When you wake up in the middle of the night, is it better to record your dreams with your voice or write them down?
If you sleep with someone, it’s better to write them down. You don’t want to wake them up. Talking into a recorder or a recording app might do it.
If you don’t sleep with anyone else next to you, the answer isn’t so clear.
Either way, recording your dream doesn’t replace writing in a dream journal. You can describe something you saw, but it won’t replace writing it down in your dream journal. That’s the step where you synthesize your experiences. That’s also the step where you try your hand at sketching out something that was in your dream if it adds something to your recollection. If you can, it’ll save a lot of writing. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Putting a voice recording program on your phone is easy. You can pin it to the first screen to make it easy to find.
It’s also easy to use a regular voice recorder that you grab and speak into in the middle of the night. You might have to look around for a bit in stores, however. Using a recording program on your phone is the most popular option because it’s easy to use and free.
Another benefit of recording the dream at first is that you won’t have to struggle to make out your bad handwriting.
On the other hand, writing it down can force you to be succinct.
You can also look intently at the scrap of paper you’ve written when you try to make sense of it. The scrap of paper can be an object of meditation when you try to understand it.
Either method can work well, just decide which one you’re going to use before going to bed for the night.
Your choice
Either way, the choice is yours. What’s important is that you get the dreams written down so you can understand them!
James Cobb, RN, MSN is an emergency department nurse, sleep expert, long-time dream journaler, and the founder of the Dream Recovery System.
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