Dream Journal

[calvint]

I go to sleep at about 11pm and i wake up at about 7:10am. is there a better time for me to wake up so i can remember my dreams easier? I can't wake up after 7:10 because i have school soon. Any suggestions? Thanks.

[The Blue Meanie]

Hi calvin. It seems like you're getting a little over eight hours' sleep, which is good. You can work with that. My suggestion, if you are having trouble remembering your dreams, is to do the following: Go to bed at 10:30 maybe, and drink a bottle of water before bed. While you're falling asleep, tell yourself you will wake up after your dream and rmember your dream. If all goes well, you will wake up towards the end of an REM period, hopefully around about roughly 5 hours into your sleep, say at 4am. Then stay awake for a half hour or so and get out of bed for a bit, nothing much, and go back to sleep again. This is the WBTB method, and it can be used to boost REM in the latter few hours of your sleep, giving you easier to remember dreams. Hope that helps!

[calvint]

ooo thnx ok ill try that on a weekend. and do you think i should wake up during a REM period or right after it ends?

[The Blue Meanie]

If you use the water technique and tell yourself to wake up after a dream and remember it, you should wake up slowly rather than quickly, so, the REM period will end, you'll start to wake up, and then you will sort of gather scraps of the dream you had and put them together. At least, that's what I get. That's also why alarm clocks kill recall - they wake you up too suddenly.