How to Remember Your Dreams
5 simple steps to improving dream recall
Having trouble remembering your dreams?
Well, you’re not alone.
And believe me, even if you think you’re not dreaming, you are.
Generally, adults dream between 4 to 6 times per night (a bit less for children), yet an article on sleep.org indicates that most people forget 95 to 99 percent of what they dream.
Being a very active, vivid dreamer, myself, I considered how crippling it might be if I suddenly couldn’t recall my night-time ventures into a vaster awareness — an awareness that so often has been the harbinger of conflict resolution, healing, insight, and spiritual transformation.
When people hear that I’m a dream-worker, they nearly always have immediate commentary about their own dream lives. I hear everything from, “I have the craziest, most vivid dreams — I just don’t know what they mean,” to, “I’ve never given much thought to my dreams.”
But by far, the most frequent comments I receive come from people who can’t seem to remember their dreams.
Having worked with my dreams for 30 plus years, I know the deep value a dream exploration can mean for healing the psyche of one who is willing. So, I’m going to share with you some tried and true methods for improving dream recall. These methods will work whether you occasionally remember your dreams or almost never remember them. The key here, as with any life change, is to actually put the steps into practice.
Ready? Here we go….
Increase your dream recall by employing the following 5 steps.
Step one:
The first thing to employ is your desire to remember your dreams, and the desire to begin working with them. You want to open your mind to the idea that you can communicate with your deep unconscious, or what psychotherapy might call the “subconscious” and what my first dream teacher called The Dream Body.
Realize that you have a dream body, a deep well of awareness into the depths of every aspect of your being, all aspects of humanity’s collective unconsciousness (Jung’s dream archetypes), and the entire pulsating beingness of the Universe. Your dreams are portholes into the great mysteries of what you are.
Step two:
Choose a method to record your dreams. I recommend an actual journal to write in versus a method of digital recording because there tends to be greater recall through the written process. However, if you are averse to writing or find yourself pressed for time, using a microphone/recording mechanism on your cell phone, tablet, iPad, or dictaphone is another effective way to record your dreams.
Step three:
Set your dream journal and a pen (or recorder) right next to your bed within easy reach. As you go to sleep each night, state to your dream body your intention to remember your dreams. I often will also ask my dream body to please deliver my dreams in symbols that I can readily understand. That is all the prep you need before drifting off to sleep. You’ll be surprised at how easily this can work when you start putting earnest attention on wanting to recall your dreams.
Step four:
When you wake in the morning, resist the urge to turn over or move in any way. Staying in the same position that you were in during the dream helps dream recall. Then, after allowing the memory of the dream to flood into your awareness, immediately grab your dream journal and write it down.
Pay close attention to any emotions, colors, and fine details in your dreams and write them down. The commitment to recording your dreams has a way of spurring on more dream recall in the nights that follow. So, make sure you stay dedicated to recording them in some way, even if in brief notations.
Some people don’t want to wake up enough, in the middle of the night, to record a dream…. This is a decision you’ll have to make. I personally record my dreams in the middle of the night if I am stirred awake by them. I consider the possibility that my psyche is waking me intentionally so that I might record a dream that might otherwise be lost by morning…. and so I wake myself to write.
Step five:
There are a few things to be aware of that can affect dream recall. Drugs, whether prescription or recreational can affect the nature of your dreams and the ability to remember them. Alcohol can inhibit the deeper REM cycles, the sleep states needed to produce dreaming. So, drinking at night will likely prevent your dream life from flourishing. The more you abstain from drinking and mind-altering substances the better the recall.
There is a great deal that can be elaborated on with regards to dream recall, but this article will suffice as a very effective beginning to remembering your dreams so that you can start to tap into the endless well of insight that awaits you each night.
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