Thread: How to Increase Rate of Normal Dreams

Welcome to DV! Good news: this is a very common issue, and easily remedied. First of all, you actually do have normal dreams several times each night (all people do), so the problem is not with the frequency of dreams but rather with dream recall. By default most people forget their dreams when they wake up most of the time. Here is one useful list of ideas of what to do to increase dream recall: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...ompendium.html

One of the most useful tools to improve dream recall is to start keeping a dream journal, and write in it every day, even if you do not recall a dream but then write how many hours of sleep you got and whether you woke up refreshed and tired and such. If you do remember a dream, write down as much as you can recall, and then review your journal periodically to look for patterns in your dreams. Just the keeping of such a dream diary usually makes a huge difference in dream recall, and you should start seeing results soon. However, if dream journal is the only tool you use for dream recall, dream recall does tend to fluctuate to some extent, so do check out the link above to the Dream Recall Compendium to see some other ideas as well.

Hey sorry I've been inactive for so long, need to start being more active on here!
Okay I will start a dream diary within the week. But one question: are you guaranteed to find a pattern in your past dreams? Is it always a certainty? I know that some people may have deeper meanings to their dreams, or maybe more complicated ones, so find it harder to interpret the patterns, but is it a law of nature (if you like) that you will always be able to find these patterns?
Thanks for your previous post by the way, really helpful for my future!

Might be worth noting - I do the SSILD technique when I go to bed. It doesn't give me a lucid dream but my recall and dream eventfulness has shot up since I've started doing this.

Sweet! But...what is it? Excuse my ignorance Do you have any links on it or can you give a description of what it is?

Google "ssild" and you can't go wrong!

Originally Posted by Joelcharig

Hey sorry I've been inactive for so long, need to start being more active on here!
Okay I will start a dream diary within the week. But one question: are you guaranteed to find a pattern in your past dreams? Is it always a certainty? I know that some people may have deeper meanings to their dreams, or maybe more complicated ones, so find it harder to interpret the patterns, but is it a law of nature (if you like) that you will always be able to find these patterns?
Thanks for your previous post by the way, really helpful for my future!

Humans are pattern loving animals: we create patterns, we recognize them, and whenever we seek a pattern we can find one - sometimes it is an obvious pattern and at other times it requires a stretch of the imagination, but our brain can always and does create/recognize patterns. And patterns can help us as reminders and for setting expectations. Does that make sense?

Okay cheers Bobblehat, will do so =)
And yes Joannna, that does make sense! I've just got to record dreams now and get the recall rate up to one dream a night now =)
The key thing for me now is to maintain the required amount of sleep every night, especially after this week when I go back to school. Any recommendations for keeping the motivation and willpower to do so?

In my experience, if you begin keeping a dream journal, your memory and quality of dreams will explode after only a couple of days. When you wake up, make sure you don't open your eyes or move - run through every detail of everything you remember in your mind - don't worry if it's not much at first. Once you've committed it to memory, open your eyes and immediately commit it to dream journal. Each evening, before sleeping, read your dream journal and relive the experiences.

Originally Posted by Bobblehat

Might be worth noting - I do the SSILD technique when I go to bed. It doesn't give me a lucid dream but my recall and dream eventfulness has shot up since I've started doing this.

Just read a detailed post about the SSILD technique and have decided that I'm going to try this tonight - looks like it could help massively! My only concern is that I may focus too much on the actual technique and so lose the sense of relaxation - have you had any problems with this? Or do you have a possible way round it if it were to occur? Also, what are you own experiences with the technique? I would very much want to hear =)

Originally Posted by apsinvo

In my experience, if you begin keeping a dream journal, your memory and quality of dreams will explode after only a couple of days. When you wake up, make sure you don't open your eyes or move - run through every detail of everything you remember in your mind - don't worry if it's not much at first. Once you've committed it to memory, open your eyes and immediately commit it to dream journal. Each evening, before sleeping, read your dream journal and relive the experiences.

Yes I agree! This is really rare for me, but I've now had three nights with memorable dreams in a row! Although I am slightly frustrated with this morning, as I woke up really early (my alarm was on by accident) and I was starting to remember my dream and was stuck between whether I should get up and write in my dream diary or go back to sleep. I was so unexpectedly woken up at such an early time that I fell back to sleep, my dreams from that night drifting away with my consciousness.
Does it matter if that happens once in a while if ever? Will my dreams be harder to grasp tomorrow morning as a consequence?

Hi Joel.

I think cosmic.iron (originator of SSILD) is usually very helpful when you have questions about SSILD.

My experience: I conclude "something is going on" with SSILD but I'm not sure what it is. I use it a lot but would prefer to know exactly what that "something" is. It hasn't made me lucid that often, but has certainly made me lucid on occasions when I wouldn't have been lucid without it. My recall has improved; I can only assume that SSILD has played a role in this. Doing SSILD on going to bed seems to increase my recall, even if I don't do it at 4am.

