Remembering Dreams

Everybody dreams, but not everyone always remembers their dreams.  Keeping a daily dream journal has been a great exercise to help me focus and make me recall my dreams more easily.  This past week, I've been on vacation and I've been able to recall my night visions much more vividly than usual.

I've been re-reading my older dream journals so I think that's a factor -- the notes I've jotted down have sparked a flood of memories of the dreams I had as if they were yesterday, even though some of them were over four years ago.  Maybe opening up that doorway in my brain where dreaming occurs is opening up the floodgates and making my dreams more lucid and easier to remember.

It also helps that I've been able to sleep a full eight hours each night this week.  I've also been waking up without my mind pre-occupied with work-related topics, so I've been able to lie in bed for a few moments after waking and I've been able to ponder the last images of what I saw in my sleep.

Usually, I'm thankful to remember one dream a night, but sometimes I can recall two or three.  If I'm really lucky, I sometimes remember up to five dreams, one flowing into the other.

On a slightly related topic, my daughter loves when I read the bedtime book Goodnight Moon to her.  HBO aired a special called Goodnight Moon and Other Sleepytime Tales, and my daughter loves that as well.  The show adapts a series of children's books read or sung by celebrities like Tony Bennett, Billy Crystal, Lauren Hill, Natalie Cole, Aaron Neville, Patti LeBelle, and Susan Surandon.  The best part of the video are the interludes -- a bunch of interviews with little kids sharing their thoughts on dreams.  Check it out.