been having disappointing nights. :(

Some time around mid May, I experienced a lucid dream. I didn't know how I became lucid, I just did. Since then, I have been fascinated on lucid dreaming and realizing the endless possibilities that I can control in my dream.

When summer break started, I started researching ways to induce these dreams. I had pretty bad dream recalling skills, and decided to record my dreams on a nightly basis. Everything was fine for the first two weeks, and I remembered my dreams vividly, until I got a job. My job requires me to go to bed pretty early, and to wake up at 9. Before then I usually went to bed at 3-4 in the morning, and woke up at 11-12. For the past week, i have been going to bed at 12, and waking up at 9, and when I wake up, no matter how hard i try to concentrate, I can never remember my dreams, and even if I do, they are just small fragments. For the past week and a half, my dream journal consists of me writing "I do not recall any of my dreams."

Is there anyway I can remember my dreams vividly again? Thanks.

Try doing short WBTBs in the middle of the night. Set an alarm for every two hours from bedtime to wake up. If you go to bed at 12, then at 2, 4, 6, 8, and then the one at 9. I recommend keeping a separate alarm for your final wakeup time so that you don't accidentally shut it off and miss work.

It helps not to move when you wake up, but if you wake up and forget to lie still - I've found it helps to utter out loud some random words. More often than not one of the words will trigger the memory of a dream.

I also find that if I keep my thoughts calm and away from the concerns of the day while showering / making breakfast - often a stream of thought will occur which reminds me of a dream.

Your schedule is probably readjusting, so you're dreaming at different times. Don't worry about it too much. Your recall should come back as you get used to your new sleep schedule.

It could be that you used to have a dream immediately before you woke up in the morning, making it easy to remember. Now, your dreams may be pushed to a different time in the night.

Like Shift suggested, be sure to wake up in the middle of the night, either with or without alarms. Your goal should be to wake up after every dream and write it down. Waiting until morning to remember and record your dreams is very ambitious.

Thanks for all of the responses. And neuronex, I always stay still when I recall dreams, it has always worked in the past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by neuronex

It helps not to move when you wake up,

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Only problem with that is, you've gotta move to turn the alarm off. :P

This morning I woke up at 4, 6, and 8. I still did not remember any of my dreams at all; after I set the alarm clock, I laid in bed perfectly still and nothing came to my mind. Yet another "I did not recall any dreams last night." entry in the journal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Lëzen

Only problem with that is, you've gotta move to turn the alarm off. :P

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If you're using a mobile phone as an alarm clock - most phones nowadays allow using an mp3 as the alarm tone. Just get a 3 minute long mp3 file with an alarm sound at the beginning, and the rest silence. Set your phone to snooze for 5 minutes or however long you'd like to lie remembering your dreams.

Alarm goes off, plays once and goes into snooze. Next time the alarm goes off - then get up out of bed sleepy head.

I Suppose you could record yourself saying: "Lie still...relax", to play after or before the buzz and then have the long silence.

Here's a 3 minute mp3. A few beeps to start, then the rest silence:
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b...4e75f6e8ebb871

Don't be disheartened. I went from a period of recalling 4-6 dreams a night, to recalling NOTHING for 6 months straight, because i simply got too preoccupied to focus on my dreaming. Now that I want to start focussing again, it is difficult to get my dream recall up again. But in the last two weeks i have made progress from 0 dreams a night to 2 or 3 dreams every few nights. This might not sound like much, but your mind takes time to adjust and to settle. Give it time and im certain you'll see results.

As a curiosity, do you smoke marijuana? I found that over the last year a major factor which decreased my dream recall CONSIDERABLY was smoking weed. Although, now that i am focussing on dreaming again, i have not altered my smoking habits yet and am still seeing positive recall results.

This gives me hope as well :)

Yeah I smoke about 2 times a day, usually after work. I never thought weed would actually affect my dream recalling skills though.

Well, apparently, and as far as I can tell theres been one or two small studies done on this but nothing spectularly credible, weed does affect the patterns of your REM cycles. It possibly makes them shorter and shorter each night, and subsequently when you quit smoking (supposedly even for a day or so), you experience what they call the "rebound effect", whereby you experience more vivid and lucid dreams due to longer REM cycles.

Theres a few threads on it, but not much anywhere else. Its interesting though, im currently trying to play around with it myself, to figure out how much it actually does affect my recall or even my dreaming.