Yeah that's the guy from who I read about it =)
I will set my alarm for 4am tonight and see what transpires, hopefully something noticeable =)

Originally Posted by Joelcharig

Just read a detailed post about the SSILD technique and have decided that I'm going to try this tonight - looks like it could help massively! My only concern is that I may focus too much on the actual technique and so lose the sense of relaxation - have you had any problems with this? Or do you have a possible way round it if it were to occur? Also, what are you own experiences with the technique? I would very much want to hear =)

With SSILD and other night-time techniques, those (like me) who wake up easily have to be on guard to hold on to sleepiness/drowsiness to makes sure you can get back to sleep. I developed a few sort of "fusion" approaches where: 1) I do some SSILD, then try to "sink into" some relaxation, if I find the relaxation is hard to develop, then I quit SSILD immediately and just focus on relaxing (in order to fall asleep); 2) do SSILD in a relaxing manner: don't stare hard with your eyes in the visual part, etc. Move your focus from sense to sense "lightly", making sure you're remaining drowsy.

A couple of things that I'm very confident improve my recall/clarity, both I've got from these forums in the first place.

1. Apples. I eat an apple as my last food of the day 1-2 hours before bed. This has improved my recall. People here were talking more about apple juice, so either might be worth a try. I just prefer the fruit to the drink.

2. Dual N-Back task brain training. This boosts my clarity/vividness of dreams by a noticable amount. I'm a bit on and off with this. I find it has diminishing returns and stop doing it out of lazyness in the end. If I leave it a while and pick it up again, I get an immediate boost again. I play it for about 5-10 minutes. I go to brainscale.net


The talk about SSILD; I usually cannot pull off SSILD when I wake up in the night because I either drop to sleep immediately or I can't sleep afterwards, but that's just me. The odd times I have done it right, I've certainly seen some results. I'm going to have to second what Bobblehat said that "something is going on" with SSILD but I'm not sure what it is.

P.S. I've never heard of doing SSILD when first going to bed, I'm going to have to try this.

^^ Hey thanks for the link to Dual N-Back training! It's interesting. N=1 was easy for me (got 100% first try), N=2 is much harder!

edit: woohoo got 83% on N=2 on my very next try. Man it takes attention!

Originally Posted by FryingMan

With SSILD and other night-time techniques, those (like me) who wake up easily have to be on guard to hold on to sleepiness/drowsiness to makes sure you can get back to sleep. I developed a few sort of "fusion" approaches where: 1) I do some SSILD, then try to "sink into" some relaxation, if I find the relaxation is hard to develop, then I quit SSILD immediately and just focus on relaxing (in order to fall asleep); 2) do SSILD in a relaxing manner: don't stare hard with your eyes in the visual part, etc. Move your focus from sense to sense "lightly", making sure you're remaining drowsy.

Yeah to be honest, I'm expecting to have a problem in this area at first. I think I won't be able to get back to sleep, or on the contrary (and more likely), I will be too tired to bother with SSILD and just fall asleep straight away.
But with every mistake/problem in our lives, there is a lesson to be taken from it - so I will practice this until there are no more lessons to be had =)

Originally Posted by Shantak

A couple of things that I'm very confident improve my recall/clarity, both I've got from these forums in the first place.

1. Apples. I eat an apple as my last food of the day 1-2 hours before bed. This has improved my recall. People here were talking more about apple juice, so either might be worth a try. I just prefer the fruit to the drink.

2. Dual N-Back task brain training. This boosts my clarity/vividness of dreams by a noticable amount. I'm a bit on and off with this. I find it has diminishing returns and stop doing it out of lazyness in the end. If I leave it a while and pick it up again, I get an immediate boost again. I play it for about 5-10 minutes. I go to brainscale.net


The talk about SSILD; I usually cannot pull off SSILD when I wake up in the night because I either drop to sleep immediately or I can't sleep afterwards, but that's just me. The odd times I have done it right, I've certainly seen some results. I'm going to have to second what Bobblehat said that "something is going on" with SSILD but I'm not sure what it is.

P.S. I've never heard of doing SSILD when first going to bed, I'm going to have to try this.

Are apples scientifically known to increase the vividness and dream recall? Because if not, it may just be a personal thing and I'm not quite sure it will work for everyone. Not saying it's not worth a try though!
I'm quite interested about the brain training too, because wouldn't that increase your brain activity if you did it just before going to bed, making it harder to fall asleep? Or is it that it increases your brain activity to an extent where you can still fall asleep but your brain is still more active afterwards, producing more vivid/easier dream recall?

Personally, I think well-known scientists should explore and experiment with dreaming a lot more =)

There is also a positive if you can't get back to sleep after SSILD - it can then function as a WBTB, so your chances of LD increase that way (assuming you get back to sleep, of course). NB: As the SSILD tutorials state, make sure to RC if you can't get back to sleep - it could be an FA.

