unusually hard to remember

I need help but im not quite sure how to ask for it because im not sure what im asking lol....if that makes sense. i am asking this in hopes that someone will relate and give me advice. Ok so.

Yes, true, i only have 9 LD's so that would definately make me still a noob at lucid dreaming. The only thing is i have always been a ver fast learner and this is no different. After studying this website lucid dreaming was really easy for me, but only through one, single method which was wbtb, but kind of personalized lol. Just when i begin to think yes, finally, i have my technique down, this is pretty simple now, i can get into a LD every morning! As of right now i am finding it extremely hard to have one. I keep trying my usual method but now its not working and i dont know what to do because it is frustrating.

i KNOW i can do it, but for soem reason it just wont work. I wake up 5 and a half hours after i go to sleep, stay up for like 5 minutes and go back to sleep. Usually this owuld work like a charm for me but now i just fall asleep...

Hmm...I know that to WILD, DEILD, etc, you have to fall asleep with a conscious mind...my best guess is that you just sort of drift off to sleep as your mind kinda wanders. You may wish to wake up your brain a bit more somehow, either through a bit of exercise or mental stimulation (e.g. tricky math problems). As you drift asleep, find something to focus on, such as your breathing or a mantra.

I'm no expert, so perhaps someone else could come and correct me, but I think that's the general gist, at least as laid out by LaBerge...

Lucid dreaming is a science. Having lucid dreams however, is more of an art. Some times methods just stop working, some times for no apparent reason. You have a few options.

You can just continue doing the same thing. Chances are you will again start having lucid dreams. It might come and go through. Some times you might get 10 days straight of having them and some times a few weeks with nothing, and everything in between.

You can take a break and try other things. You might have luck with them as well. And you can always come back to this later.

Or you can work on your dream recall, because it is possible that it might work and you just forgot that it worked.

I can relate. I haven't had many lucids, none by trying to induce them (just happen randomly every now and then), but I had really good dream recall about a week ago. I was also doing WBTB and not getting lucids, but found I could make myself dream about what I wanted to at least, and re-enter a dream I just woke from. Very encouraging, right?

Yeah, well, for the last 4 or 5 days I have no dream recall whatsoever!!!! I'll still wake up after about 6 hours (I always do, just naturally) ---- but I don't seem to be waking from REM anymore, or else I do and just go back to sleep and forget it, and then wake later from deep sleep with no memories except some dim image or a feeling.

Sorry, no help to offer, just commiserating.... :?

I've experienced similar issues. And while finding a technique that works for you is vital I have found that you must also have a desire to LD, and not just to have LD's. Meaning, we grow attached sometimes to thinking "I have this many LD's in X amount of days" and forget the actual beauty of LD's. Before going to bed, ask yourself -WHY do you want to LD? Mindless repetition of techniques wears of pretty quickly.

Thanks for the advicce people. After posting this last night i finally broke my dry spell and had a brief lucid dream. It was really dark in my room and i ould keep making it brighter, but everytime i did it would gradually keep getting darker and darker. I looked out my window to see why and there was a whole bunch of suns shooting up in the air like flares and then they would float down, making everything get dark. This is the coolest thing i have done so far even more cool than flying. I learned how to manipulate the suns in the sky with my fingers, and the clouds would be like puffin around when i moved the suns lol. I could flick them around, it was so badass. Then i started to RC with my clock and noticed that it said " Self Cleaning" on my clock, i was like wtf lol that weird.

I started to read something else and for some reason my eyes closed, and then i woke up.

Something i also just realized. Not only me, or someone else in this thread has said that they have no dream recall lately either. I had one dream last night before the LD, and i now realize that everytime i LD i always have a regular dream before it. When i was failing, i dont remember dreaming at all before i tried to wbtb. My friends who arent even into LD also tell me that lately they have no dream recall. Kind of strange.

Dream recall is a fascinating subject, and actually goes way beyond just Lucid Dreaming as it's at the very heart of the science of trying to understand why we dream and it's place in human evolution.

There are a few theories out there on why we dream and some of them state reasons for forgetting dreams such as the expectation fulfilment theory (which I don't fully agree with personally).

For sure we remember things both consciously and unconsciously and lucidity and dream recall fall within the former; I think the reason why a lot of people forget dreams is simply because they don't pay attention/don't care about them. The mere act of noting memories of dreams in the morning will improve recall and train the mind into focussing more attention on them, this is why the idea of a dream journal is fundamental to most lucid dreamers.