Incomplete recall

Hello,

It has been a while since I posted here.. Gave up on learning to LD just before the summer after many failed WILD attempts and an increasingly stressfull work/school schedule. Now lately, I have had some more time on my hands and coincidentally came across a book by Stephen Laberge: Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming.

So, I started reading the book. Basically, it's an elaborate guide to learn lucid dreaming, including helpful excersises and such. I decided to follow the guide, take it slow and just see where it got me. To start, I had to start keeping a dream journal to improve my dream recall and find some personal dreamsigns. My natural recall is usually quite good and I was off to a good start with 6 dreams in 4 days, written in my journal.

Today though, when revising my entries and highlighting potential dreamsigns, I realised how little of my dreams I actually remember... I recall main themes and occurences, but I never remember dialoges and there are huge gaps and indeterminacies in my entries. Also, I never really know when my dream began; mostly, my entries start with 'I find myself to be in my living room...' or 'I am at school for some reason...'.

Now my question is whether this is normal? My entries are anywhere between 150 and 400 words. Is this too short, and is it common to remember full dreams? If so, do you have any tips on how to achieve this?

Thanks,

InnerVision

This is a normal progression of dream recall. Think of it like a movie. When you start remembering dreams it is like a movie that you half remember. You don't know the plot, but images and ideas pop into your head when you think about it. If it is a movie you have seen more recently, you might remember the plot and a scene here or there. If it is a movie you watched today, you will remember a good portion of the movie and some dialogue. If it is a movie that you have seen a couple times, you could give a play by play of the plot and quote quite a bit of the movie. If it is your favorite movie, you probably know every scene change and every bit of dialogue.

When I first started remembering dreams I wanted to remember one a night, and then I wanted more than one a night. After I started getting about 4-6 a night I started noticing that I didn't remember dialogue very well and most of my dreams were short. I started getting less dreams a night but longer dreams and remembering scene changes and more dialogue. What you remember least is usually dependent on you, so when I wake up and write tags I write "who, what, where" and then all the dialogue and go back to sleep for morning.

If you want more help with recall, just ask. Here is a guide for DJing that should help you:
http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...m-journal.html

Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I didn't realise that not only quantity but also quality will progressively increase. I'll just keep at it and take a look at the guide you mentioned. One question though: do you use an alarm to wake up after REM periods, or do you just write in your DJ after waking up naturally?

I used to use an alarm, but then I switched to the water method. Then I switched to the intent method. Right now if I am low on sleep I will use the water technique. I believe that after a certain level of recall, you just realize when you wake up. Think of it like waking after a lucid dream, a smooth transition from sleeping to waking.

When we describe a lucid dream, we describe it like "imagine realizing that you were in a dream right now." When I look at my recall, it is often like "imagine waking up right now" when I am well rested, my dreams are as good as waking life. I remember what I take time to remember and forget the rest.

Hope this makes sense! Haha. I usually wake up 4-6 times a night. The reason at first was that I knew that it is easier to remember a dream that you wake up from, so increased awakenings. Later on it became habit and I realized that when I didn't wake up through the night it was when I didn't have very aware dreams. So I often use the water as backup because I will have a few not very aware dreams and then water will wake me up. Then when I go back to sleep I have more vivid dreams and then often I wake up after those dreams without water.

I understand what you are saying and I'm going to try some mantra's tonight, to strongly set the intention to remember as much as possible. So far I've only been using the DJ for better recall, but I'll try to speed up the process with some more techniques.
The only thing that I don't understand is what you mean by the 'water method'. I've never heard about it until now, neither in literature or the forums.
If you care to explain it overnight (it's 10 pm here now) that'd be great, otherwise I'll make sure to look it up tomorrow.

The water method is basically drinking enough water that it wakes you up in the middle of the night. It is a pretty soft awakening. It works very well for recall.

Native Americans used it to wake up for night raids!

I should've been able to figure that one out myself haha, anyway it seems like a neat method! I'll give it a try tonight.

Yeah, that's something I consider normal for me as well. I'm journaled well over 1600 dreams or so throughout my life, and there are always places here and there that I don't remember clearly or what appear to be breaks or discontinuities in my experiences—I don't worry about them too much but simply describe them as such in the dream journal. I also believe that for most people some things are easier to remember than others. I usually don't have much trouble remembering generally what I do and see in dreams, but I do generally find it much more difficult remembering verbal data like exact conversations or things I've read.

I don't personally use any particular dream recall method. My method is pretty much just “whenever you happen to wake up and remember anything you don't want to forget, write it down”. ;)