How to Remember Your Dreams
Dream interpretation can only work with the dreams you remember. Many people who feel they hardly ever dream are not dreaming less; their dreams have simply vanished by the time morning comes. Here is what you can try, starting tonight, to carry the dreams you have through to morning.
Why dreams are gone by morning
REM sleep, the stage in which you dream, comes around roughly once in every 90-minute sleep cycle, and it grows longer in the second half of the night. Dream memories are sharpest the moment you wake from REM sleep, and they fade fast once you sit up and start thinking about the day ahead. That is why nothing is left on mornings when an alarm pulls you out of deep non-REM sleep. How you wake, and what you do in the first moments afterward, changes how much dream recall you get.
Things to try tonight
Allow a little more time for sleep
REM sleep gets longer toward dawn, so waking early cuts into the hours richest in dreams. Make room for days when you can sleep a little longer than usual, and you are less likely to lose the dreams from those hours.
Go easy on alcohol before bed
Alcohol helps you fall asleep faster, but it reduces REM sleep in the first half of the night. You may drift off sooner, but the time you spend dreaming shrinks accordingly.
Stay still when you wake
Before you open your eyes, hold the same position for anywhere from a few dozen seconds to 1 or 2 minutes and go back over the scene, then the colors, then the mood. Roll over or reach for your phone only after you have recalled what you can.
Keep a notepad by your pillow and jot down even fragments
One word, one color or one feeling is enough. Simply going to sleep intending to write something down turns your attention toward your dreams. The Dream Journal tool on this site keeps your entries on this device and nowhere else.
Decide before sleep to remember tonight's dream
Surveys have found that people who take more interest in their dreams tend to remember them more readily in the morning. Going to sleep intending to write your dream down is a simple way to renew that interest every night.
On days off, wake up without an alarm
Research has found that people woken by an alarm are less likely to remember their dreams. On days off, skip the alarm, leave the curtains slightly open and try waking to the morning light.
Keeping it up
The effect varies from person to person, and a few days is not enough to judge. Keep at it for about 2 weeks, then compare the mornings when you managed to write something with the mornings when you did not. On a morning when nothing comes back, writing just the date and closing the notebook is enough.
The glossary explains how to keep a dream journal going, what dream drought means when dreams stay out of reach for a long time, and how sleep hygiene improves sleep itself.