We spend a third of our lives in the vast, unfathomable secret world of sleep.

With the help of science, we are at long last discovering what this world is made of, and what our dreams can do for us!!

We all dream, even if we don’t remember our dreams.  Our most fertile dreaming occurs in REM sleep. We enter REM about 90 minutes after nodding off, and it occurs more frequently and for longer periods as sleep progresses.

We spend two of every 24 hours dreaming, which adds up to more than five years of our lives spent dreaming.

About half of us are lucky to remember one dream a month, says psychologist Rosanne Armitage of the University of Texas.  The rest of us remember as many as four dreams a week.  Researchers agree we tend to remember vivid dreams more easily than boring dreams. Sleep and dream researcher Ernest Hartmann has found that some people have what he calls thin boundaries. Such dreamers are trusting and vulnerable people, they have more nightmares and remember their dreams better than those more orderly and rigid – with thick boundaries.

To remember your dreams more easily, be like The Little Engine That Could and tell yourself that you can.  “Virtually everyone improves with practice”, says Stanford University sleep researcher LaBerge.  Then sleep as long as you can (dream periods get longer and closer together with time).

When you wake up, try not to move until you remember the dream – that helps trick the mind into believing the body is still in REM paralysis.  Fix on a key image to help you remember.  Keep a journal by your bed to write down your dreams.

Avoid alcohol, which reduces REM sleep.