The little guide to good dreams

How can we remember our dreams?

Keeping watch over our awakening: We must wake up, if possible, fifteen minutes before the sunrise, suggests Nicole Gratton, who has been conducting workshops for twenty-five years. Keep the eyes closed, motionless, focusing on the last few images. Then, with your eyes still closed, change positions in bed: it is likely that new sequences from your dream will emerge as well – the corporeal memory and dreams are related. If nothing comes to you, think about the people who matter in our lives, which can initiate the process of remembering.

Keeping a journal: The ideal is to keep notebook and pen next to the bed and note dreams in their order of appearance. Phrases and names should be transcribed first (these are the things we forget the fastest). Do not pay attention to writing style; write what comes to your mind spontaneously. The dream world loves playing with words to get messages across.

Giving them a title: Your choice is already provides a direction for interpretation. Also very important: select a word that effectively encapsulates the feeling left by the dream (and not the one experienced upon waking). Specialist Patricia Garfield also advises to write down the date and indicate the highlights of the day in a few words, before going to bed.

How to promote good dreams?

By avoiding proteins: To stimulate the production of serotonin, the regulator of sleep, take meals rich in carbohydrates. In the case of insomnia, it is better to limit protein and fat, which take longer to digest, and this increases body temperature, which must decrease again before we are able to fall asleep.

By choosing your cheese: According to the survey conducted by the British Cheese Board – where every night for 7 days, 200 volunteers ate 20 g of cheese half an hour before going to bed – 85% of women and 75% men who ate stilton cheese had delirious dreams, while with cheddar, two-thirds of dreamers saw shooting stars in their nights.

How to stimulate good dreams?

St. John’s Wort has effects on REM sleep. According to Christian Escriva, producer of medicinal plants, “this plant stimulates creativity and promotes new brain connections.” For a fifteen-day treatment, take 5 to 10 drops, or as a hydrosol (a teaspoon in a glass of water).

The trefoil plant also facilitates the recall of dreams. Take note that the whole plant must be used, as an infusion, over the course of one week. Count a teaspoon per cup of boiling water.

Martine Azoulai

Read more from our ‘Dreams’ report: 

– 7 Keys to interpreting dreams