Dream Recall Related

[homer2020]

Ok, so I've kept a dream journal for 8 days now and have only remember 3 dreams. It might have something to do with my length of my sleep (6 hours, I have trouble sleeping sometimes). Also sometimes I wake up and think about what I dreamed and all I remember is one word about the dream, like I wake up and remember the word "rabbit" and that's it, should I still write that down?

[Gwendolyn]

Yes. Every little bit counts.

[DrTechnical]

Yes, write down rabbit. The dream journal accomplishes two things. First, by implementing this habitual action of writing down dreams in your journal, you get into the habit of paying greater attention to your dreams. Second, it will ultimately give you data to help charaterize your dream signs. You have a larger challenge though. You're really not remebering dreams. Here are my suggestions: 1) On the main dreamviews page, read the link related to sleep cycles. 2) You need to sleep 8 hours or so to maximize time in REM. The longer you sleep, the longer your REM cycles are. 3) You need to wake out of your REM period to remember the dream. One way to do this is to set an alarm clock to intersect with what is hopefully a REM period (see (1) above) 4) The other way to insure not sleeping continuously and remembering the dream, is to drink lots of water before bed, and then lots more every time you get up to pee. This will force you to wake up periodicially 5) When you wake, don't even move. Just reflect on the dream snippet and see if other impressions come to you. Within a minute or so, other aspects of the dream may be recontructed. Hope this helps