Starting again.

Hi guys!

I registered on this forum a couple of months ago, and like most freshmen i read all the time and tried out different methods. Since that day i have had six lucid dreams. This is not a number i am really happy with, but still something i expected. It takes a long time to get down to 3-4 a week, right? Anyhow, the interest soon started to falter, because i stopped writing down my dreams and stopped perfoming the excerices. I do not know why this happend, but i think it was because my dreams were not really as clear as i hoped for and therefore did not give me so much of a "kick".

However, i recently decided to get back into it again, which leads me to my question;

- The main difference between when i first started out and now, is that it was summer vacation when i started. With all that time on my hand i was not stressed at all and could wake up naturally. Today i struggle with both. I can deal with the stress part myself, but i wonder how you guys wake yourself up in the morning without having the alarm ruining your memory (atleast, that is what it is doing with me)?

Thanks for the help!

I guess I am lucky, in that I seem to wake up after each REM episode, so I have got into the habit of going over the dream I have just had in order to commit it to memory. Although my memory of each dream fades a bit in the morning, I can ususally remember 2-3 dreams a night, with the last one being fairly detailed.
The habit of going over each dream did take a while to get into though. The starting point is to try to remeber to stay very still, keep your eyes closed (even if it is dark!) and gently let the memeory come back. Trying too hard to remember doesn't usually work for me. As fragments start to return, try to link them and go backwards through the dream. It is amazing what can suddenly return with a bit of practice.

I have noticed that I sometimes wake naturally after a REM episode before the alrm clock goes off, and then I remember the last dream with more clarity. If it happens to wake me mid-REM it seems to fade faster. I don't know why.

I then use the Android Dream Journal from Radiant Monkey to record my dreams. I do that first thing on waking, before allowing any distractions to dull the memory of my dreams. If I don't do it in the first 5 minutes or so, I will forget almost everything, but writing it down seems to re-inforce it some more, so I can often remember the dreams through the day.

You're right in believing it can take a considerable amount of time to get to 3-4 LD's a week, but it's all individual and different for everyone. I personally don't do any exercises during the day. For techniques I do WILD and DEILD/MILD. I could probably become better at lucid dreaming faster if I spent more time during the day, but quite frankly I don't have neither the time, commitment or good memory to remember to do Reality Checks and whatnot during the day. The fact that I don't write my dreams down either obviously gives me worse dream recall overall, but, like you, I remember roughly 1 dream every night, sometimes more. I'll usually go over the dream and then let it go again, because dream recall isn't an issue for me. I tend to wake up after my LD's, so I remember those quite clearly. LD's are also much more significant to me than normal dreams, so they tend to stay in my memory rather than get lost again.

As for your problem with the alarm ruining your memory, I've never had that issue. But in my experience, it is much easier for me to have better and more clear dreams, and actually remember them, after I've had at least 6-8 hours of sleep, at which point I am almost certain to remember a dream.

I recently came back from being inactive also. I've been having troubles with lucid dreaming. I haven't had a lucid dream in AGES. I'm not sure why because i mean i almost always remember my dreams but i never remember about lucid dreams during them. I've been trying MILD's and DILD's (im in school so i really dont want to try WBTB or a WILD) and i seem to be having no luck. Maybe i just dont have that hype i use to have :/