If you can't remember your dreams, TRY THIS!

So happy that this still helps people.

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Originally Posted by Aziq

Ok so first off - Great technique / idea you've developed, Mastermind! It's a solid idea and it's helped me with my recall a lot.

At the moment I spend about 30 minutes with an entry (I really try to remember as much as possible and write down as much as I can). My entries get to about a whole page in word with letter size 11.

I'm noticing however that its effectiveness has decreased a bit. I'm not sure if this is anything external like stress or not sleeping as well as before, or that I'm just in a dry spell week of dream recall, but have you experienced anything like this before? If so, did you do anything to solve it or did it pass by itself?

Thanks in advance!

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I have experienced dream recall dry spells, we all do. I solved it by looking at it logically and finding things that could increase or decrease my chances of remembering my dreams. One really big factor was the alarmclock. If I woke up on my own I remembered my dreams in much detail but when I woke up briefly and snoozed I woke up and forgot everything. Another could be stress as you suggested. I have found that a stressed mind brings stressed dreams, because you supress your thoughts and emotions so they end up in your subconscious mind, and well a dream is in some ways an experience of that. I solved that by meditating before going to sleep.


I hope that answered your question. :)

I will give this a shot tonight I have real vivid dreams but extremely fragmented and I have to work hard to remember usually spend most of the day slowly remembering bits and pieces.

I think at least part of the reason this worked for me was because after investing the time to do it, I was anxious to see if it paid off. It made following through more important, and so I was a lot more diligent in noting my dreams after each REM cycle than I usually am.

An interesting experiment would be to write down the details of what we plan to do the next day, and see how the results compare. This would exercise prospective memory. Maybe it would lead to a higher incidence of DILD lucidity?

I recently began keeping a journal, maybe two or three days before I decided to give lucid dreaming a shot again. My dream recall IS definitely increasing (just compare the amount of detail in my 2nd DJ entry versus the 1st one!). But is it because of the day journal or the dream journal? Or all of my reading about lucid dreaming? If I'm lucky, all of these influences will combine and help me attain lucidity sooner...I'm so impatient. :)

It could just be a combination of the two. With a dream journal you're recording events that have happened that you're trying to recall, how is this different form the day one? The difference is that with the day journal you have more to write down (presumably) which means more practice. With LD'ing you're trying to bring your concious state of mind into the unconscious state (effectively) so, you could be referring to the original (concious) to merge the two together. Like having motion blur the two can become closer to the ideal one.

the voice recorder is a good idea... I remember my dreams more when there is no pollutants in my system. Alcohol, smoking anything, even herb, basically the less of that stuff the more I can recall my dreams... But then again we are all wired different.

I've been doing this for the past few days, and I've been remembering at least 2-3 dreams every morning.

It's all about awareness . . .

Everyone seems to be enjoying good results with this technique, so I'm in for trying it. I enjoy doing some writing before bed to stimulate my brain anyway, so this will be fun.

EDIT (next day) - Well I wrote down everything that happened to me last night in a waking journal and I can safely say that when I woke up I was able to remember my dreams with much greater vividness. I was on a dry spell of not remembering anything so this is great. -EDIT- I don't think writing out the waking journal made the dreams more vivid, but it gave me the motivation to actively try and remember them when I woke up in between sleep. Upon further thought, the recalling of the day probably did help a lot with recalling in the dream. :)

I also tried a new alarm setup which could have greatly helped, because I am capable of recalling dreams in detail,but lately I have been getting nothing. Lately I've been setting my alarm to go off 6hours into sleep, 7 hours into sleep, and finally my wake up alarm. This time I set one alarm which was 6 hours into sleep, and that was it. I was naturally awoken by family 10 minutes before this alarm though and turned it off. I had dreamed by this point though, several times, and with a little bit of effort to get the ball rolling I started remembering them.

My dreams after the second awakening were much more vivid and detailed. I will continue with this waking journal idea, thanks.

So glad I found this post! I love lucid dreaming, but haven't practiced in years. I've just recently joined the boards again, and this post is a perfect Step One for me :-) Thank you MaterMind and hopefully this will be the WD-40 to my rusty dream recall :-P

Hello there.

Another case of success for me!

I was in a long dry spell, not recalling anything anymore since I dont remember when. Just a couple of nap dreams made it to my journal, but yesterday at night I did this, and today, after several wake ups, I have two entries on my DJ. One sex dream (God, I missed them!) and another more weird involving looking for someone who couldn't possibly be there.

THIS FREAKING WORKS!

I also read this years ago in reverse, meaning start with the last thing in the day and elaborate to the awakening. But this way worked, I still cannot believe it. I'm working line by line today in my waking journal as situations develop themselves, and later at night I'll give it a whole read. Let's see if it works better.

Thanks!!!!

