Getting stuck in Dream Recall

I have been trying to lucid dream on and off for the past 5 years. Throughout these 5 years, I have never been able to bring my dream recall up past remembering three dreams max per night. Three dreams is the absolute max I have achieved in one night. I have never gone beyond that number, and I am lucky if I remember 2 dreams in one night.

This 3 dream count is also incredibly dodgy. It always has been. I will go from one night remembering 3 dreams to the next night remembering 1 to the next 3 nights remembering zero and so on and so forth. I get consistent amounts of sleep as well.

I keep a dream journal that is a bit inconsistent I will admit, but even after keeping a consistent dream journal for the past month I am still having inconsistent recall.

My question is: How do I go about improving this number and making it so I consistently remember my dreams?

I haven't tried this process yet, but I'm pretty sure it would work:

1.Just before going to bed, tell yourself that you want to recall the next dream you have. Go to sleep.
2.Upon waking up from the dream, recall where the dream scene(s) took place. Right down these place(s) in chronological order from left to right.
3.(optional) Under the place(s), recall and write down things that happened in those places.

I think this would help create more structure and consistency to the process of recalling dreams. It would make it easier to start recalling a dream by making it easier to know what to recall and write down first. I figure the places of the dream are general details and general details are easier to recall than more specific details.

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Originally Posted by sscheaper

I have been trying to lucid dream on and off for the past 5 years. Throughout these 5 years, I have never been able to bring my dream recall up past remembering three dreams max per night. Three dreams is the absolute max I have achieved in one night. I have never gone beyond that number, and I am lucky if I remember 2 dreams in one night.

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Wait, what?!

You remember as many as three dreams a night, with regularity, and you see that as a problem? What the hell are they teaching about LD'ing these days?

Dream recall is certainly necessary for LD'ing (and any kind of dream exploration, for that matter), but I've been at this for a very long time and I have never heard of a requirement to recall all of your dreams. That on its face is absurd, because we are simply not wired to remember all of our dreams, and even remembering most of the dreams you have all night would require writing down your dreams after every awakening through the night, which would be exhausting at best. But on top of that it isn't necessary, at all: If you are able to recall even one dream clearly each morning, that is enough to raise dreaming's profile high enough to make it a part of your waking life, and a real tool for successful LD'ing. So, in other words, your current recall abilities are more than enough, Sscheaper; there is no need to strengthen them unless you really wish to for its own sake.

I don't know where you heard that you must recall more than three dreams per night, but, in my opinion, they were wrong.

Yeah, people get caught up with the numbers of dreams these days. That's good that you are able remember as many as you do.
It's not a competition. Remember: We are just one small adjustment to making life work. ;)
Would you rather have; one dream that you remember in detail or a bunch of dreams in which you can only remember one key piece of detail in each dream?
Besides, if you are like someone that remember too many dreams, it's not always fun when you, for example, let's say, you are sick and you remember each nightmare that you have. It can be a little tricky when you are delirious. Just saying.

As for worrying about numbers of dreams or counting dreams I tend to agree with earlier answers that it's not really relevant to lucid dreaming.

However, I will also add that I believe that having frequent, vivid dreams, with excellent recall after waking up, is a precursor to having regular lucid dreams, or at least a sign that DILDs are on the close horizon -- again, at least for DILDs, where one becomes lucid from within a dream that begins non-lucidly. I of course have only my own DILD-focused practice and my own theories to back this up. Having frequent vivid dreams is also something that helped maintain my motivation in between the lucids. While I highly value my lucid experiences, I had probably somewhere around 10-x more ultra-vivid, "epic" non-lucids for each lucid dream I had, and way more "regular" non-lucid dreams (50x, probably).

For me, probably the best part of lucid dreaming practice, when I was particularly dedicated and really in the full swing of it, was having what felt like nights "full" of epic, vivid, immersive, long, detailed, (but mostly non-lucid), dreams. Just for the purpose of telling different dream sequences apart, I used what I call the theatrical classification of dreams: I would count as a dream, any "sequence of scenes with a particular set of actors, a particular plot, taking place at some set of locations, with remembered transitions between individual scenes." So any two dream scenarios that didn't share any of those common elements (actors, plot, location, remembered transition between scenes), I would count as different "dreams."

Some people consider "anything remembered within a particular sleep cycle [or since the last waking]" as one dream. Again, the precise definition doesn't really matter. I just wanted to set the stage for my next point.

At the height of my practice, I would reliably have 4-5 dreams (counted as above) per night, minimum. Less was very rare, and more was fairly often (8-10). Sometimes I would recall upwards of 4 dreams per waking for each of about 4 wakings in a night, leading to, well, lots of dreams recalled and recorded. I could count on one hand in a year the nights I had with no recalled dreams at all, usually at times of sickness or severe stress in waking life or a topsy-turvy sleep schedule (e.g., jet lag). At that time I was also recording at least summaries on a voice recorder on most wakings, and transcribing and filling in details from memory to typed format on the computer during the day. Yes it took a lot of time, but I'd say the results were worth it. I was highly motivated both to recall dreams and to experience lucid dreams.

I do not go to those lengths these days. I do try to keep a mental running list of keywords/summaries of all dreams I recall during the night through to the morning. I also don't have LDs much any more, but again I've fallen out of practice and have different waking life priorities for the past few years.

The point of all this is not to toot my own horn about dream recall -- it's to show that if one is really motivated and sets strong intent, and makes recalling dreams (having lucid dreams) a priority in life, it is possible to go far beyond just a few dreams recalled per night. I think as LDers go I'm nothing special as to frequency of having lucid dreams. But I do think I was very successful in building very high dream recall, and I really enjoyed the heights I had achieved (I'm trying now to work back towards that...)

So while I do agree that "you don't have to have great dream recall in order to have lucid dreams," I also believe that having great (reliable, detailed, vivid, frequent) dream recall is a sure sign that lucidity is close, and that a person is on the right track in terms of day and night practice for lucid dreaming.

If you check the links in my signature I go into a lot more detail on how I recommend approaching increasing dream recall and working to have lucid dreams.

In short, I believe that our dreaming experiences and level of awareness in the dream state closely track that of our waking experiences and awareness levels. Those who stumble through waking life on autopilot, barely taking notice of day to day experience, can't really expect to have frequent bright, vivid, and yes, lucid dream experiences in the dream state at night. To be even more short, "if you want to be lucid at night, you should strive to be lucid during the day."

I believe dream recall can be trained -- we remember best those experiences to which we pay active attention. Practice paying attention to life experiences during the day, and recalling those experiences in the evening before bed (a "day review" if you will), just like how in the morning we recall our dream experiences of the night. Do this regularly, integrate attention to (and yes, reflection of), and recalling the memory of life experiences, day and night, and over time dream recall can't help but grow and grow. In the words of "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep," if you pay mindful attention to experience and behavior [reaction to experience], "your dreams will change in extraordinary ways."

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Originally Posted by Lang

It's not a competition. Remember: We are just one small adjustment to making life work. ;)

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I really like that. :)

I agree with Sageous that three dreams is pretty darned good recall. Also agree with what FryingMan said about good recall being crucial. I often get up after each dream and jot something down about them.....particularly if they are strong ones. I have come to realize that consistent journaling is also crucial. It's kind of like cognitive offloading......making room in there for more. :)