If you’re someone who regularly remembers your dreams, you have probably considered keeping a dream journal at one point or another. You may even be keeping one now! Truly, the simple act of writing a dream down has the power to deepen your experience of your dream and help you digest the material in powerful ways. Dream journaling can be quite simple–just writing down your dreams and reflecting on them for 20 minutes a day can lead to deep changes in you understanding of yourself and the world around you. Here are some of my favorite tips for getting the most out of your dream journaling.
- Make It Easy
A lot of times you’ll read that if you want to keep a dream journal, you’ll need to get into the habit of writing down your dream as soon as you wake up. This is true to a certain extent–you will probably remember your dream best right when you awaken–before you check your phone, brush your teeth, or take a look at your emails. But if taking 20 minutes to write down an epic dream just doesn’t fit into your morning routine, don’t despair. You can still dream journal! Try this tip instead: as soon as you wake up and begin to recall the dream, keep your eyes closed and come up with 3 or 4 keywords that will jog your memory of the dream. This could be the name of people who were in your dream, the location of your dream, or the action you were doing. Truly, any word that helps you connect with the imagery of the dream will work. Then, when you get to your dream journal, just jot down those 3 or 4 keywords and get on with your morning. You can return to write down the entire dream at another point in the day when you are feeling more spacious.
- Don’t Worry About Remembering Your Dreams “Right”
Another thing that can hold people back from writing down their dreams is the idea that they are not remembering their dream 100% correctly, are missing large parts of it, or are in some other way not getting their dream ‘right’. Instead of writing down what they do remember, folks sometimes just throw the baby out with the bathwater and tell themselves they’ll write dreams down when they really remember them. Here’s the thing: I don’t know if we can ever recall a dream 100% correctly. Your dream is your own experience. Whatever you remember about it, is it! Relax and let the parts that didn’t come through all the way go–and then write your little heart out about what you do recall clearly. More often than not, there’s PLENTY of material to work with even if there are parts you know you’re leaving out.
- Focus on the Feelings
If you’ve read my blog before you’ve definitely heard me say this–but it’s always worth repeating because it’s so easy to forget. The quickest way to get to the deep wisdom of your dream is to replace the question, What did my dream mean?, with, What did my dream make me feel? This is easy to explore when you have a dream journal practice. Each time you write about something that happened in the dream, then write a sentence about how that event in the dream made you feel. Very quickly the depths of the dream will begin to be revealed to you.
- Be Open To Learning
Sometimes when we wake up from a dream, we can feel right away that we know what the dream was trying to tell us or what the dream was “really” about. More often than not, you are probably on the right track in terms of what you think the dream is referring to. But the thing is, if you feel like you already know what the dream was saying, you aren’t going to get very much out of writing it down. In fact, you might not bother to even remember it at all, because you feel like you already know what it means. To get the most out of writing and reflecting of your dreams, it’s very helpful to humble yourself a bit to the mystery of dreams and trust that even if you have a sense of what the dream means, there’s probably something more there that you haven’t thought of yet. Maybe it’s just something that you already know in your mind but just need to feel more deeply in your heart. The more open you are to learning from your dreams, the more you’ll get out of them!
- Openly Celebrate Your Dreams
Truly, writing your dreams down and reflecting on them on your own is just a first step to developing a life-changing dream practice. No one will ever understand your dreams quite the way you do. And yet there’s nothing quite like hearing your dream out loud and realizing all of the amazing points of connection they may have with others. But sharing your dreams with other people or using them to spark other kinds of creative expression such as poetry, art, or music is an excellent way to deepen your relationship with dreams and continue to utilize the wisdom they offer. The more you put your dreams out there and honor them in all the ways that feel best to you, the more you will receive from them in return.
Recently I created a unique dream journal to help folks who are looking to deepen their dream practice in various ways. It contains 13 different exercises and pages to help you dive deeper with your dreams and explore what they may be offering you. The first edition of this journal is almost SOLD OUT–click below to learn more!
Or if you’d like a PDF of my daily dream pages, click below. The pages are a simple format to help you get the most out of recording your dreams on a day to day basis.
