Excerpt from: The Creative Dreamer's Journal and Workbook.

Tips for Remembering Your Dreams

1) Keep a pen and paper by your bed each night. Invest in a dream journal as a statement of your commitment to remember your dreams. Spend some time shopping around for the most inspirational blank book you can find!

2) Before retiring, have your partner or a friend tell you that you will remember your dreams tonight. If there is no one around to ask, tell yourself this several times before going to sleep. You can even remind yourself several times during the day if remembering your dreams is particularly difficult. Some people I have worked with have written themselves little dream reminder notes and hidden them in places they knew they would come across. Surprise helps!

3) Just before falling asleep, date a page of your dream journal with tomorrow morning's date.

4) As soon as you wake up in the morning, keep your eyes closed and go over the dream in your mind in as much detail as possible. Be determined not to fall back asleep. After you open your eyes, immediately write the dream down. Don't wait! We have only 3 seconds after opening our eyes to remember our dreams without rehearsing them in our minds first.

5) Make an agreement with someone to share your dreams each day. Dream sharing is a lovely way to become closer to those you care about, and it also increases dream remembering.

6) Get plenty of sleep. The longer you sleep, the more REM periods you have, and the more dreams you will have to remember (although we dream in other stages of sleep, too). Taking naps in the morning also works well.

7) If none of the above work, have someone (or you) set your alarm for a random time during the night for a week. Voila! Instant dream recall.

8) If you usually remember your dreams, but are suddenly unable to, think back to what you did with the last dream you remember. When a dream has been misinterpreted or ignored, dream recall often slows down or stops!

From Tonay, V.K. (1997). The Creative Dreamer's Journal and Workbook. Berkeley: Celestial Arts/Ten Speed Press.