Do you like to find hidden meanings in your dreams? Do you ever wonder why do people dream? Would you like to control your dreams? We spend one-third of our lives sleeping and most of it dreaming.

Many people perceive dreams to be important because:

• Dreams are important for our overall well-being and health. Dream deprivation leads to irritability, disorientation, and depression.
• Dreams are our connection with our subconscious mind. They reveal suppressed emotions, as well as our innermost desires and fears.
• Recurring dreams may point to an unresolved issue in our lives. This helps us understand how to reduce stress and where we may need help.
• Dreams can provide guidance and inspiration for ideas and creativity.

A lot of information about understanding why people dream, and analyzing your own dreams, is now easily available on the web. A simple search reveals dozens of sites that claim to help you interpret your dreams. Unfortunately, many of them are outdated or are marketing gimmicks for selling books or premium services. Let us see some of the best free sites and how you can make use of them.

Remember Your Dreams

The first step is to sleep well. Perhaps these sounds to help you relax and sleep can help? Typically, five minutes after we wake up, half the content of dreams is forgotten. After ten minutes, 90% is lost. Here are some guides to help you remember dreams:

• WikiHow provides a 10-Step guide and some tips to remembering dreams
• Reader's Digest offers 7 ways for better dream recall
• Tips and resources from an expert to increase dream awareness and recall

This should get you started, but remember to be patient and persistent. Find out what works best for you.

Search Online Dream Dictionaries

If you don't want to sign-up anywhere but simply want some quick clues to interpret a dream, use online dream dictionaries.

No single dictionary or site can provide a completely correct interpretation of your dream. This is because every dream symbol, object, and theme can mean different things to different people, depending upon our culture, personality, upbringing, and experiences. These dream dictionaries are still useful however, because many symbols do have universal meanings, and some dictionaries offer multiple interpretation of symbols. Remember to apply the meaning in the context of your life and the recent past.

• Dreams Dictionary aggregates multiple dream dictionaries and provides a search front-end to various domains of dream interpretation like psychology, theology, etc.
• FateDreams gives you a searchable Dream Interpretation Dictionary with over 10,000 keywords you can search.
• Spirit Community has a unique Biblical and spiritual dream dictionary.
• DreamVisions has a "˜Dream Analyzer', where you describe your dream in a form, and get back your dream's symbols and their meanings.
• Free Dream Interpretation has a searchable Dream Dictionary of over 3000 dream meanings.

Ultimately, only you can interpret your dreams, using these different resources, and tailoring them to your unique situation. Some people think that the dictionary approach is outdated and irrelevant. DreamWiki is an interesting site for learning the art and technique of dream interpretation, but is relatively new with minimal content. It deviates from the dictionary-based approach and focuses on interpreting dream behaviors in the context of the dreamer's life.

Best All Round Dream Sites

The following sites provide several resources related to dreams. They are useful for those who are really interested in learning more about their dreams.

Dreammoods [No Longer Available]

• Background information on dreams including research, dream types, recall tips and dream theory
• Searchable Dream Dictionary covering over 4000 keywords and symbols with 12000 different meanings.
• Quick guides for universally common dreams like flying, chasing, etc. and dream themes like food, birds, and characters.
• Discussion forum section with thousands of members in different forums for different types of dreams.
• Dream Bank with a hundred-odd real user dreams interpreted by experts.

Dream Central

• Dream Dictionary - limited, not searchable.
• Basics of Dream Analysis, covering themes and common symbols
• Discussion Forums for interpretation, nightmares, prophetic dreams, and discussing dream symbols

Dreamsleep.net

• Lots of articles about common types of dreams, universal dream symbols and experiences
• Easily accessible Dream Dictionary with alphabetical drop downs and quick links
• Free Online Dream Interpretation Forum where you can discuss dream interpretations with other members

Join Online Dream Communities

You can use an online sleep tracker to keep track of your sleeping patterns, but it doesn't help with dreams. The best way to keep in touch with the world of your dreams is to record them in a journal and join a community. While you can indeed record your dreams in a blogging platform like LiveJournal and join the Community of Dreams', there are unique advantages to joining focused sites that have built a community to share, rate, and interpret each others dreams. They offer automated keyword tagging to dream symbols, classification of dreams, detection of trends, and so on.

Dream Journal lets you record your dreams privately or publicly. The site has over 9000 active users with over 120,000 dreams.

Dream Crowd has built an active social community where you can keep a dream log, share your dreams with others, and comment on other's dreams. The site automatically tags keywords and phrases in your dreams that are hooked up to its dream dictionary for quick interpretation.

Unleash the Power of Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams are dreams where you know that you are dreaming and can control your dream. This lets you dream your fantasies, have superhero powers, psychic powers, travel in space, or whatever you wish. There are a few sites devoted to the unique world of lucid dreams:

Lucid Dreaming is a popular social-networking community exploring and documenting lucid dreams.

Lucipedia is another good site for learning, recording, sharing, and discussing lucid dreams.

Dream Views has a good guide to developing the art of lucid dreaming, and also an active lucid dreamers forum.

So these are some of the sites to help you understand and enjoy your dreams meaningfully. Was your favorite dream site missed? Do let us know in the comments! And oh yes, sweet dreams!

Image credit: Chris Gin