced Afterlife Communications with Dr. Allan Botkin | WebTalkRadio.net The shared experience is explained at the 26:25 mark.
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SD is definitely real. Me and my girlfriend shared dreams atleast 3 times a week for a year and a half. We shared lucid and non lucid dreams. Even when i moved to CA and she lived in VA we still shared vivid dreams frequently. I've shared dreams with other people though. Thirteen others to be exact. But only about four of them were lucid dreams. I woukd love to know more on the subject but so far im the only person i know who has had multiple or intentional SDs. Im actually on the site today looking for answers because I had one last night.
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Welcome, Quazoo!
There is a lot of positive, occasionally informative stuff about SD on DV's if you look around. You might do a search for WakingNomad, the resident, if currently mostly AWOL, SD guru on these forums; he even has a SD tutorial.
Also, there is a forum set aside for SD, called the International Oneironaut Shared Dreaming Project; you might want to browse that as well; though it has been quiet for a while, there is a lot of interesting SD stuff there.
I notice you've been signed up for a couple of years, so you might already know about both these things, but I figured I'd share anyway, just in case!
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Thanks I'll check them out. I enjoy speaking about this with people who dont think Im on drugs.