So why is it that we can sometimes remember our dreams?

Well, if you think about it, most of us don't remember our dreams at all, we only remember some fragments of them for the first 10 minutes when we wake up, then we completely forget about them, and this process continues every single morning.

The reason for this is simple:

When you wake up, you are still partially in-tune with your subconscious mind. You know that feeling of disorientation and slowness when you wake up?

Your conscious mind is slowly “booting up”, like a computer. During this time you have a brief shadow memory window. During this time you can access some of your shadow memory; it's usually at this time that fragments of our dreams still float around our mind aimlessly. As we get up, take a shower and eat breakfast it seems that these memories quickly “deteriorate” and fly out of our minds forever. What's actually happening is your conscious mind is gaining full awareness, and you lose the connection with your subconscious memory.

Because our conscious mind takes over when we wake up, our mind labels the brief half-real fragments of shadow memory as “not important”. When we reflect on them in the 10 minutes after waking up it only seems like our dream(s) may have been a few minutes long.

Sleep Memories

Conscious Memory

Conscious memory is the memory in your mind which you have conscious access to. It is the memory that keeps all the “important” stuff like your bills, your car payments, your appointments etc. All our recent and important memories and emotional aspects are kept in your conscious memory. This could be a time frame of 1 month, 1 year, 5, 10 or more years and it's through these thoughts that we sift and rummage through on a daily basis.

In order for something to register in your conscious memory, it has to be first experienced and labelled as “important” in some way by your mind.

Subconscious Memory

Our subconscious memory keeps all the stuff that isn't “important” but you did experience in some way. You could look at this as all the stuff that gets shuffled aside by your mind and thrown in the garbage pile.

For instance, if I were to ask you how dirty your socks were when you took them off 5 days ago, chances are you wouldn't be able to remember this.

Believe it or not, your mind did register this. It just put it in the “subconscious memory” pile. If you enter a relaxed state, and become more in-tune with your subconscious mind, sometimes thoughts and memories from this area will surface and come to your awareness. This is because thoughts are connected in a chain like structure, where one thought leads to the next. Have you ever had the experience of trying to remember something all day, but not being able to? Then, all of a sudden having that thing pop into your mind later on when you weren't expecting it?

Shadow Memory

As I said before, everyone dreams every night, we simply don't remember our dreams. You see, when we're dreaming, our conscious mind is completely turned off. Our dreams are a production of our subconscious mind, so we're only aware of them when we're having them, and the memory of these dreams DOES NOT enter our conscious memory while we're dreaming. Dreams automatically enter our subconscious memory as we're having them. Therefore, if you try to remember your dreams by accessing your conscious memory, you're out of luck!

I learned to term the memories of these dreams: shadow memory. It is memory that is not linked to our conscious mind in anyway, the source of these memories is purely the subconscious mind, therefore, the chance that these memories will suddenly pop up in your waking life are next to none, and most of the time you will never become consciously aware of these memories for the rest of your life.

So what is Quality Sleep?

As you may have already guessed, quality sleep consists of being able to sleep deeply. For our minds to easily slide into the deep stages of sleep, and stay there for the time needed. Easier said than done.

So I've got a question for you: What controls how long and how deep you sleep? There's an underlying mechanism in our bodies called our “body clock”. However, I don't like the name so I will simply refer to it as the sleep clock. Your sleep clock is a system inside of you which controls how you sleep, how deep you sleep, when you sleep, and how awake you feel during the day. Once you understand this system you'll be able to take control over your sleep and your energy!

The challenge in our society is that our sleep systems have been weakened by so many outside stressors that we're not even aware of, that our sleep clocks are totally out of whack. This is why so many people can't sleep deeply, why they may suffer from insomnia, poor day-time energy levels, or find themselves waking up several times in the middle of the night. Usually when you wake up in the middle of the night it is at the end of a sleep cycle in Stage 2 or REM sleep when our brain waves are highest and we're most wakable. This happens because of a weakened sleep system.

The Mystery of Quality Sleep

You hear people saying this so often these days - but you probably haven't thought of it up until now. You've probably heard someone say this to you, or perhaps you've even used these lines yourself in your life:

“I just need to get a good night's rest...”

“A Good night's rest keeps the sickness away...”

“Get some quality sleep, you'll feel better...”

But what on Earth is quality sleep? Is it some mysterious force that just comes and attacks us in the middle of the night that we have no control over? Most people have very limited knowledge and beliefs about what sleep is. Often sleep just means “sleep”, and nothing more, and we don't pay much attention as to how it affects our health.

Until the 20th century, it was believed that our minds completely turned off during sleep. Recent scientific discovery has un-covered something completely different. What you'll discover in this e-book is that once you sleep, your mind enters a state so fascinating and rich with structure that it makes being awake look boring! When we're sleeping, our minds are more active than they are when we're awake – which you're about to learn. Knowing this may lead you to asking yourself the question: “If our minds are so active during our sleep, perhaps my sleep has a greater effect on my body, and my health, than I previously thought?”