Well, next day went again with zero recall, although I woke up a couple of times. But two factors: I did the waking journal through the day, line by line as events unfolded and then read it at night, instead of just remembering at bedtime, and also I went to bed with a little stress based on some news i got, so today I'm gonna go back to just remember the day and not "cheat".

Happy dreaming.

I am simply writing this down on random pieces of paper every night before I go to bed and almost always throw them out the next day. I was a little too lazy to get a notebook (let alone one as nice as my DJ:)) at first but I think this works just fine I remember several dreams almost every night since I started. Thanks!

I'm mad I didn't see this until now! I have been struggling with dream recall for the past few months (been on a dry spell), and this seems like it could work for me! I'm hoping this will be the rain to get me out of my dry spell!

Wow, tonight I am trying this technique! Thanks for sharing, I know this thread is old, I didn't read all the pages, so how are you doing now with dreaming, MasterMind? :)

Good luck Mellanhavande! ;)

My recall now is mostly dependent on a few factors such as when I go to bed, how stressed I am etc. But most mornings I wake up with a so called "Wait was that just a dream?" feeling. To understand what I mean imagine waking up 10 seconds from now realizing that you were just dreaming reading this, yea... That WTF feeling I have almost every morning, because my dreams are that vivid and realistic.

Lucid dreams is also very dependent on when I go to bed and how stressed I am, I get lucid dreams here and there, but the full control lucids that I want doesn't occur that much nowadays because my mind is focused on so much else. But I am slowly practising the skillset to enjoy the lucid life in the future when I got more time.

You can follow my progress in my DJ. ;)

Sweet dreams!

I am so glad I found this. This has made such an improvement in my recall. I started writing down my day while I was up before I went back to bed. The very first night I did it I went from remembering nothing to "WOW THIS IS INCREDIBLE"

I dont know if any one still looks at this but I am so happy it was here!!

Thank you Thank You.

This really worked. I have been trying for months to have a lucid dream, with reality checks and a combination of MILD and WBTB, meditation before bed, and just overall awareness, and I have had trouble recognizing my dream signs while I am dreaming, as well as doing reality checks in my dreams. But I woke up in the middle of the night, couldn't get back to sleep, starting reading ideas on this forum and came across this idea. So I reviewed my day, and also reviewed my reality checks and any thoughts I had about lucid dreaming that day, and I had a lucid dream! And it was the first time I was able to fly in my lucid dream. Awesome awesome idea, thank you!!!

Thanks for this. Yeah, I think it is the exercise of remembering what I experienced. I find that I am too bored with my day, but that is probably more of a core issue that means I am not as lucid in my waking life. There used to be this one program I tried that told me to report my time at the end of the day. Just the simple act of doing that would actually make me more conscious each subsequent day, and I would start to have better days. That sounds a lot like the relationship between recalling dreams and then becoming more conscious in subsequent dreams.

I stopped doing my waking life recall a few days ago and my dream recall was decreased the last two nights. So maybe there is really something to this.

One of the challenges for me with waking recall has also been that with waking life, I could probably remember too many details, if I really tried. So I might be writing for hours. Whereas, if I wrote a dream, there is more of a limit to how much I have to write before I have fully written it.

But yeah, I will have to get back on track with doing this. It is good to know that some other LD'ers are doing this too. Also, when I did this for a few weeks straight, I started to actually notice I was paying more attention during my day. I was even noticing random numbers during the day like bar codes or the random number in the youtube URL and then challenging myself to see if I would remember it when I went to do my daytime recall later. As well as seeing if I would remember TO remember. A lot of times, i wouldn't remember TO remember, but the memory would pop back up later.

I am not saying I am going to do this perfectly, since like I said, perfectly might mean I am spending hours a day just writing about my boring day. Drove to Aroboretum. Saw the guy in a white pickup truck. Heard a chainsaw the whole time. Felt annoyed. Listening to Robert Waggoner podcast. Etc.

It does kind of give me a clearer mind though, and has a centering effect. I will keep reading through this thread to hear what other people said about it and add any other things I thought about it from trying it. I will make sure to journal that I read a thread about journaling my day and then wrote a post about journaling my day :P

Just stumbled upon this while reading the dream recall compendium, applied it and got a WBTB without setting an alarm and two dreams recalled only a few hours after going to sleep.
Even 8 years later, this is still very helpful. Thanks for sharing this!

Hi ...um I'm new here and I came here after getting more inspiration from the movie of Christopher Nolan The Inception. But I do know Lucid Dreaming before seeing the film. Can you help me around here??

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Originally Posted by StephenLaBerge

Hi ...um I'm new here and I came here after getting more inspiration from the movie of Christopher Nolan The Inception. But I do know Lucid Dreaming before seeing the film. Can you help me around here??

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Make your own threads about that movie.;)