Remembering Your Dreams

Tips to remember your dreams:

1) Make a conscious decision to remember your dreams. There is a better chance of remembering your dreams if you really want to remember them. Assuming you do want to, tell yourself that you?re going to remember your dreams and conscientiously follow the steps to make your desire to remember your dreams come true.

2) Put a pad and pen or pencil within easy reach from your bed. It?s best if it just has plain paper with no designs or other distractions. Use this pad only for recording your dreams. Before you go to sleep, make sure it is open to the next page on which you can write so you do not have to search for a blank page when you wake up. Always put the pen in the same spot so that you don't have to search for that, either.

3) Place your alarm clock close to your bed. When you wake up you want to be able to focus on remembering your dreams before you perform any other activities. If you can wake up without an alarm clock, you won?t have to worry about turning it off, but if you do need an alarm, make sure you can turn it off quickly and easily, preferably without even moving in bed. Don?t use a radio alarm clock, as the ads or chatter on the morning show will likely distract you from your task.

-- If possible, try using a gentler way of waking up. Wake up on your own, ask someone to wake you gently and without talking to you, or hook up a timer to the lights in your room. Many people find that they are able to better recall dreams if they do not use an alarm clock.

4) Place a post-it note on the alarm clock, with the words "What did you dream?" or similar in large letters, so that it's the first thing you see when you open your eyes (and turn the alarm clock off). Give yourself a strong suggestion before you go to sleep, such as I will remember my dreams. They are worth remembering. They are worth recording.

5) Get to bed early enough to get adequate sleep on a consistent basis. If you wake up too tired to think, you will find it hard to recall your dreams. Too little sleep will also limit the number of dreams you have.

-- Do meditation or various relaxation exercises before you sleep, such as tightening and relaxing muscles & various parts of your body to help ease you into an altered state.

6) Think about a major problem or emotional concern right before you fall asleep (nothing that will spark too much of a negative feeling). Think deeply about the situation without pressing for solutions or coming to conclusions. Just thinking about the problem "opens the door", in a sense, to more vividly remembered dreams, and the dreams may even offer more insights regarding the problem at hand.

7) Concentrate on recalling your dream as soon as you wake up. Typically you can remember only the last dream you had before waking. Do not move and do not do anything. Stay in the same position as the one in which you awoke and try to remember as much about your dream as possible before you think about anything else.

-- Focus your gaze on the first object you see as you open your eyes. Look at the object; focus on it. That object will most often take the vague recollection of your dream to a placemark in memory where it is easier to recall details. A doorknob, a light bulb, or a nail in the wall, for example, will quell your urge to begin your day, and will help you to settle into memories of what you had experienced while sleeping.

8) Record your dream in your dream journal. Jot down as much as possible about your dream, starting with a basic sketch that includes such things as the location of the dream, the basic plot, the characters, the overall emotion of the dream (i.e. were you scared or happy in the dream?), and any prominent images you can recall. If you can remember any dialogue, you may want to write it down first, as words in dreams are easily forgotten. Record everything you can, even if you can only remember one image. As you get the basics down, more of the dream may come to you.

-- If you cannot remember anything about your dream, write down the first thing that comes into your mind upon waking. It may be related to the dream in some way, and it might trigger recollections. Also write down how you are feeling when you wake up. The emotions you experience in a dream typically remain, at least for a brief period, when you awake, so if you wake up anxious or elated, ask yourself why.

-- By writing the dream in the present tense, it helps you to go back into the dream moment.

-- Working from the end of the dream back to the front helps if you can?t remember how the dream started.

9) Increase the number of dreams you can remember by writing in your dream journal every time you wake up throughout the night. You dream several times while you're sleeping, so if you only record the last dream you had before you get up in the morning, there are more dreams you might not be remembering. It is always tempting to go right back to sleep when you wake up in the middle of the night, but take the opportunity to remember what you were dreaming before you do?in all likelihood you will not remember it in the morning.

10) Keep a notepad or voice recorder with you throughout the day. Often something you see or hear later in the day will trigger a memory of a dream from the night before. Note these recollections without delay, and think about them to see if you can remember how they fit into the rest of the dream. Throughout the day, keep your mind open.

Extra Tips:

-Keep a table lamp on your nightstand. If you wake up in the middle of the night, you will need to turn on a light in order to record your dreams in your dream journal. As with the alarm clock, you want to be able to reach your lamp with as little movement as possible.

- As an alternative, you can also use a small flashlight solely for recording dreams at night. Cover the lens with three layers of masking tape so you can still easily see your journal at night, but it's not so bright that it makes you want to close your eyes.

- Some people keep a small voice recorder by the bed and talk into it instead of writing down the dream. It's easier to remember when you're only half-awake!

- If you have the same dream the next day, or next week, jot that down also. A dream that repeats itself is a dream upon which we should all concentrate. It might have a special meaning.

- When recording dreams, remember that the recording is personal. Don't write it to make sense for others because you may find yourself altering things to make it easier for outsiders to understand. Always write what you believe to be true, not what would make sense.

- Record exactly what happened without necessarily trying to make sense of it yourself, either. For example, if your dream starts inside a house and you then find yourself in a forest, avoid the temptation to assume you walked out of the house. Dreams that are foreign to everyday experience could be lost by trying to apply waking logic to the events.

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