Everyone dreams. Every single night. If you think you don't, you’re just not catching the signal. Your brain spends about two hours every night in REM sleep—that’s the Rapid Eye Movement stage—weaving together bizarre narratives, repressed anxieties, and sometimes just pure nonsense. But for most of us, that's all gone the second the alarm blares. You wake up, reach for your phone, and poof. The movie is over and the film reel is burned.
Learning how to dream more often isn't actually about forcing your brain to produce more imagery. It’s about creating a physiological and mental environment where those dreams can survive the transition into your waking consciousness. It’s kinda like trying to catch a butterfly without crushing its wings. You have to be gentle. You have to be prepared. Honestly, most people fail because they treat sleep like a light switch they just flick off at 11 PM, rather than a skill they need to cultivate.
The Science of Why You’re Coming Up Empty
Most of the time, "not dreaming" is actually just a failure of recall. Researchers like Dr. Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep, have spent decades proving that dream deprivation is actually quite rare and usually linked to severe neurological issues. If you’re alive and sleeping, you’re dreaming. The problem is often your neurochemistry.
When you're in REM sleep, your brain is actually quite active—sometimes more so than when you're awake. However, levels of norepinephrine (a chemical associated with memory and alertness) drop to their lowest levels. This creates a "memory-less" state. Unless you wake up directly from the dream or shortly after, the memory never gets encoded into your long-term storage. It stays in the "buffer" and then gets cleared out to make room for the day's stress.
Alcohol is a massive dream killer. You might think a glass of red wine helps you "drift off," but it’s actually a sedative that suppresses REM sleep. When the alcohol wears off in the middle of the night, you might experience "REM rebound"—where your dreams come back with a terrifying, vivid intensity—but generally, regular drinkers find their dream life is pretty much a desert. Marijuana has a similar effect; THC is a known REM suppressant. If you want to know how to dream more often, the first step is often looking at what you're putting in your body before bed.
The Dream Journal: It’s Not Just for Teenagers
If you want to remember more, you have to tell your brain that dreams are important. Right now, your brain thinks they’re junk data. You need to prove it wrong. This is where the dream journal comes in.
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It doesn’t have to be a leather-bound book with a quill. A simple notebook or even a voice memo app on your phone works. The key is the timing. You have to do it the absolute millisecond you wake up. Do not sit up. Do not look at the light. Do not check your emails. The moment you shift your focus to the external world, the dream memory dissolves.
Write down anything. Fragmented colors. A feeling of dread. The fact that your 3rd-grade teacher was wearing a scuba suit. Even if you remember nothing, write "No dream remembered." This consistent practice trains your subconscious to hold onto the imagery longer because it knows a "request" is coming. Over a few weeks, you'll likely find that your recall expands from a single sentence to several pages of detail.
Change Your Wake-Up Routine
The standard alarm clock is the enemy of the dreamer. That jarring beep-beep-beep triggers a shot of cortisol that effectively wipes your short-term memory clean so you can deal with the "emergency" of waking up.
- Try a "progressive" alarm that starts very quiet and slowly builds.
- Use a light-based alarm that mimics the sunrise.
- If you can, try to wake up naturally on weekends to see the difference.
The Role of Vitamin B6 and Diet
There is some fascinating, albeit limited, evidence regarding Vitamin B6. A study from the University of Adelaide found that participants who took high doses of Vitamin B6 (240mg) before bed reported better dream recall compared to a placebo group. They described their dreams as being clearer and more "real."
Now, don't just go popping pills. Too much B6 can cause nerve issues or insomnia. But you can look at your diet. Foods like bananas, chickpeas, and wild salmon are high in B6. It’s a subtle way to nudge your brain toward more vivid nocturnal adventures. Some people also swear by Mugwort tea or Calea zacatechichi (the "dream herb"), though the scientific backing there is a bit more anecdotal and "folk medicine" territory. Be careful with supplements. Always.
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Sleep Cycles and the "WBTB" Method
If you’re serious about how to dream more often, you need to understand the 90-minute cycle. Our sleep isn't a flat line. We dip down into deep sleep and then rise back up into REM. As the night progresses, the REM stages get longer. Your first REM cycle might only be 10 minutes, but the one right before you wake up could be 45 minutes long.
This is why "sleeping in" results in such crazy dreams. You're hitting those long, juicy REM cycles.
There’s a technique used by lucid dreamers called "Wake Back To Bed" (WBTB). Basically, you set an alarm for 5 or 6 hours after you go to sleep. You stay awake for about 20 minutes—maybe read a book about dreams or just sit quietly—and then go back to sleep. This "interrupt" puts you directly back into a REM cycle, and because you've just been conscious, your brain is "primed" to stay aware and remember what happens next. It’s incredibly effective, though it can make you a bit groggy the next day if you aren't careful.
Creating a "Dream-Friendly" Environment
Your bedroom should be a cave. Cold, dark, and silent. If your body is busy regulating your temperature because you're too hot, it’s not going to prioritize high-level cognitive functions like dreaming.
- Keep the room around 65°F (18°C).
- Use blackout curtains.
- Get a white noise machine if you live in a noisy city.
Also, stop the "blue light" exposure at least an hour before bed. Your phone screen mimics sunlight, which tells your brain to stop producing melatonin. No melatonin means lower sleep quality. Lower sleep quality means fragmented REM. Basically, if you're scrolling TikTok until 12:01 AM, you're killing your chances of having a cool dream about flying over the Alps.
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The Psychological Component: Intention Setting
There’s a concept called "Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams" (MILD), developed by Dr. Stephen LaBerge at Stanford. While primarily for lucid dreaming, the core principle helps with general recall. As you're falling asleep, repeat a simple mantra in your head: "Tonight, I will remember my dreams."
It sounds like New Age fluff, but it’s actually about "prospective memory"—the ability to remember to do something in the future. By setting this intention, you’re basically setting a "mental alarm" to trigger upon waking.
Why Bother?
Why do we care about how to dream more often? It’s not just for entertainment. Dreams are where your brain processes emotions. It’s "overnight therapy," as Dr. Walker puts it. When we dream, we take the sting out of difficult memories. We solve problems. Some of the greatest inventions and works of art—from the structure of the atom to the song "Yesterday"—came from dreams.
If you aren't dreaming, or rather, aren't remembering them, you're missing out on a massive part of your internal life. You're leaving money on the table, creatively speaking.
Actionable Steps to Start Tonight
If you want to see results, don't try everything at once. Start small.
- Stop drinking caffeine by 2 PM. It has a half-life of about 5-6 hours, meaning it's still in your system at midnight.
- Place a pen and paper on your nightstand. This is a physical signal to your brain.
- The "Stay Still" Rule: When you wake up, do not move a muscle. Try to "re-trace" your thoughts backward from the very last thing you remember.
- Watch your supplements. Check if your multivitamin has B6, or try incorporating more B6-rich foods into your dinner.
- Be patient. If you’ve spent years ignoring your dreams, it might take a week or two for your brain to start "broadcasting" to you again.
Dreams are a window into the subconscious. They are messy, weird, and sometimes uncomfortable, but they are yours. By prioritizing your sleep hygiene and showing a little bit of interest in what happens behind your eyes at night, you can unlock a world that is far more interesting than anything on Netflix.
Focus on the transition. The "hypnopompic" state—that fuzzy middle ground between sleep and wakefulness—is where the magic happens. Don't rush out of it. Linger there. That's where you'll find the pieces of the story you've been missing.