Practicing recall without journaling

This is not just a lazy technique! This morning (and yesterday too maybe) I whispered the dream to myself instead of writing it out. It is much faster and easier than writing my dreams down. So obviously this makes no sense if you really want to record them to read them later for fun and/or to learn something from them. But I mostly journaled to improve my recall.

A serious benefit: because it is so much easier to whisper the dream than to pick up paper and a pencil, light a light and write the dream down, I can squeeze in an additional session of recall practice, whereas usually I would just think about it, recap it, wait for some grogginess to wear off before writing it down. In these moments I might fall asleep. Not only that, I may be waking up at least once at night and forgetting it later on and because I am so groggy I don't write it down, but if I am whispering them right after waking up instead of writing, I am so much more likely to get in extra recall practice.

Another pretty big benefit: because it is so fast and effortless to whisper as opposed to writing, I can add little details here and there and things like this: "oh, she had blonde hair like that girl from that show" "and i think that happened because he was doing this 5 minutes ago" these little things that take a lot of effort and 15 seconds each to write down are now of negligible effort. This also makes it so that I spend more time exploring my memory of the dream, which is good for improving recall and also to learn more about my dreams. And there are a lot of these little things that cross my mind about the dream but would take insanely long to write down.

Pretty cool huh :D

Sometimes when I feel I'm in a really good spot for a WILD or DEILD and I don't want to move and start writing notes, I do something similar I guess. I recap the dream as far as I can go remembering everything, though knowing some of the information will be lost. Then as I have the dream fully remembered, I give a name to it like " Bank robbery" and what I do is this: I look at one of the three lamps that are hanging from my ceiling, and I "place" the dream in one of the lamps. I look at the lamp and I repeat the name of the dream in my mind. Then after I wake up later, I look a the lamps ( that have storage room for 3 dreams heh) and I remember the dreams. Though I still think that writing them down is a much more effective and secure way. Buuuut, a good chance for WILD or DEILD > Writing down some random nonlucid dreams.

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Originally Posted by Ginsan

This is not just a lazy technique! This morning (and yesterday too maybe) I whispered the dream to myself instead of writing it out. It is much faster and easier than writing my dreams down. So obviously this makes no sense if you really want to record them to read them later for fun and/or to learn something from them. But I mostly journaled to improve my recall.

A serious benefit: because it is so much easier to whisper the dream than to pick up paper and a pencil, light a light and write the dream down, I can squeeze in an additional session of recall practice, whereas usually I would just think about it, recap it, wait for some grogginess to wear off before writing it down. In these moments I might fall asleep. Not only that, I may be waking up at least once at night and forgetting it later on and because I am so groggy I don't write it down, but if I am whispering them right after waking up instead of writing, I am so much more likely to get in extra recall practice.

Another pretty big benefit: because it is so fast and effortless to whisper as opposed to writing, I can add little details here and there and things like this: "oh, she had blonde hair like that girl from that show" "and i think that happened because he was doing this 5 minutes ago" these little things that take a lot of effort and 15 seconds each to write down are now of negligible effort. This also makes it so that I spend more time exploring my memory of the dream, which is good for improving recall and also to learn more about my dreams. And there are a lot of these little things that cross my mind about the dream but would take insanely long to write down.

Pretty cool huh :D

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Yes, and easier. I have done this, by recording a voice memo. Plus, when I go to type it out I can remember even more details.

I wonder if "whispering it" but entirely in your mind would have the same effect? By this I mean, not recalling your dream in a disjuncture visual "quick-flashes-of-images" way, right after you wake up. I mean, making yourself hear a voice in your head that basically "whispers" (or scream or yell, whatever's fun) your dream just as you would out loud, only it's in your head, to prevent your mouth muscles and vocal muscles from moving. That sounds like it would help even more with WILD, but maybe the act of physically saying it helps with increasing your chances of remembering it? Or at least, not falling back asleep too soon?

Any thoughts on this?

I don't know, miss juice. Whispering in my head feels very strange and difficult; it goes like this: "so... yesterday... i... was... eating... ice cream... and... i dreamt... about..." so it is very slow because thoughts keep interfering and I feel like I have to emphasize every thought-whisper to make it feel different from regular thinking. But it may be personal I don't know. I think it comes down to how clearly everything resonates or how clear every sentence is. When you're writing, all the thoughts you have while writing kind of fade away and what remains is just the text you actually put down, when thinking, all thoughts merge merge. I hope that made sense. But it may depend on the person. And about WILD, I don't know much about that, but at first glance it makes sense and the slowness (which you need to make the thoughts stand out) is not a negative thing I think, since it might take ~10 minutes anyway.

I have used a voice recorder in the past, but I slowly watched my recall trickle into short summaries, as opposed to long, detailed expositions. I was able to recall lots of detail at first (and was super happy, because I was tired of writing) but for some reason, writing just brings the memories back for me, while speaking does not capture the entirety of what happened in the dream. If you are still able to remember long, detailed dreams in six months, then I think you found your ticket :) And if you don't care about that, then I guess you still found your ticket

Use to tell my dreams every morning for my girl, but those times i wake up with my eyes still closed and want to get back to dreaming I just pretend to wright the dream down with my finger. That also works really well. Because for me its about the amount of time I spend thinking about the dream that makes me remember it well.