Keeping your room as dark as possible while sleeping can minimize unwanted light stimulation.
Regulated breathing techniques, like the 4-7-8 breathing method, might help you nod off faster if it tends to take you a while to get back to sleep. To perform 4-7-8 breathing, all you have to do is inhale slowly to the count of 4, hold your breath for 7 seconds and then exhale forcefully and completely to the count of 8. As the brain is oxygenated, the body will naturally enter a relaxed state and become more receptive to the hormones that induce sleep. [4] X Research source Many people claim that by regulating their breathing, they are able to fall asleep in as little as one minute.
Dreams are essentially random combinations of sensory reactions, feelings and thoughts that are mined from waking life. If you remain focused on resuming an aborted dream while falling asleep, there’s a greater likelihood that your next string of dreams will contain the same images and events. Many sleep researchers believe that the emotional response is the most influential factor in how much we remember of dreams.
It’s important to try to grasp as much of the dream as you can while it’s present in your short-term memory. The part of the brain that forms and stores memories is effectively dormant when dreaming, so the details will quickly evaporate, possibly for good. [7] X Research source If you’re unsure whether you actually remember a certain detail or your imagination is just filling it in, zero in on it anyway. If nothing else, it will come in handy for helping you resume a dream that’s close to the original, with missing details supplied by your own creative touch.
A good method for coaxing out as much detailed memory as possible is to quiz your dream memory on the six basic questions that journalists attempt to answer when investigating a story: who, what, where, when, why and how. [8] X Research source
Don’t wait to jot down what you remember from a dream. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking that you’ll be able to recall the dream later, but it’s never as simple as you think it will be. Don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or even writing in straight lines when scribbling an entry in your dream notebook. Just make sure you get it all out while it’s on your mind!
If you wish, you can go so far as to color your dream sketches, or create a kind of progression of drawings like the storyboard for a film. The more detail you can record, the better.
Make sure there are no unnecessary distractions in the room around you, like a television or radio that might make falling asleep difficult or wake you unexpectedly. If you’ve been keeping a dream notebook, it can be helpful to review it prior to falling asleep so that the images remain firmly planted in your thoughts.
The most clearly remembered details from dreams are usually taken from the end of REM sleep, right before you wake up. If you’re trying to carry on a particular dream, try to time the cycling of the remembered dream so that you fall asleep with the most vivid details fresh in your thoughts. Combine your dream visualization with calming regulated breathing techniques, and play through the most memorable parts of the dream slowly in your mind, like a film being played back at half speed. [12] X Research source
If revisiting a certain dream doesn’t work on the first try, don’t get discouraged. It may take many attempts before you’re able to recreate a dream. The practice of training oneself to moderate one’s dreams is known as “lucid dreaming”, thought by many to be a little-known way of exploiting the unconscious processes of the mind that take over when we’re asleep. [13] X Research source [14] X Research source
