The Best Way to Remember Your Dreams

The Method: You must be willing to stay in bed an extra 3 minutes each morning: Those first minutes after you wake are vital. It cannot be put off. Your hopes of snaring that dream fade as soon as you are vertical. 3 minutes = 180 seconds sounds easy but it is a real commitment. We are a highly pressured society and most Americans are sleep deprived: We are trained to get up and go. The tools of the trade: Keep a pen and paper or your journal by your bedside so that you can reach them without getting up. Some people prefer a tape recorder. The Key Discipline: Before you get out of bed, write down whatever is in your head Don't try to remember a dream. Instead, jot down any thought that is running through your brain at the time. It may be words -- ''coffee'', ''late'', ''get the kids to school.'' In that transitional world between sleeping and waking (known as the "hypnopompic" state), you might be seeing an image, talking to a friend, arguing with a parent. Anything is possible. Whatever the thought, word, image or experience, get it down. This is a special time of the day and all kinds of interesting and peculiar ideas are floating around your brain. You will be surprised. The exercise here is to develop your ability to notice whatever is in your head as you wake up. This is the training process. Eventually you will notice a dream but the ability to remember that dream comes out of this training. What is quite likely is that one day you will wake up knowing that you had a dream but not remembering it at all. In that case you are getting very close. It's likely that, during your day, someone or something will trigger those memories and the dream will come flooding back to you. Dos and Don'ts: Notice what position you usually wake up in. Many people find that going back into that position helps them remember the dream. Mugwort and Melatonin are both believed to help. They seem to work well for some people. Avoid alcohol. It interferes with your brain for many hours after that last drink. Some prescription drugs and some over the counter medicines will also interfere with your ability to remember dreams. Recall past dreams: As an exercise, write down a few dreams you can remember from your childhood. Often there is a key dream from before the age of 10. Many people have a childhood recurring dream that eventually stopped. Going back to these earlier dreams seems to prod the mind into remembering new ones. Talk about dreams: Sharing your dreams is the greatest way to ensure that you will continue to remember your dreams. You will go back to forgetting if you cannot make any use of your dreams. Simply telling your dream to a sympathetic listener will reinforce the process. Listen to other people's dreams. They will stimulate your own dream life. Oftentimes I have a dream and am pleasantly surprised to find that it relates to a dream someone told me. Come to my dream groups. Once you get to see the excitement of discussing dreams, you'll be so hooked you'll never go for long without a dream. In summary: Remembering your dreams is a habit and needs support structures like any new habit. You are more likely to go jogging if your running shorts are by the bed, the alarm is set, and your partner has permission to (gently) push you out of bed. Dream recall is even easier. The task is to stay in bed! Don't get up until those first thoughts, images, or dream fragments are down on paper. And all your loved one has to do is say nothing at all until you have finished writing.