The "secret" to having vivid dreams: live a vivid waking life!
As evidenced by the frequent posts here, many people are searching for the "secret" to having (more) vivid dreams. And for good reason -- vivid dreams are one of the most awesome experiences one can have! Vivid dreams are the gateway to lucid dreams: vivid dreams (especially those with presence) + intent/memory to get lucid = lucid dreams. Especially those vivid dreams where you feel a strong sense of "presence," like it is your full waking self, with awareness of who you are.
People frequently ask which pills to take, what foods to eat (cheese? peanut butter? bananas? apple juice? protein powder? mugwort/wormwood? etc.), whether they should live "nofap," and so on. While some substances do have a significant effect upon consciousness and brain chemistry that can affect dreams, I believe these approaches miss the mark. Because I believe the most fundamental ingredient to having vivid dreams is the practice of paying purposeful attention to all conscious experience.
What is a vivid dream? Most people would say that a vivid dream is a dream that we remember extremely clearly, with a lot of detail, both with regards to the senses and to emotions / awareness that we have during the experience. A dream where we remember the feeling of having lived through the experience, with a high degree of presence (the feeling that "I was really there").
Vivid dreams can be practically indistinguishable from vivid waking experiences: we feel a sense of self, we interact with the environment and "others," and we remember the experience quite well, even long after the experience has passed. I like to talk not about "dreams" and "reality," but instead about "waking and dreaming experiences --" in my mind, they are really more or less the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Once you have enough vivid dreams written up in your dream journal, examine those memories and compare them to your memories of your waking experiences. I bet you'll find that the quality of those waking memories are nearly identical to dreaming memories a lot of the time.
I believe that holding dreaming and waking experiences separate from one another is counter-productive. We are who we are (more or less), waking or dreaming. If we live one way and approach our interactions with experience one way during the day (either autopilot, "zoned out," zombie-mode, mindless; or mindful, attentive, aware, lucid), it is extremely likely that we will have exactly the same sort of dreaming experiences at night. Dreaming experiences are not identical of course to waking experiences, because of the physiological changes in the brain that take place in the dream state: our awareness feels like it has been placed under a blanket of fog/haze, and our access to memory is impaired. So our dreaming self is sort of a "muted" version of our waking self. This leads to the argument that we must strive to build a very bright, active, lucid mind, in order to have a chance of having similar bright, vivid experiences in dreams. In addition to the difficulty of becoming suddenly lucid during the more mentally challenging dream state, we are setting up a disharmony: living one way while awake, and wishing to live another way in dreams. This disharmony IMO leads to internal conflict, stress, and anxiety -- and stress and anxiety are well-known enemies of dream recall, vividness, and lucidity.
So now that we understand that all experience (waking, dreaming) can be considered as more or less the same thing, how do we have vivid experiences? Again, a vivid experience is one where we feel like we're really there, and remember it very well. This means that we need to bring along that sense of presence into our experiences: take a moment (as many as you can) to really feel your sense of self, pay attention, on purpose, to what you are doing, what is going on, what you're thinking, how you're reacting to your experiences. Many people will probably recognize this as classical mindfulness, and indeed it is.
We remember best that to which we pay active attention. This is easy to experiment with during the day to prove to yourself. Throughout your day, pick a few moments that you specifically wish to remember in the evening. Pay a lot of close attention to these moments to fix them well in your memory. Then in the evening before bed, hold a "day review" of these memories and see how many of them you can recall, and how vivid those memories are. I think you'll find that the memories of those experiences will be bright and clear, as opposed to other parts of your day where you sort of sailed through mindlessly. Paying attention, on purpose, to your experiences is another aspect of mindfulness.
Our brains are amazing constructs: they adapt to get better and better (by building and widening neural pathways) at the things we do. The more one lives a mindless life, the better one gets at being mindless and the easier it is to get through your day mindlessly. And likewise, the more one lives a mindful life, the better and easier it gets over time to be mindful. This process is not instant. It can take years of study and practice to gain expert status in most disciplines/activities. This is why it takes time for people to start having lucid dreams: it takes time for the brain to react to the new way of being that you're trying to create with lucid dreaming practice. But the initial benefits can start to be seen more or less right away. And with consistent practice, the experiences just keep getting better and better!
My tagline is "Pay attention, reflect, recall" -- I believe these are the foundations of having amazing experiences and memories of those experiences. Practice attention/awareness/mindfulness actively to all conscious experience. Reflect on your experiences (more important for lucidity in dreams, not necessary really for general vividness -- ask yourself "is this dream-like?", discussed more here: FryingMan's Unified Theory of Lucid Dreaming: Pay Attention, Reflect, Recall -- Both Day and Night), and practice recalling your experiences (an evening review of your day before bed, like how we recall dreams in the morning). As you do these things on a regular basis, your brain will adapt and get better and better at doing them. Once I started focusing on being mindful, I noticed that gradually over time my dreams got more and more vivid on a regular basis. It got to the point where after about half a year, I noticed I was having epic (long, detailed, vivid, fascinating, amazing) non-lucid dreams frequently, sometimes every night, and getting lucid more and more (lucidity is another story for another post -- it requires additional strong intent to be lucid in dreams).
So stop looking for short-cuts, and start living mindfully -- I promise your life (both waking and dreaming experiences) "will change in extraordinary ways"[*].
* The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep
