The dream catcher is hung above your sleeping area in a place where the morning light can hit it. The Dream Catcher will attract all sorts of dreams to its webs. When bad dreams come, they do not know the way through the web and get caught in the webbing where the first light of day causes them to melt away and fade. The good dreams know their way go through the centre of the web and slide down the feather to the sleeper below. The web catches bad dreams and allows the good dreams to come through the middle and slide down the feather. Bad dreams may be very disturbing, but still have a very important message for the dreamer, so that the dream catcher doesn’t necessarily get rid of bad dreams in the sense of nightmares, but bad dreams in the sense of distracting dreams that have no significance or meaning to the dreamer. 
The dream catcher is very pretty, and of course, the place for it is in a bedroom or over a bed. The dream catcher is made from a hoop of red willow with a webbing, which takes the form of a web (like a spider’s web). Attached at the bottom of the loop are a bead (usually seed or carved wood) and a feather. They must all be made with all natural materials – the hoop should be made with willow, preferably red willow. The traditional Dream Catchers are only 3 to 5 inches across. “The web is a perfect circle with a hole in the center.  Use the web to help you reach your goals, making good use of your ideas, dreams, and visions.  If you believe in the spirit, the web will catch your good ideas and the bad ones will go through the hole. It was traditional to put a feather in the center of the dream catcher; it means breath, or air. It is essential for life. This lesson comes forward in the way that the feather of the owl is kept for wisdom (a woman’s feather) & the eagle feather is kept for courage (a man’s feather) and that to use the feather each is aware of the gender properties she/he is invoking. The elders passed on their vision to the people, and now many Native American people hang a dream catcher above their bed to sift their dreams and visions. The dream catcher has been a part of Native American culture for hundreds of years. Virtually everyone agrees that it began with the Ojibwe people. But as is true with all myths and legends, stories about how the dream catcher came into being differ slightly from tribe to tribe. So if you are having bad dreams on a regular basis it might be a good idea to go to your local New Age Shop and look at all the beautiful dream catchers there are and choose one that appeals to you. Then go home and place it over your bed and hopefully from then on you will only remember the good dreams that you have and not remember the bad ones.