Five Tips to Help Remember Your Dreams
Before you can begin to analyze and extract meaning out of your dreams, you first have to remember what your dream was. Beyond that, you have to remember more than just small fragments in order to extract the full meaning. Remembering dreams long enough to capture them, either in a written journal or a voice memo, is by far the most difficult task in solving the mystery of a dream. After all, dreams are simply stories written in disappearing ink. They have to be retold immediately or they start to fade.
Here are five tips you can start putting to use today to help you remember your dreams:
Tip#1: Be prepared to capture your dream immediately when you wake up. Whether you love to write or hate it, use these steps to record your dreams.
Take a voice memo. Nearly every cell phone has this capability. This is by far the easiest way to record dreams, but you may encounter problems understanding what you said when you go back and listen. Keep your phone by your bed with the voice memo app open in order to start capturing as much of your dream as possible right away.
Write them down. This is the most obvious way to record your dreams. You may have already started a dream journal but haven’t kept up with it. Keep a journal and pen on your nightstand. Before you start writing things down, make sure you sit up so you don’t go right back to sleep. If you’re recording a dream in the middle of the night look for a pun with a light on the tip so you don’t have to turn on a bright light to write things down.
Tip#2: Use the opposite side of your brain. If you change the way you write things down you’ll activate parts of your brain you don’t normally use and it will help you remember more of your dream.
Circular writing. Start in the middle of the page and turn the paper around as you write down words in a circle motion from the inside out.
Draw the action out instead of describing it in words. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be an artist to do this. My drawings consist of stick figures and stick animals; only sketches, really.
Start out your dream by writing the phrase “once upon a time” and use as much detail as you remember to describe the story.
Tip#3: Get used to waking up before the alarm goes off.
Most dreams finish sometime between 4 and 5 am. If we’re not startled awake by an alarm clock we will not immediately get out of bed and rush to get ready for work and forget all about our dream. It would be very helpful to get in the habit of start rehearsing your dream as soon as you come out of it.
Tip#4: Regularly practice the art of remembering.
Sometimes we don’t remember our dreams because we’re not taught how to remember them. Memories are made of pictures and pictures make up dreams, they really are worth a thousand words. If we test ourselves at remembering what colors we’re wearing late in the day, or what pictures are on the wall at work, or what material our couch and chairs are made of, it will greatly help us to remember everyday details in dreams.
These are just a few pointers on how to better remember your dreams. If they’ve been helpful check out a blog I’ve written on why some people don’t dream.
Two Reasons Why Some People Don’t Dream
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