Dec

How to remember your dreams every night

I’m always amazed when people told me that they cannot remember their dreams, I have a completely different problem, when I wake up I have the memories of too many dreams, which is confusing and can take a certain time to write down. Even hours after I wake up I have flash memories of various part of my different dreams.
I noticed one thing that affect the ability to remember dreams is digestion; if you go to sleep with your stomach full of foods, you are not likely to remember your dreams. Another factor that affect dreams it is to go to sleep when you are not tired, many people who suffer insomnia in fact do so because they go to sleep when they aren’t tired, they assume that they need the standard 8 hours of sleep, however, the amount of sleep we need is very variable.
Going to sleep when you are really tired will help to remember your dreams better as you are more likely to have a quality night of sleep.

According to Norman Ford author of The Sleep Rx: 75 Proven Ways to Get a Good Night’s Sleep , a dose higher than 500 mg per day of caffeine can increase blood pressure with no doubt this will affect your dreams and sleep pattern, over consumption of caffeine can cause nervous anxiety, can lead to frequent urination, and has been linked to a higher risk of fibrocystic breast disease, and of osteoperosis in women. It may also contribute to a biochemical deficiency of calcium and potassium, and of vitamin B1. A deficiency of B1 leads to coffee nerves, fatigue, anxiety, depression, and difficulty concentrating. Fatigue is often due to overstimulation of the adrenal glands. Caffeine may also have an adverse effect on heartbeat rate.

If you are serious about studying your dreams make a cut in your consumption of caffeine (coffee, teas, chocolate).

Basically, healthy habit = healthy sleep = easier ability to remember your dreams.

Now, let review the Robert Moss (author of Conscious Dreaming ) method to remember dreams.

1 – Use affirmations, when you go to sleep tell yourself ‘I want to remember my dreams tonight, I ask for guidance of my dream source’ or ‘Tonight, I will remember my dreams and when I wake up I will immediately write them down’ , this is conditionning you to remember more than one dream per night.
2 – Keep your dream journal or your recorder at your bedside so when you wake up everything is ready to write or record your dreams.
3 – Give yourself time to bring your dreams back, I noticed that sometime part of dreams will come back to me when I’m in the shower it has become a tradition with me. Moss recommends to wake up without an alarm clock (which I do for some reason I always wake up naturally between 4 AM and 5 AM ), according to him it helps to not be pushed to quickly away from your dreams in the outside world.
4 – Give yourself space, try to record your dreams before you get out of the bed.
5 – Write your dreams all at once, this one can be a pain if like me you are an early riser, but according to Moss it helps to keep the memories of dreams fresh.

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