Because learning about your brain and sleep can be fun . . .
If you take a medication, you can’t not take the medication for a week and then take seven days’ worth all at once. If you exercise, you can’t not exercise for a week and then do a week’s worth of push-ups, sit-ups, and jumping jacks all at once. It’s the same thing with dream journaling.…
Sure, you can study your dreams, but you can’t scientifically study your dreams. Your dreams are still worth studying, just as it’s worth looking at your face in a mirror every morning. The mirror shows you a reflection of your external self. The dream shows you a reflection of your interior self, potentially an even…
Dreams can be and often are immersive. When you’re dreaming, you can’t always tell the difference between the waking world and the world of your dreams. If you don’t value the ideas projected in dreams, they’ll fade. One way to tell the difference between dreams and reality is to change something up when you’re…
Dreamwork, what they call working with your dreams, can be tricky. You can go for a period where you think you’re not having any dreams. When that happens, dreamwork is hard. If you’re not having any dreams, you’re not able to work with anything. Yet you are. EEGs and the techs at a sleep lab…
It’s understandable why someone would want to take some kind of dream analysis shortcut. Quicker is usually better. It’s “efficient.” But not in this case. People wake up in the morning. There’s a rush to get everything done. Get breakfast. Get to work. Sometimes they’ve made a promise to themselves to go to the gym…
Dream journaling is a type of somatic writing. Somatic writing is a practice that focuses on the physical sensations and bodily experiences of the writer. Bodily experiences include the sensation of dreaming. All types of somatic writing involve exploring emotions, memories, and inner experiences by focusing on the physical sensations associated with them. Somatic writing…
Big family all gathered around in a circle. Price for experience—not available. Too many people. Not right. So you’ve dutifully written down what your dream was about and went back to sleep. Upon rising later, what you’ve written doesn’t make any sense. You recognize the words, but they don’t make sense. They don’t jog…
Remembering even one thing can help you. All dreams aren’t sweet. Remembering some dreams is like trying to grab motor oil streaming out of an engine: slippery, unpleasant, hot, messy, confusing, and imperfect. Like the backyard mechanic performing routine car maintenance, one can have their “oil collection container” (think dream journal or scrap paper) handy.…
The first few lines of the dream journal entry read like a list: A park in summer with a bandstand. The Beach Boys song “When I Grow Up to Be a Man” playing in the background (The bandstand was empty. Neither the Beach Boys nor any other band was playing in the bandstand. The song…
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say. And they’re right, though 1,000 words is approximate. It very well might be much more. Drawings show. Words tell. Sometimes it’s easier, quicker, and clearer to show than tell. Make drawings of your dreams Do it even if you think you don’t draw well, even if…
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…
Sometimes something happens during the day. Whatever it is, you can’t stop thinking about it. Or maybe you watch something on the Internet. Whatever it is, it fills your thoughts when you sleep. They’re not dreams. Oh, no. Dreams have more form and shape than these thoughts. These are ideas that you’re mulling. It would…
Sometimes dreams don’t have a discernable story or scene. They’re too disorganized or minimalistic to put into words. When this happens, the SOM format doesn’t work. How are you going to make or tell a story if there’s no story? Try this alternate dream journal method. What to do When this happens, simply make a…