Have you ever thought about why some nights you can remember your dreams but not other nights? Or why you rarely to never remember your dreams at all? I have constantly asked myself this question with solely the mere understanding that everyone does indeed dream. I find dreaming so fascinating and sometimes the dreams even feel like they were past memories or part of my actually life. As I dug through some articles and researched more about the dreaming process my questions were answered.
We dream every single night, in fact, even if our conscious mind does not remember what occurred when we wake up. About one to two hours each night we spend in REM sleep, rapid eye movement, which is the time of our sleep that is spent in the dreaming process. A study was conducted using 36 participants. These 36 individuals were split into two groups and listened to background music during this study, occasionally hearing their name said to them. When sleeping, both groups reacted the same way, hearing their name said to them but quietly enough to not get woken up. “However, when awake, high recallers showed a more sustained decrease in a brain wave, called the alpha wave, when they heard their names, compared with the low recallers.” The difference between these high and low recallers is that high recallers process sound and have better reflexes than the low recallers making them more aware of their spacial surroundings. They are better able to perceive the world around them at a higher frequency and notice the details in the things they do. This allows for the mind at night to be working at a more active pace: this is due to the alpha waves, which decrease the amount of brain stimuli, which would allow for a higher interaction with the outside world. Since these people are not focusing as much on the outside world when sleeping they can better concentrate on what is happening while they are sleeping.
What I find strange, though, is why is if you are more or less focused the world why that would have to do with your ability to remember what your dream was. I discovered that people who were more rested had a fresher mind and were ultimately more focused and calm when sleeping. This concentration leads to being able to remember one’s dream for a prolonged period of time. It is a fact that if you write down what you remember about your dream within the first 90 seconds after waking up that you will start getting a stronger sense of your dreams and be able to recall and regurgitate them more and more as time progresses. I actually have a friend who keeps a dream journal and she rereads it quite often. She tells me about her dreams on a regular basis, and includes detailed descriptions that most normal people would never recall. Regularly writing down your dreams allows you to hone in on every event that occurs when you dream; this allows for future dreams to be better remembered because one will start having similar dreams each night due to the fact that they are rereading and writing down each dream they have.
Dreaming is a succession of images, thoughts, or emotions passing through the mind during sleep. This concept will forever be strange to me as dreaming occurs when your body is at its slowest, calmest point, but can do something as amazing as dream. I am going to try keeping a dream journal, and see if it helps with remembering and having dreams that stay with me for longer periods of time. Try this as your own experiment and maybe you will be as surprised with the results as I hope to be with mine in soon time. 
In my own experience, I have found that I also typically remember nightmares and “bad dreams” much more than I remember a dream I had during a calm night’s sleep. I have always wondered what the reason for this is. I am also curious as to why nightmares occur and whether or not they are often tied to experiences we had while awake. I have never been good at recalling a dream on a night when I did not have a nightmare, but I can remember nightmares vividly for days, even weeks, after I wake up from them!