Remember your Dreams

Dreams can have profound meanings in your current life and often help process events the mind couldn't properly deal with in the awake state. A lot of people have a hard time remembering their dreams once they wake up, though.

There are a variety of helpful methods that will help you retain the memories from your dream:

• Remain in bed with your eyes closed or partially closed. Refrain from turning on artificial light and try to regain hold of the pictures that played in your mind just moments ago. As soon as light enters your eyes, your body starts to wake up and the dream disappears from your conscious memory.

• Reminisce and recall consciously what you saw in your dream with your eyes closed. Re-trace the steps or events of our dream in your mind. 

• Avoid distraction from the dream right after getting up (including radio, TV, talking about something else, kids, etc.). If you direct your attention to anything but your dream, you won’t be able to concentrate on the dreamlike pictures the dream left behind, as they quickly fade away as other thoughts enter your mind.

• Write it down as soon as possible. For me, writing something down helps me to put single thoughts into a big picture. In this case, it helps me to recall further details of my dream, as I write along. My dream literally flows out of my mind onto the paper.

• Tell someone about it without interruption. Sometimes it helps to tell about your dream, as if it was a story. Other people may even ask you questions about details of your dream that you did not remember or realize. They are more likely to float to the surface of your mind and create new and additional meaning, when answering questions.

• Use a dictation device or voice recorder to record your impressions, feelings and sensations. Some people like to put the pictures they saw into words and tell about them. If you don’t happen to have anyone around to talk to about your dream, try this effective method!

• Paint a picture of the dream, and the impressions you had in your dream. Some people have an easier time remembering images than words. This method seems to be quite helpful to kids.

• Find the main aspects of your dream in a dream interpretation book. Finding one word quickly leads to others and helps you remember the remaining context of the dream.