Reading Stories increase dream recall?

[SpecterSlash]

Hey has anyone noticed that after reading a good book or story that your dream recall and lucidity increases? I'm not sure if i'm the only one but everytime I read a story, it usually ends up with me having great dream recall and lucidity + really long dreams. So does anyone have this too? Does reading make others recall and be lucid easier? My theory is that reading a story stimulates imagination right?

[Phased]

He'll yeah, can't speak for lucidity but defiantly recall/dream vividness/excitement or length of the dream. When I first tried it out it was with the first book to the keys to the kingdom series, Mister Monday, it's prett out there and exciting so that helped, but yeah, I defiantly saw an increase in recall and all that! Interesting idea :3

[Sensei]

I never stop reading books, so I can't tall ya if it hinders me if I stop.

[Phased]

I never stop reading books, so I can't tall ya if it hinders me if I stop. I love books too, sometimes in between reading books like when I Finnish one and am looking for a new one I are my recall drop a little in quantity and quality.

[Linkzelda]

Reading stories does help increase dream recall in some way because just like with incubating your dreams, you imagine yourself where you want to be, or imagining yourself in the story. As you're going through the pages, you pick out notable marks and see yourself immersed in that specific event, and the more detail there is, the more you get into the story where you start forgetting about reality for a while and focus on enjoying the moment. And making your own short story for dream incubation can help with dream recall as well, because things are planned out, and even if it goes off in a different direction, you'll have a general idea of how things went. It's just one of those moments where we forget about having to be aware only on this reality and go back into the child mindset of the power of make-believing, and when we can shift through these two roles, dream recall comes easy because we just let the experience happen instead of trying to force it.

[Phased]

Reading stories does help increase dream recall in some way because just like with incubating your dreams, you imagine yourself where you want to be, or imagining yourself in the story. As you're going through the pages, you pick out notable marks and see yourself immersed in that specific event, and the more detail there is, the more you get into the story where you start forgetting about reality for a while and focus on enjoying the moment. And making your own short story for dream incubation can help with dream recall as well, because things are planned out, and even if it goes off in a different direction, you'll have a general idea of how things went. It's just one of those moments where we forget about having to be aware only on this reality and go back into the child mindset of the power of make-believing, and when we can shift through these two roles, dream recall comes easy because we just let the experience happen instead of trying to force it. So it's a similar process to setting the dream scene when WILDing except, it's more in the back of your mind? Either way that's how I am going to look at it, as it actually seems really logical for some reason, I don't know..

[Arkadast]

That's so weird! For my third lucid dream (I had awesome lucidity in this one) I read before I fell asleep! I never thought the book helped until I read your post. Maybe there can be another lucid dreaming method called RILD? (Reading induced Lucid Dream)?

[Linkzelda]

So it's a similar process to setting the dream scene when WILDing except, it's more in the back of your mind? Either way that's how I am going to look at it, as it actually seems really logical for some reason, I don't know.. It's pretty simple, once you get used to making certain responses (having a campfire with a dream character for instance), the more effort you put into getting that naturally, it comes easier. It's a battle between what you consciously want, and what your imagination can do. Obviously, your imagination is going to dominate over something you're trying to make, and you just let whatever subjective experience occurring to be there. Just like someone asks you to imagine a hot and beautiful female, chances are, you'll already have several, if not, at least one image of what that would be to you. The same principle applies when reading a book that has good amounts of detail, the content gives a base for you to start imagining without you being overly conscious about it. Books that help a lot with allowing one to explore their 5 senses to live within the story are going to have better recall of those moments. So when you start going more into detail yourself making an incubation for a dream, things like "Her dress was crimson red with red-laced lining" instead of "Her dress was red" obviously will give you more detail. Now imagine doing that when doing a WILD and focusing on your dream body, or even just having your face at the "back" of an environment, the visualizations become easier because you acknowledge yourself in the environment AND the environment rather than only focusing on the environment. So in theory, those parts are solidified since you get used to describing things more (you, the environment, the objects, and the people in it), which means your dream recall gradually improves (this helps a lot if you couldn't remember the dream as a whole, but could remember your emotions, because when you start knowing how you feel in certain situations in your dream, bits and bits start picking up, and you can recall more detail despite having less recall of the plot of the dream at first).