Question
When I was a child I used to remember my dreams all the time,
but now as an adult I never remember them. Is this a problem?
Answer
It is often frustrating to lose some skill from youth, but not necessarily a
problem. In general, dream recall and dreamwork is seen as life enhancing,
but not essential. It seems that dreams are already doing what they need to
be doing without our helping them along. Dream science says we all have
dreams about every 90 minutes during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, so
that's about six per night whether we recall them or not.
If dreams don't interest you and you are not recalling them, forget about it.
It's very natural as we age to find it more difficult to recall dreams. We
often have less REM as we age, and that seems to be the best brain state for
remembering dreams, though it's not the only one.
If you feel a loss at not recalling dreams and want to remember more of them,
there are many books available, as well as an article in this magazine, on
learning how to recall dreams.
2/20/98
Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The
Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet
Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for
the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.
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