Good Dream Recall - A Natural Talent, or My Approach to Dream Recall?

For some reason I have good dream recall naturally without the need for dream journals, although I'm not sure why as my daily short term memory is terrible (perhaps a cognitive compensation?). I can remember some dreams that I had decades ago vivid and clear just like it was yesterday. Sometimes I think it's down to my own approach to dreams, because for some people they're places to have fun, while for me I see them as a world to be experienced, explored and understood, just like waking reality. Dreams are a science to me with physics that I think about on a daily basis as opposed to thinking about techniques like reality checks and dream journals, however I do have more vivid dreams than I do lucid dreams, not a bad thing for me personally as it's the nature of the vivid dreams that I enjoy most. I have had some lucid dreams where I've been able to shape and manipulate the environment which was fun, although I learn less from those experiences than I do from vivid dreams and tend to not remember them as well.

For me spending the day practicing things like reality checks are what you want to do if you want to entice lucid dreams, where as spending the day thinking about the differences between waking and sleeping reality are what you want to do if you want to improve dream recall. If you spend the day doing reality checks you're going to ask questions like "am I dreaming or am I not dreaming" which does help activate awareness but that's all it does; where as if you spend the day comparing dreams to reality you'll ask questions like "what is the difference between this world and the other world," and while you're less likely to entice a lucid dream you're more likely to remember those differences as it's the comparative science you're concentrating on, not distracting your mind with the fun of being lucid.

Something I think is important to remember is that the dream world is just like the waking world, how you spend your time there is what progresses your development. If you spend all day playing video games you're not going to be out in the real world gaining experience and remembering those experiences, like wise with playing around with lucid dreams. If you're constantly trying to become lucid then you are distracting your self, not thinking about what is important. For me I spend a lot of the day simply thinking about stuff and questioning things, be it life, science, philosophy or dreams, and that habit translates into my dream states. So while I'm dreaming I'm constantly questioning the dream, making mental notes about the world I'm in and what that world is or might be about, as opposed to doing reality checks to try and become lucid and play games with the dream I'm in. So while someone being lucid might think "I want to fly," for me being vivid I think about the actual content of the dream its self. I'm not trying to distract my self playing games, I'm trying to observe, understand and figure out what is actually going on around me, and I think it's this that possibly gives me the talent of having good dream recall without the need for a journal, as it's in my nature to spend the day thinking about things as opposed to actually doing things.

On the contrary, I keep a life journal, not a dream journal. Every time I'm thinking about stuff, every idea I have gets kept and written down, this is my daily habit. So I think while I'm dreaming I'm doing the same thing, my dream journal takes place within the actual dream its self, not during the morning as I'm waking up.

Do you ever find yourself writing in a journal in your dreams? I recently read someone else's post about doing that.

I think we have a lot in common about our approaches to dreaming. I also have been pretty good at remembering dreams throughout my life and can still remember many from long ago, although recently I started keeping a dream journal and it has helped me remember even more, because I usually remember dreams one detail at a time over about a 20 minute period. I usually can't remember what happened when, but just slowly I remember many different pieces. I'm trying to improve my waking short term memory also. I've found that just paying attention doesn't embed things in my memory. I need to actually be aware of my desire to encode something in my memory and not just be simply paying attention to it.

I would argue that if you are constantly questioning your dreams and making notes about them, that is a form of lucid dreaming. When I realize I'm dreaming, I like to just observe what occurs naturally around me and pay attention to all my senses without trying to influence the dream with any intentions. It's fascinating what unfolds naturally. I do this when I'm awake too, by trying to clear my mind and waiting for the next random word that pops into my head. It's always a surprise and I find that really interesting.

I say for those that aren't good at writing down their dreams right after they wake up from a dream,, then these people should have an audio recorder ready to go.