Helpful Dream Advice

No, I don't subscribe to those ideas that if you dream of a fish that means you'll be traveling, or that if you see a circus clown you'll be getting money. I think that's all hooey.

But I'm well-practiced in dreaming or, more honestly, in having nightmares, and I've stumbled on a way of remembering them better. Some people have told me it's good to do that, and that, combined with what I learned on a TV show, has given me a habit.

The TV program explained a few things, not the least of which is that before we go into REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and start a dream, our brain issues a couple commands. One releases a paralyzing agent that prevents us from acting out our dreams and the other shuts off our near-term memory.

I know the first is true because my dog can't run when he dreams. His legs move, but it's more a twitch than anything frutiful. The short-term memory thing, I think, is a defense against confusing dreams with reality, but I could be wrong.

Anyway, it's the reason so few of us can remember our dreams. We aren't supposed to. In that sense, it works, but it can be overcome. What I've learned to do is wake up with my mind running and right off the bat try to recall parts of the dream. Then, I focus on those and, usually, more and more comes back. I have to do this quite a bit if I want to remember the dream very well, to force it into long-term memory, but I think it works.

What's deadly is waking up and having to go to the bathroom or make coffee. By the time those activities are done, the dream has evaporated. You have to be quick to catch a dream, and not many people will tell you that.

Oh, unsolicited advice is worth as much as free advice, but has the added benefit of being uncalled for.