We all dream
every night. Some people don't remember dreaming and would
swear that they never dream. But dreaming is essential for
sorting out and releasing the emotional buildup from our day
so we can start the new day with a clean slate. If you stop
people from dreaming, they become disturbed, confused and
can start hallucinating.
On the other end of the scale,
there are people that dream too much. This often happens to
those that are depressed. Our brains aren't very good at telling
the difference between a real situation and an imagined one.
So hours of thinking about stressful situations before bedtime
creates a huge negative emotional charge which requires huge
amounts of dreaming to discharge.
So dreams are a very important
part of us and affect our lives whether we remember them or
not. And by tapping into them, we can explore and work through
issues before they have even come to light. One of the great
benefits of dreams is that they can show us what we are thinking
about or are concerned with in our lives, often at a subconscious
level.
Most people actually dream
about one hundred minutes per night-about as long as any film
you might see at a movie theater or on television. Most of
us are lucky to recall even a few minutes of the previous
night's dreams and many people routinely wake up with no recall
at all of dreaming.
According to Dr. Alan Hobson's
work at Harvard University, that memory for dreams is affected
by the presence or absence of various neurotransmitters in
our brains. The evidence is clear that some people have much
better dream recall than others. The answer to this difference
most likely lies in the balance of these different chemicals.
Most people remember dreams,
or at least remember dreaming, when they awaken in the morning.
The reason for this is because the vast majority of dreaming
occurs in the last third of sleep. But if you have little
or no dream recall, here are a few tips that could help:
Learn how to "wake up
slowly." When you first wake up in the morning, lay quietly
in bed and don't immediately start thinking and worrying about
the day ahead. Try to concentrate your mind on whatever it
was that you were just dreaming about - even if at first you
can't remember dreaming about anything. This recall process
is half intellectual, half emotional. We want to think about
what it was we just were dreaming of, but we also want to
feel what it was that we were dreaming about.
Often, if we can identify
our emotional state, we can work backwards from there, remembering
fragments of the dream until something jogs our memory and
suddenly we may remember a lot more of the dream.
Many dreamers who practice
this "slow awakening" technique say that it is important
to lay still as they are waking up. Moving their bodies distracts
their mind from being able to recall the last dream.
Here is something else you
can try. Set your alarm for about thirty to forty minutes
earlier than normal and hit the snooze button every ten minutes
until it is really time to get up. Since we dream most heavily
in the morning, chances are very good that each time the alarm
sounds, it will wake you out of a dream. Now practice the
dream recall technique we just discussed above. Hit the snooze
button, lay still in bed, and work back in your mind to what
you were just dreaming about. Feel your feelings, feel your
emotions, and hold on to whatever snippets of the dream you
can. Try to gather more bits of events and activity, until
you have at least an outline of the dream.
Sleeping with a dream pillow
is a great way to improve your dream recalling abilities.
Mugwort is an herb used in dream pillows that is known to
make dreams more intense and vivid so that the chances of
remembering the dream is much greater. It's My Nature's dream
pillow is quite effective for this. However, we always recommend
that those prone to nightmares not use a dream pillow and
we do not recommend it for children.
Once you begin remembering
your dreams, you might want to keep a dream journal and record
them. In dream recall, every detail is important. A general
rule would be to make a point of recalling colors, shapes,
gender, water, weather and movement. These points can reveal
a great deal about the overall state of your life. Dreams
can reflect tensions that exist inside of us. Recalling and
analyzing our dreams can go a long way in helping us to ease
some of the stress in our lives. If we just listen, our dreams
can show us the way!
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