How to make dreams more vivid?

**Kinda a long post! If you dont wanna read it all my basic questions are at the bottom :)**

First off, hey everyone :) Glad to be a part of the community, seems like you guys have a great group of people, and a huge amount of information.

I am extremely interested in working on having more vivid dreams, and working towards being able to regularly become lucid, some quick background information is I have no memories of ever being lucid, in fact I only remember a couple different dreams that were .. I guess what you could call a real dream. Where there was an active plot of some sort or I was actually doing something, from time to time I wake up and just have a random feeling, of being somewhere I know I wasn't, its very hard to describe. I have no clue where, but I know that I haven't been laying in my bed for the last few hours, I was doing something.

I feel like before I can even consider going lucid I need to work on my dream recall, as Im sure its happening, I just cant remember it.

Would eating a banana or some peanut butter or any type of food be beneficial to having more vivid dreams? I've read that Vitamin b6 along with some other stuff can drastically improve vividness.. I'd prefer to not use supplements and just eat some food to get a boost for this if you guys have any recommendations. I think once I have more vivid dreams I will be able to get a real dream journal going, and work on my dream recall more and more.. As of now it just honestly seems like im not dreaming, when i know damn well that i am. :(

Also... Do you guys think setting up multiple timers later at night during the latter REM cycles might help with dream recall? So that I wake up multiple times, my memory may be more "fresh" about whats going on, if so what are some time ranges to shoot for. Btw the reason im asking about this is because 9/10 nights I sleep the entire night without waking up, and I generally get 8-9+ hours of sleep. I feel like thats why I cant really remember anything specific, because theres a cluster fuck of things that have happened throughout the night, and my mind cant separate or visualize them as a different dream.. I often wake up just feeling uneasy, or very happy, scared, shocked, etc.. and yes I write that down. I do not remember who, what, where, when, or why though :(.

I have read alot of tutorials on this site over the last week and I have more or less tried every beginner technique I can find, I just always get caught at the same point..

It varies depending on what technique im using that particular night, but it usually goes like this.

1. Fall Asleep
2. Wake up a few hours later
3. Stay up for anywhere from 5-30 mins (I have tried reading, doing math, thinking about dreams, etc.. I never remember if I had a dream right before I woke up.
4. Go back to bed, relax.. I can usually begin to see some very faint flashes or blotches of light, no shapes or patterns, almost hard to see.
5. After a few mins I begin to feel the vibrations, although sometimes I go almost directly into SP (Sometimes takes as little as 2 or 3 mins).
6. Here is where im stuck, most nights my body goes numb, and im just staring into the blackness behind my eye lids..

Supposedly dreaming comes soon after SP, and so maybe im not really in SP yet.. But i have sat there for almost an hour after the initial feeling and not gone anywhere.. I think this has to do with my mind just trying to dream to much, Some people say they see pictures/images and stuff, I dont.. nothing but black. If i try to imagine a scene, even something like walking in my backyard... My mind just gets to distracted and i never fall asleep... If i try simple things like counting, or even not thinking at all.. I just pass out and wake up the next morning not remembering any of the dream.

Basically....
- Can you recommend food that will help with the vividness of dreams, and when to eat it?
- Would waking up every say 30 or 45 mins between the hours of 5-8 in my sleep cycle improve recall, so that maybe I could remember one, or even multiple dreams?
- Any beginner methods of becoming lucid that you guys could recommend that I may have overlooked throughout the tutorial section?

thanks :)

Hi, welcome to Dreamviews.

Vividness can be improved with a B6 supplement, purchased from any health store. I can't think of any foods that will, effectively, improve recall. Although I can give you a site with more supplements to help with lucidity and vividness. http://www.advancedld.com/index.html


Periodic waking will certainly help with recall. Although there are easier measures such as dream recall or auto-suggestion to do this, just have a look in the forum as there are many threads regarding these methods.

The best advice I can give you to become competent at lucid dreaming is simply keep trying and find what is best for you; A tutorial can only tell you so much. Maybe try the adoption section.