Are apples scientifically known to increase the vividness and dream recall? Because if not, it may just be a personal thing and I'm not quite sure it will work for everyone. Not saying it's not worth a try though!
I'm quite interested about the brain training too, because wouldn't that increase your brain activity if you did it just before going to bed, making it harder to fall asleep? Or is it that it increases your brain activity to an extent where you can still fall asleep but your brain is still more active afterwards, producing more vivid/easier dream recall?

Personally, I think well-known scientists should explore and experiment with dreaming a lot more =)

First of all I will make no claims to be well educated on these subjects and don't know the science behind it, I can say what I know but I could be wrong or misguided on things. If I remember right, people here were experimenting with apples/apple juice and were comfortable with the idea it increases recall. I tried it because it was easy and I could do with more fruit in my diet anyway. I noticed results. Like you say perhaps it doesn't work for everyone; we're all different. And if it's not really helping me and I just think it is then at least I'm eating apples. I don't know if there's any scientific link as to why they might help.

The brain training doesn't seem to affect my ability to sleep, I don't feel like I'm buzzing afterwards. I'm not the best at getting to sleep so I think I would be particulary vulnerable to this if it did affect peoples sleep. The theory is that N-back task exercises a part of the brain which is also used for remembering dreams. I'm sure some people here can explain that in more detail. There are plenty of people using this brain training that are reporting increased dream recall, even though they do it with no particular interest in dreams in the first place.

And I have to agree, it would be interesting to see some scientific experiments with some of these ideas. I guess this is a subject that is hard to measure results for even if there was some intention to test it.

I might try the apple thing. I'm the same as you, Shantak - I could maybe hit the apples for my midnight snacks instead of reaching for the junk food. I've been thinking of doing this anyway, without even knowing it's supposed to improve recall.

How did you get on last night, Joel?

It's a case of "more of the same" for me. Did SSILD on going to bed, did it about 2 in the morning and experieced reasonable recall.

I don't eat after I've had dinner, so I cannot do the apple experiment (apart from consuming juice) as eating in the evening is a bad habit - if no exercise is done after eating in the evening, the energy consumed is usually stored as fat as your metabolism is at a low.
But this isn't a fitness forum
However, I heard somewhere (I think from CosmicIron, the discoverer of SSILD) that drinking water before you go to sleep helps with dream vividness/recall. I've been doing this for a few days now, since I've started my dream diary and I seem to be able to recall dreams on a nightly basis now. But that may have absolutely nothing to do with the water! I will suspend the consumption of water for a few nights to see if there are any noticeable differences.

About last night - I intentionally did SSILD before I went to sleep, but also set my alarm for 4am. The thing is, I don't even remember waking up at that time! But I must have done, because my alarm doesn't turn off by itself and no-one else in the house would have turned it off. So the only possible explanations are that I was only subconscious when the alarm went off and turned it off while I was half asleep, or I in fact WAS awake and DID go through the process of SSILD but because it was in the middle of the night, I entirely forgot about it when I woke up.
But all in all, my dream that I had last night was less vivid, and I found much harder to recall than the other nights, which I was a bit disappointed at!
I think the dual-N back task brain training will help a lot though, so I am going to try this hopefully tonight. But the website Shantak shared you have to pay for...does anyone know of a free website or even better, a free app on the iTunes app store?

Apples have a small amount of choline, which is a substance important for dreaming. But there are things much, much higher in choline than apple juice. Soy lecithin for example.

Frankly I've tried a lot of things (peanut butter, apple juice, milk, crackers, cheese, mussels (b12 super food), peppermint tea, St. John's Wort, soy lecithin, etc.) and haven't noticed anything making a huge difference from one night to another. Regular sleep, a healthy diet, regular exercise, and daily LD practice (RCs, meditation, visualization, etc., all the usual), dream journal are the key, in other words, the fundamentals. I'm not into supplements so I don't mess with LD "cocktails" like Galantamine + Alpha-GPC, etc. even though it's clear they work.

The brain training site I mentioned can be used for free. Recently they've started a thing where you have to wait about 10 seconds before playing a game. You can pay there but I can't say I know the differences other than removing the delay. The 10 seconds doesn't bother me.

I think I'll keep away from the supplements at the moment, as you said, I think it's down to habits and not "special" foods.
Oh okay! I'll try the site again then =)
I'm having consistent dreams every night now, but they're not as vivid as I'd like them to be. This may be because I'm not waking up straight after them, so they've finished and I've had some light sleep afterwards before waking up again.
I remember the dream I had the night before I started a dream diary and it was as vivid as it gets! This may have to do with the fact that I woke up straight after, but the dream itself may have just been a lot more vivid. Does anyone know how to make that type of dream happen more regularly?