Dream Recall
Category: Sleep Science
The Starting Point of Dream Divination - Nothing Begins Until a Dream Comes Back
Dream recall means the ability to bring the content of a dream back to mind after waking. REM sleep arrives at intervals of roughly 90 minutes and repeats several times over a night, but most of what is dreamed there is no longer around by the time a person wakes. How often dreams come back varies widely from one person to the next: some say they remember a dream every morning, while others feel they hardly dream at all. For the second group, saying the dream did not stay in memory fits the results of sleep experiments better than saying no dream took place. Dream divination has nothing to work with except the dreams that come back, which makes recall the first gate to get through in practice.
Three Factors That Shape Dream Recall
Three factors come up again and again in accounts of how much of a dream comes back. The first is the timing of waking. A dream can usually be told after waking out of REM sleep, while an alarm going off in the middle of deep non-REM sleep tends to leave nothing behind. The second is the quality of sleep. Alcohol is known to reduce REM sleep, and fewer dreams come back along with it. Medication works differently from one type to another, so if something being taken is a concern, please check with the doctor who prescribed it. The third is the manner of attention paid to dreams. There are reports that people who keep dreams in view recall them more often, and the habit of keeping a dream journal gives that a push.
Do People Who Say They Never Dream Really Not Dream?
People who say they never dream are not hard to find, but the results of sleep experiments make the statement difficult to take at face value. In an experiment carried out by Dement and Kleitman in 1957, participants woken during REM sleep told the content of a dream in about eighty percent of cases, while those woken out of non-REM sleep did so in fewer than one case in ten. In most cases, then, not remembering the dream is closer to the mark than not having one. Where recall is extremely low, several circumstances tend to be stacked together: waking abruptly out of deep sleep, starting the day in motion with no gap for looking back, and paying no attention to dreams in the first place. For anyone who wants to keep up with dream divination, putting the recall side in order before polishing any interpretive skill leaves more material to work with.
Practical Techniques for Improving Dream Recall
Here are a few things worth trying. First, the habit of keeping a dream journal. Going to sleep on the understanding that something will be written down makes it easier for attention to turn toward dreams, and there are reports that the number of dreams that come back grows over time. Second, staying still on waking and taking one or two minutes with the eyes closed to look back over the dream. Rolling over and changing position can be enough to lose the thread. Third, telling yourself before sleep that tonight's dream is one to remember. How well any of these works differs from person to person, but on this site we suggest building on the dream journal and the first minute or two after waking, then adding the remaining one on top.
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