Hello, the other day, I posted (on Lucidipedia) something about the Memory Temple Technique, which is a general memorization technique that I have customized for dream recall. You can read the thread here.

I'll summarize what I say here:

MEMORY TEMPLE TECHNIQUE
It is common knowledge that an efficient way to remember things is to associate them together. Some forms of this technique involve making a story out of words you need to remember. For example. Eggs, carrots and broccoli, a shopping list can be made into the sentence Carrots lay eggs, broccolis do not. Another form is Mnemonics in which the first letter of the list of words are made into a sentence. It is very hard however to use these techniques to remember dreams which consist of more than single words. We can use a form of this which is called the Memory Temple Technique.

I will first explain how you can use this technique for anything in general:

1. Choose a place you know very well and which you will be able to visualize easily. It is a good idea to pick a place you go every day such as your own house. Go there and walk through this place you have chosen. This place is your temple. When you walk through your place, create a pathway. Always move through it in the same order. If I start by the front door of my house, the porch can be the first "Checkpoint" in the pathway. The Entrance door the second, The hall, the third; a painting on the left wall of the hall, the fourth, the staircase beside the painting, the fifth, the hallway at the top of the staircase, the sixth, the bathroom door their seventh, the bathtub the eight, the toilet the ninth and so on. You chose your own order. Walk through it many times so you can visualize it very well. If you are a good visualizer, you can create a place that does not exist if you want.

2. Now, when you want to remember them, put an image of what you want to remember on each "checkpoint". If I want to remember to buy lasagna, I can imagine a giant lasagna lying on my porch.

When I read about this technique, it said to use objects such as chairs, tables, that you encounter in your pathway but this is good when you have to associate words. As dreamers, we must associate events to the checkpoints. That is why I recommend using rooms or items such as a painting in which there is space for you to put an event. If you dream about your best friend stealing pies you can visualize your best friend sitting on your porch with a pie. You don't need to put your actual dreams, just main points.

Also very importantly, I would say that if you have a dream journal and you like it, you should not stop your journal to use this technique. Instead, I think you should use both together so that it does not mess up your recall if the technique is not good for you.

When you wake up using this technique, as soon as you remember a dream, put it in your dream temple and go on remembering dreams and adding them one by one. Then, go through your temple as many times for it to seem solidified (I'd say, twice). This will make writing down your dreams in a journal easier as I remember that before when I used a journal, I would sometimes forget dreams while I remembered others and I would sometimes forget those by the time I wrote them down.

Also, when you go through your temple, I would not just see the things you have put in the checkpoint (the best friend with the pie) but as well, once you see that, relive the dream, then be in the temple again, keep walking. See the next checkpoint, relive that dream.

I am sorry if this is vague. I was unable to find my source. I hope this is of an interest to you.

For my recall, I use this technique, no dream journal and I have been getting better recall than with a journal. This works for me. I don't know for others. I write down very inspiring or really good lucid dreams though.