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Originally Posted by Shady

Basically....
- Can you recommend food that will help with the vividness of dreams, and when to eat it?
- Would waking up every say 30 or 45 mins between the hours of 5-8 in my sleep cycle improve recall, so that maybe I could remember one, or even multiple dreams?
- Any beginner methods of becoming lucid that you guys could recommend that I may have overlooked throughout the tutorial section?

thanks :)

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There are a lot of foods with B-6 in them. As I'm sure I've mentioned many times on this forum, bananas work great for me. I eat them usually at the beginning of WBTB to give it some time to get into my system (bc i'm usually up for kind of a long time during WBTB) or just before you go to sleep.

I think waking up every 30 - 45 minutes will just disrupt your sleeping schedule and make your mind more tired so you're less likely to remember. I mean, like phsycology student said, periodic waking will help... it's just I dont think you need that much periodic waking. The 30-45 minutes might not even give you time to have a full dream, and even if you do dream, you can remember them better when they're longer and have some sort of plot to them forming. Just write them down when you wake up naturally if you had a really vivid dream or write them down during WBTB. I think just one or two times in the night plus when you wake up in the morning would do.

Some beginner methods... DEILD is a good one. But I think the best ones for beginners are the ones you most likely already know about. Just do RCs and write in your DJ and try to DILD or do WBTB until you feel confident enough to try WILD or something.

Thanks for the reply Laguna :)

Through hours of searching around yesterday and this site, a few others, nutritional facts site, google :P etc.. I kinda made my dinner based on some foods high in tryptophan and b6, just to see if it would help, I then went through my normal falling asleep method, and I set 2 clocks about 5 minutes apart for 4-5 hours later.. Luckily I woke up from the 2nd one, because i slept through first (Its kinda quiet).

To my suprised I remembered my first dream in months/years! In fact I remembered 3 :).

I cannot remember the last time i remembered one.. so that alone was amazing for me! I didnt remember a whole lot of the first one, the basic outline of where i was, and a few people i was with.. I may make up a DJ on the site once I have more to share or actually...compose the story :P

I then wrote all that down, and got up and had myself a banana :banana:. Shortly after (I'd say 10 minutes later) I found myself in a kinda late stage of SP, really working toward that transition, but i just cant get through. I wont get into that and its nothing new, very similar event to what i've been experiencing lately.

Suprisingly when I fell asleep, and woke up after ward.. I remembered another dream, this one was easier twice as vivid/weird.. I remembered who I was with, what I was doing, exactly where we were on separate occasions throughout the dream, clocks on the walls, what i was talking about with people, And some very primitive objects, like I remember a brown desk and a computer, etc, a whole bunch of random stuff that may seem normal for most people, but for me its amazing to even remember I was dreaming!

And it gets better :P My third dream, is almost unexplainable for me.. to have a dream that vivid and remember it is just fantastic. I remember the time of the day, the street names I was on, exactly who i was with, what they were wearing, how their hair was done, what was in my pocket/backpack.. Again I wont go into detail, but it was almost everything and anything you could think of, I felt or remembered. It was basically like watching a movie about what I was dreaming about when i woke up.. I will also note that all my wake ups tonight (3-4) we're completely natural, no alarm clocks or anything (with the exception of the WBTB clock), which again is amazing for me because I usually sleep right through the entire night.. All the dreams I remembered happened immediately after I woke up randomly throughout the night :)

Conclusion: Last night I ate a banana during wbtb and a meal with a good ammount of tryptophan for dinner.. I remember 3, progressivily more vivid and clear dreams thoughout the night, after not being able to remember any dreams, or really experience what I was doing in them for several years :).

Since you are working on your dream recall take b12 and niacin. This should help with your memory.

When you wake up every so often write your dreams down in a dream journal. Often I will do that leave and when I come home later I won't remember my dream so I go read my journal and Rediscover my dream. When useing a dream journal the more specific you are the better it helps improve your recall because you will then remember that dream better. So, use emotions, Sensations everything. With me when I am writing alot on a dream and i am thinking about it, as I write it I remember more about the dream or even another dream from that night.