*edit
By smoking, im referring to smoking the reefer :P

In the past my dream recalling skills were pretty amazing but just one day i couldn't remeber anything. After that one day my dream recalling skills went to zero. However, i have recently been getting them back. It seems to me that sometimes your mind can be preocupied subconciously. It's almost like there are two people in your head and one is focusing on some of your thoughts while you are focusing on the others. If the other part of your mind is preocupied then it could affect recall skills. You getting a job is obviously now a big part of your life so there is a definite change in what you have to think about. Once you become comfortable and your job becomes just another part of your life then your recall skills should return.

haha, well the funny thing silverwing, is that i've been smoking atleast once a day if not more for the past 2 years; and during the beginning of the summer, when i could vividly remember my dreams, i was smoking more than what i've been smoking in the past week.

and btw, i remembered a dream last night, but it was quite vague.

I dont believe that THC as a molecule has the much effect on your dreaming. Studies have shown the REM stage to shorten, but again, not many studies and not very credible.

In my own opinion, however... Weed makes you forget to remember. If that makes sense. A lot of dream recall and lucid dreaming techniques rely on your prospective memory (telling yourself you will remember to do this and this). The thing I found about weed was, it was making me go through the day without remembering pretty much anything. I rememeberd things that were important to my survival, like eating and drinking, but for the rest of it its pretty much easy come easy go.

I find this to be a problem when training your mind for dreaming, as your brain needs to be trained to focus.

I find that weed defies this purpose quite well, and its why Im now stopping :) hehe

okay, so my dream recall is pretty much close to before, and i've been trying to WILD. for the past week i've been waking up at 6 in the morning, and staying up for about 30 minutes, then going back to bed using the counting technique for the WILD. everytime i do this, i inhale while saying "i will lucid dream" in my mind, then exhale while couting. when i get to around 50-60 my breaths become longer and i feel a shock of some sort in my body, i assume this is SP, but on the first few nights, i realized i could still move even after this happens.

well anyways, by the time i get to around 100 or 120 my breaths become even longer, and i am more relaxed; and this is the time when i assume i'm going to begin to see the hallucinations, but it never happens, i just fall asleep. what am i doing wrong?

bump

What is your state of mind while you count? You should be drifting off to sleep a little bit, with the counting keeping you from losing consciousness. It is difficult to describe, but you need to be totally relaxed, to the point where you are almost asleep. If you are seeing little dreamlets and finding your mind slipping off into unbidden tangents, you are in the right place.

Personally, counting gets me nowhere. I need something to bring my attention away from my body, and into a dream. I like a visualization that engages my sense of movement or touch. Imagine the feeling of doing something very familiar. Keep imagining/ remembering it until it feels real. That should help you dissociate from your body a little and enter some hypnagogia or a dream.

when i count i'm pretty tired. i only lay in bed when i'm tired because i find the more time i spend in bed awake the more time it'll take me to go to bed. everytime i count i drift off a bit.

i almost experienced a DILD the other night, where i was in this store and picked up an item that i new wasn't real. it was like a can of some sort with my signature on it. once i looked at it, i told myself "this can't be possible, am i dreaming?" once i noticed that i was dremaing i immediately woke up. how can i maintain lucidity when i realize i'm in a dream world?

If churning thoughts generated by your new job are inhibiting your dream recall, you might find that doing a 15-20 minute mind-clearing meditation might help.

I find that meditating helps quiet my mind and improve my recall even if I have smoked that night. It makes my body more relaxed, too, which makes it easier to fall asleep right away -- a good thing because I find the nights where I toss and turn are the ones where I don't have any dreams worth remembering.

Good luck -- I hope you kick it!

lucid dream girl has a great suggestion. i tried meditation once and it worked great. i always have nearly perfect dream recall so i cant even begin to imagine what its like to not remember your dreams.

I work an early shift too. What really helps my recall is taking naps when I get home from work. That way when I go back to sleep later it seems like a lot more REM. Because I can get a lot of dreams in a short period of time. It's kind of like doing a long WBTB I guess.

lol, last night i also realized i was in the dream world, and i told myself "woah, this can't be possible i know i am dreaming." then i closed my eyes and told myself i'd alter the whole dream, but nothing happened. after a while i felt a "sharp" feeling move throughout my body and it just felt like i was shaking. i woke up right away and never maintained lucidty again.

oh well, there's always a next time....

go to bed earlier.