Can Intention Kill Recall?

Everything I have read indicates that maintaining the intention to remember dreams and become lucid in dreams is a positive thing. And while it could just be a coincidence, the few days since I have signed up here I haven't remembered even a single fragment of a dream to start my dream journal with... and before that I usually remembered at least one dream per night, nearly never going more than one night with no recall. Anyone else experience this or have idea of why this might be? Or am I just being impatient? Patience has never really been my strong point. Thank you in advance for any advice.

I honestly think it depends on the person, because I SUCK at intention. Whenever I set an intention, the next day I can't remember any of my dreams because my mind is so focused on what I intended to dream about. Like my brain pushes all other dreams aside to search for my intended subject and if it can't find it, it just gives up and wipes my dreams clean or something.

What I do is I don't set any intention, I just do stuff related to whatever I want to dream about. That way it's on my mind, but it's not technically an "intention", if that makes any sense. Like if I wanted to have a dream about kicking a dragon's ass, I'd probably watch The Hobbit that night. ...I have no idea if this would work for everyone though, but it always helps me out.

My recall varies with weekday (little) vs weekend (good), amount of sleep / number of times awakening. The best recall for me is on a weekend where I have slept enough to begin napping. I also use things to increase recall like B6, I am trying to by some 50 mg slow release but nobody actually carries it in the store. Once I reach the point where I am sleeping in only 40 minute to one hour cycles my recall can be 10-20+ minutes of dreams each awakening. Try getting more sleep or take a bit of B6

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Originally Posted by Ashikael

I honestly think it depends on the person, because I SUCK at intention. Whenever I set an intention, the next day I can't remember any of my dreams because my mind is so focused on what I intended to dream about. Like my brain pushes all other dreams aside to search for my intended subject and if it can't find it, it just gives up and wipes my dreams clean or something.

What I do is I don't set any intention, I just do stuff related to whatever I want to dream about. That way it's on my mind, but it's not technically an "intention", if that makes any sense. Like if I wanted to have a dream about kicking a dragon's ass, I'd probably watch The Hobbit that night. ...I have no idea if this would work for everyone though, but it always helps me out.

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That sounds like it could be the situation. Since finding DreamViews I have immersed myself in dreaming information, maybe I'm trying too hard. Perhaps tonight I will just play video games and let the dreams come. Thanks.

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

My recall varies with weekday (little) vs weekend (good), amount of sleep / number of times awakening. The best recall for me is on a weekend where I have slept enough to begin napping. I also use things to increase recall like B6, I am trying to by some 50 mg slow release but nobody actually carries it in the store. Once I reach the point where I am sleeping in only 40 minute to one hour cycles my recall can be 10-20+ minutes of dreams each awakening. Try getting more sleep or take a bit of B6

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I have tried melatonin unsuccessfully in the past, but perhaps B6 is worth a try. It's too late to get any tonight, but maybe tomorrow. Thanks.

"Intention" describes a specific short-term plan and "expectation" is less specific, still thematic though, and not on any particular schedule.

No, intent to remember dreams does not kill recall, quite the opposite! Intent is a focus of a very strong desire, and for good recall you must really want to remember dreams.

Dreaming is not like a simple function machine where if you input intent you get recalled dreams as output without fail.

Recall goes up and down for many different reasons. Current level of interest, how well-rested your are, whether you're stressed or have a lot of waking life responsibilities that are stealing your attention, all these things and more affect recall. And even when there are no apparent external changes, recall goes up and down on its own, pretty much all long-term dreamers experience the waxing and waning of recall as a continuous cycle.

Patience is pretty important in lucid dreaming. It's good to stay highly motivated, but if you start experiencing frustration or anxiety due to your dreaming "performance" not meeting your expectations, that can affect your dreaming. It's much better to maintain a very positive and thankful (and yes, patient) mindset towards dreaming.

Keep up consistent, diligent day and night work, and the dreams will keep getting better and better over time.

Supplements that affect brain operation can help, but generally only if you are deficient. I think it's better to take a general-purpose multivitamin (for example, "Opti-Men" is one I take fairly regularly to make sure I have no glaring deficiencies) than to pile up on individual substances like B6. B6, as with any single vitamin/supplmement, can have harmful effects if taken in doses beyond what is safe. Always research a lot before taking any supplements.

I find that regular exercise, being happy, drinking a lot of water (good for the brain, and good for helping to notice middle of the night wakings for WBTB), and staying really excited about dreaming are generally all that you need beyond the awareness, memory, and recall work, to have great dreams consistently.

Intention for me (as a aim): relaxed intent, very persistent and never stuggling (or straining?). Intention is over the motivational waves. Intention is very-very important. Everywhere: recall-awareness(lucidity)-everyday life.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

"I find that regular exercise, being happy, drinking a lot of water (good for the brain, and good for helping to notice middle of the night wakings for WBTB), and staying really excited about dreaming are generally all that you need beyond the awareness, memory, and recall work, to have great dreams consistently.

