Thread: How long did you practice dream recall before attempting lucidity?

I am wondering how long you practiced dream recall for before attempting to have a lucid dream, or maybe how many dreams you should be aiming to remember before starting on lucidity. I have come back to this website after quite a while so obviously my recall is rusty, after my first night of using a dream journal I recalled one dream and another dream but that was only fragments, for the first night I am guessing that is good.

^^ You can attempt to have a LD any time you want, I think; there really is no time requirement.

Good dream recall is certainly important for successful consistent LD'ing, and you should develop it regardless, but you can still become lucid without it, if you are otherwise ready to LD anyway.

There are other things involved in successful LD'ing, like developing a good mindset (that link was from my DVA WILD class, but it works just as well with DILD techniques), experimenting with techniques (developing or refreshing your MILD technique is an excellent start), finding the sweet spot for WBTB (when its best to wake up for a WILD attempt), going to bed with well-set intentions, and more. Much of this other stuff can be practiced without any input from dream recall, and some of it includes actually attempting to LD, so there is no point holding it all off until some point in the future when your dream recall improves... plus, just the act of attempting to LD, even if you fail, is good practice.

So I suggest that you go ahead and make your attempts as your dream recall improves.

I started to read about LD's at New Years eve many years ago. Began dream journaling the day after. Became lucid after 2 months.
The secret here is not really the dream recall (the dream count is not important, just remembering the lucid one!), it's self-study. Educate yourself, find the techniques that you feel most comfortable with and you will be lucid in no time.

I also would like to know what people recommend. I've heard multiple sources say that if you can remember 2 dreams a night, you're ready to begin lucid dreaming induction techniques (source: Dream Yoga by Andrew Holecek + other sources). But does this mean 2 dream snippets or 2 full, detailed, long dreams? The quality of the memory can vary vastly between dreams. I remember at minimum 2 dreams a night, but they are always flashes of a longer dream, which I don't remember. At my current state I don't consider myself to have great recall yet and am currently working on strengthening it.

^^ Dream recall is a great and important thing, but there really is no minimum requirement for how much of dreams you can remember before you can be considered ready to begin attempting to induce LD's.

I know Mr. Holocek is an important voice in the LD'ing world, but in this case I think he is wrong. If your mind is in the right place to begin LD'ing, you can begin LD'ing -- whether or not your recall is helping your progress... and there is certainly no requirement of 2 fully recalled dreams per night.

So keep working on your dream recall, but also feel free to work on your induction techniques; if you are mentally prepared to have a LD, then you will have one, regardless of your recall quality.

Sageous, thanks for the positive advice. The reason I felt I should wait to develop dream recall before attempting to LD is that I am worried my LDs will be super hazy and unvivid. This is what happened to me many times in the past. I guess this might be something that stabilization techniques could help.

Originally Posted by JayTabes91

Sageous, thanks for the positive advice. The reason I felt I should wait to develop dream recall before attempting to LD is that I am worried my LDs will be super hazy and unvivid. This is what happened to me many times in the past. I guess this might be something that stabilization techniques could help.

First: if you worry that your LD's will be super hazy and unvivid, then they will be; expectation plays a substantial role in our dream life.

Also, and perhaps contrary to much of what you read on these forums, lucidity has nothing to do with vividness. You can be full-on, extremely lucid in the most hazy of dreams, just as you can be not lucid at all in the most vivid of dreams. I'm not sure when "vivid" became a descriptor of LD's, but it really is not; lucidity is about self-awareness, and not about the quality of your dreams.

So, you might consider not concerning yourself with vividness as you get started in your LD'ing practice... later, when you've got a few miles on your lucid odometer, you can make your dreams more vivid through dream control, but until then, try to focus on the knowing you are dreaming part rather than the quality part. And yes, stabilization techniques will likely help you make your dreams more vivid, when that time comes.

On top of all that, I'm not sure where you got it from, but dream recall has pretty much nothing to do with vividness. Dream recall as it relates to LD'ing is helpful because it brings your dreaming life more squarely into your waking life (and thus helps you build your lucid mindset), and it gives you opportunity to spot things like dreamsigns, or the general feeling that you are dreaming. Better remembering your dreams will not make your dreams better.

Hmm that's really interesting. I've always had very hazy dreams, lucid or not, and I always just assumed that they were hazy because my recall was bad. I figured if I improved my recall these dreams would be come more vivid...

So how can I improve vividness in non-lucid dreams? Could a mantra help this?

About 10 minutes of dream recall and then I managed to have a lucid dream

^^ I'm not sure if you can increase non-lucid vividness, because you're pretty much at the mercy of your dreaming mind. I suppose, though, that you could try incubating a vivid dream by, say, focusing on the sort of dream you'd like to have when you go to sleep at night. Dream incubation is a fairly popular activity, so a quick Google search will likely reveal a few sites with helpful advice on the subject... it'll probably take more than a mantra, though.