Sleep Patterns
Tips for Dream Recall
If you awaken during the night with a dream memory, jot down a few keywords or images in your Dream Journal, or you might want to record them in audio. These middle of the night snippets are often sufficient to trigger a fuller recall in the morning. Many dreamers find Jungian dream practitioner Robin van Löben Sels’s tips for dreaming helpful. We’ve included them here along with our own.
Tip: If you do not recall dreams on waking you might try moving your body into your habitual positions that you sleep in: cuddled up knees to chest, laying on your side or any position you regularly sleep in. During sleep our eyeballs tend to roll upwards behind our lids. Laying with eyes closed and rolled up in this way may also aid in sleep recall.
TIP: A way to recall dreams is to imagine faces of the people you have the most potent emotional response to in your waking life (positive or negative). Often one of these faces will appear in a scene or setting of a dream. Should this produce a dream memory, once grasped it may bring more of a dream to consciousness.
TIP: There are dietary aids for active dreaming, vitamin B for example, has been reported by some to enhance dream memory. A word of caution, many people find that eating chocolate in the evening produces nightmares. Many common sleep aids and alcohol deter quality sleep and reduce dream life so go easy if you lean on these.
TIP: Processing dreams need not be a solo endeavor. Sharing dreams can bring further insight from those who care about you and also in the telling, often by speaking a dream we discover that we remember more than we’d thought. Depending on where you live, you might find a dream group that you can join in person.
With permission from Dreamwork(ing): A Primer Second Edition © 2024 Robin van Löben Sels