The Importance of Remembering Your Dreams
Dream interpretation and analysis can be anything from a fun and
interesting diversion to a serious, full time pursuit. Many
people have been able to analyze their dreams and use the clues
found there to address important issues in their waking lives,
and dream analysis has been an important subject throughout the
ages, from the earliest Greek and Roman philosophers to modern
day society. Before any dreamer can set about analyzing and
interpreting his or her dreams, however, those dreams must first
be remembered and recorded. Remembering your dreams is an often
overlooked part of dream analysis, but it is the basis upon
which all dream analysis stands or falls. It is important to
record dreams quickly, since dreams are one of the hardest
things to capture. Half of a dream's content can be lost in as
little as five minutes, and up to 90% of the dream can slip away
within less than ten minutes. Therefore, it is vital that anyone
seeking to interpret or analyze his or her dreams keep a dream
journal as close to the bed as possible. Keeping a notepad on
the night stand or under the clock radio is ideal. It is
important to get into the habit of playing your dream back in
your mind before you even open your eyes. That is because the
clock is ticking as soon as you wake up. Running the dream back
through your mind will serve to strengthen and reinforce some of
those little details that will soon be forgotten. Write down as
many of those details as you possibly can, even if it just means
jotting down a quick word of phrase. You can always fill in the
gaps later, the goal is to get as much recorded about your dream
in as short a period of time as possible. After you have written
down as many details as possible of your dream, it is a good
idea to read what you have written, fill in as many gaps and
details as you can, and try to make sense of it. If there are
meaningful symbols in your dream, or things you recognize from
real life, you may want to circle them or otherwise point them
out. It is best to keep a dream journal over a period of a few
nights, in order to look for patterns and similar elements.
There are often recurring themes in dreams, and those recurring
themes can provide valuable clues to the root causes of the
dream elements. When interesting and analyzing your dreams, it
is best to keep it a fun and exciting exercise. While dream
interpretation can be used by experts such as psychologists and
therapists to treat and diagnose issues, that part of dream
analysis is best left to the experts. It is of course possible
to use your dreams as healing tools, or as ways to examine
underlying issues in your life. For instance, dreams about being
naked are often metaphors for being exposed in a lie, or having
a secret revealed. If you see such a pattern in your dreams, it
may be worth examining what parts of yourself you have kept
hidden, and for what reasons. Likewise, dreams of falling are
often indications of feeling out of control. If you see a
pattern of falling dreams emerging, you may want to examine your
life and try to take better control of your waking hours.