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Well "being happy" isn't so easy for me since I have been diagnosed with chronic depression. That's one issue I'd hoped to work on in dreams once I learn to control them. I know some vitamins are water soluble so having some extra won't hurt, maybe I should research B6 a bit before taking it. :shadewink:

Good luck with battling the depression. My advice still stands, though, as much as is possible, try to associate only positive thoughts with dreaming.

Water soluble notwithstanding, it is possible to cause irreparable nerve damage by too-frequent intake of too-high levels of B6.

From [How much vitamin B6 is toxic?]. - PubMed - NCBI

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Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) causes neuropathy at intakes of 1000 mg per day or more, which is about 800 times the daily intake from foods. There have also been occasional reports of toxicity at intakes of 100-300 mg per day. The US authorities set the no-observed-adverse-effect-level at 200 mg per day and the safe upper limit at 100 mg per day. A report of neurotoxicity in 2 patients who had taken 24 mg and 40 mg of vitamin B6 per day respectively, may be coincidence rather than a true toxic effect of such relatively low doses. However, physicians need to remain alert to high intakes of vitamin B6 as a cause of unexplained neuropathy.

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Originally Posted by FryingMan

How much vitamin B6 is toxic?

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I just managed to pick up Solaray B-Complex 75 and yes the B6 is the toxic one
this crap is a capsule of 75Mg each of all kinds of stuff, with supposed 50% fast acting
and 50% up to 8hr release. I wish I could just get the B6 only and 100% slow release
at 50mg or 30mg. Oh well tho, I will take a full one tonight on first awakening then
I will possibly take a cut dose in the morning and nap on, take another full dose tomorrow
night and then cut or skip doses the rest of the week.

B6 toxicity takes a while to build up the B6 itself is water soluble but it gets converted
to a highly bound form that has a half life of like more than a month. If you take a whole
pile at once, once in a while it won't all get converted but if you take a lot every day it
will lead to loss of proprioception (sense of where your body parts are).

I would definitely keep the total dose to less than 1.5 grams a month at least on average

It does seem to have a huge impact on Recall tho try 50 mg a day for one week on
and one week off and see what it does for you.

I am hoping this slow release formula will improve recall in the latter cycles, the stuff
gets metabolized and who knows what form increases the recall or for how long.

I'll report back somewhere on how it does at partial dose during week days for recall
I think I'll just take half of it Mon - Thur at initial sleep for this coming week (37.5mg)
this complex contains Choline tho I hope it doesn't adversely affect recall, who knows
maybe some of the other 'complex' garbage will help a bit too.

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Originally Posted by Amanda1

I have tried melatonin unsuccessfully in the past

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I take ridiculous amounts of Melatonin but I take that for vividness not recall (although as someone mentioned
vividness might cause you to recall more in and of it self). I wouldn't recommend Melatonin in young women
as it is reported to disrupt their cycle. (not and issue for me :) ) at the levels I take it, it causes insomnia but
that is perfect for wake back to bed and weekend napping nothing like a bit of insomnia to ensure you wake
back up.

If your not taking an SSRI for your depression you might consider 5HTP to increase your serotonin but I
have cut the stuff out for now myself, I was taking like 100mg 2-3 times a week along with DHEA 25mg
but I have cut it out entirely for at least the next few months, in general 5HTP makes for mental focus
and DHEA increases bizzarness of dreams which together can help you trigger, but who knows what
other long term effects the DHEA might have. (Don't try 5HTP if your serotonin is being elevated by
SSRI tho) 5HTP also tends to lead to early sleep and then rebound insomnia, which again is fine if you don't
have to get up to work, but I get up at 5am all that mental focus in the middle of the night tends to
lead to racing thoughts once your awake.

I know that when I have something on my mind before I go to sleep, I don't dream. (I know 'don't dream' is technically incorrect so nobody has to point it out.) It's always been that way for me so when I have the intention to dream right before bed it doesn't happen. That's why I try my hardest during the day and relax at bedtime. It makes it easier to go to sleep and improves my recall.

Thanks for the responses. I did manage to recall a dream finally, so I might hold off on supplements. I am on a SSRI, so 5HTP probably wouldn't be the best option. A possible side effect for some of my antidepressants have been vivid dreams. My doctor never ceases to be surprised when he asks about that side effect and my response is, "I wish!" It's one of the few side effects I want, but it usually end up with the weight gain one... So I posted the dream I remembered in my journal, so I'll see how the next few days go. Thanks, everyone and I wish you lucid dreams. :cheeky: ☺️

The thing that most affects my dream recall is sleep time. I don't remember any dream I had this whole week, because I slept 6/7 hours each day, but today I slept 10 hours and I remember 4 dreams, 2 non-lucid and 2 LDs.
When I woke up I only remembered the lucid ones, so I picked up my phone and started writing them. Doing that I remembered the other dreams.
I never took supplements, but if they help you, keep using them, but to get an even better dream recall:

-Sleep more
-Try to recall your dreams as soon as you wake up

Good luck!

I took 2.X of those 75Mg of B6 + B-Everything and My recall has been fairly good, but then it is the weekend

generally when I woke up I would remember that I dreamed and at least one or two fragments in my mind.

when I would think about the pieces more pieces would appear. Especially when I would begin to type in the
journal. Then more parts would come back. So maybe a good idea would be when you wake up to just journal
anyway.

Start out with: I wish I could remember what I was just dreaming about. Was it a Car? A Plane? A Wombat?...
and then suddenly you'll remember something :) But use your dream signs so maybe not Wombat tho next
time you see one you'll surely be dreaming so it could be a good one :)

I won't try this method this coming week so as to see what half a pill does to recall only using my typical lay and try
to remember a bit. So I can tell if these stupid 1/2 time release B6 complex things are having any effect
Then try skipping them for next week (during weekdays)

So I have been taking or not taking the b-complex of 75mg of everything

In isolation it didn't seem to do much for recall, but when combined with 5HTP (that I had stopped taking but now am taking again) and Melatonin (that I almost always take some of, often ridiculous amounts) I seem to have great recall. So I recommend trying some b6 (not to much it is neuro-toxic at high levels) and 5HTP which seems to help give me mental focus within the dream to sense it isn't real.

Also one new lucid dream, it wasn't a particularly good one, and I had a false awakening where I believed that I was about to wake up and actually went thru the way I usually wake up for real. I rub my hands but am not stabalizing enough, vision is going in and out, I feel my hands begin to paralyze then I begin to feel my real body (but wait that is what I was expecting to happen while in the lucid dream, so it seemed to happen), I could suddenly feel my real body moving so I gave up and just woke up, then seemingly a bit latter I was recording my dream all different directions on a napkin out in my front yard while a band was playing nearby and people were talking to me, and I was noticing weird stuff on my street. Latter when I actually woke up I didn't recall the dream at first but as I was recording other dreams I thought oh yea I already recorded the lucid on a napkin.... On a Dream Napkin... I don't actually think the false awakening was that convincing but the pretend waking up from the lucid was dead on, that is usually exactly what happens to me as I begin to lose stability. I never give up easily if I begin a stabilization attempt I fight to the dream death, never before had the dream death occur entirely inside a dream before tho. The dream went on for like 4 or 5 more fragments, but perhaps due to the b6 I was able to recall back to the band/napkin part and realize I had had the lucid dream :)

The lucid portion was from a false awakening too, where I just knew it was a dream and it was blurry, surprising how the expectation of losing the dream turned out to play out exactly as expected but while in the lucid dream I was trying to find people, I would open doors in the house and find rooms with only empty beds with the sheets all balled up, even tho every time I opened one I expected people, vision came in and out at least 3 times and was often blurry.

I was able to overcome the blindness by just continuing to move I would know where I was in the hall and where the next door was, I would just walk blind to the door and open it and as I did vision would return, but then as fast as I could turn around I would lose sight again, I would just rinse and repeat. Of course once I thought I was outside writing my dream on the napkin the world around me was non-lucid and crystal clear.

All the meds aside recall seems mostly to do with how much sleep I have had, the more the better, and how clear the dreams are (Melatonin helps here) and most importantly how stress free I am so Friday - Sunday are the best recall times for me

Just a quick comment that intention and will are not the same. A strong will to dream does kill dream recall. Intention is the soft knowledge that you know you will dream tonight. The will is conscious...intention is setting the subconscious desire. It took me awhile to learn the difference through experimentation. Don't over think your desire to lucid dream.

Here's my experience if it helps. I've always been able to recall dreams to greater or lesser degree. I in the last few months got reinspired towards LD. I was doing nightly entries of 3 or 4 dreams each night. Getting lots of semi lucid 'dream signs'. But then as I had read three or four of what I felt were the most important books and read online articles I started to loose my nightly recall. This got to where I could remember nothing or at best I might be slightly aware I had been dreaming but the dream was buried deep in my mind-and as soon as I awakened any memory was instantly gone. During this time my LD readings had really slowed. I was reading Jung stuff. You probably know he was seriously into dream study. I wondered if I just needed a break from LD reading and that caused my loss of recall. Just within the last couple weeks I have been recalling my dreams slightly. I wonder if we all don't go through dry periods? I'd advise you not to give up. Keep in mind all the good that can come from it. I can see the truth in what they say that there is tremendous benefits to be gained with LD. Not just flying around and doing fun things but you can greatly improve your personality, gain deep understandings, remove obstacles to in your everyday waking life.

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Originally Posted by deric

at best I might be slightly aware I had been dreaming but the dream was buried deep in my mind-and as soon as I awakened any memory was instantly gone.

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deric:

When you can remember that you dreamed but can't think of a single image, feeling I find it helps to go thru lists:
like: Car, Bike, Train, Bus, Plane, Boat if it doesn't work go thru another Cat, Dog, Horse, Bug, Bird and another House, Apartment, Work Cube, Restaurant, Stadium

as many lists as you can until you remember something, for me this works most of the time, you'll suddenly remember you were eating in a restaurant or that you saw a bug crawling along a wall, or you were waiting in a crosswalk for a bus to go past. Then you try to remember more, I find it works best if you are lying still with your eyes closed, be convinced you were just somewhere, doing something and don't give up until you at least get some idea of the dream, even if all you get is vague something to write down anything, one you start writing sometimes more will come back or even flood back