Recall problems

Hello everybody!

I found out about LD yesterday and also found you. Of course the first thing I did was starting Reality checks, put an empty notebook beside my bed and got some Theta binaural beats from youtube. Also read many different sites about LD techniques.

So first I tought I would take a few months to get used to RC and the Dream Journal, but today I realised I could not remember a single dream, and not only this night, but I haven't remembered any within the last few months. It's not that I doubt to dream, but I have NO IDEA where to start trying to remember them. I even put my alarm clock to 2 hours before normal time so I might catch a REM phase, and after that didnt work out I set it again to 30 mins before normal time. No luck...

Are there any tips for real newbies to help remembering, apart from setting the alarm clock to unusual times (I will try 2 hours after falling asleep tonight)?

Thanks for being here and helping me. I want to LD so much :D Sounds awesome.

- opatut

PS. Found you after googling "Lucid Dream" after being redirected there from the Inception Wikipedia page :D Awesome movie, saw it twice last week :P

Maybe try a mantra? Also check the tutorials for help.

But don't get discouraged man, it'll come to you. Good luck!

Hi and welcome! Setting your alarm two hours after going to sleep is pretty random. I sometimes wake up after two hours and remember a dream, but usually I don't. This is because the REM period is so short during the first hours of sleep, that you barely dream anything. I would suggest you try setting your alarm after atleast 5 hours of sleep and see what happens then. 6 hours is a great mark, as most of our sleeping periods last between 90-100 minutes each, after 6 hours you're most likely in the middle of a REM period.

If you lie completely still with your eyes closed during the morning, you should start seeing images. Feelings, small fragments and stuff like that are all clues to what you have dreamt. If the dream doesn't come to you, then just try to "probe" around and perhaps put those words and fragments into scenarios. This might trigger an entire dream.

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. Good luck!

Thank you both! Of course I have already checked the tutorials (most of them, I will not start off with the wish to lucid-dream about sex or so :D). I just wondered that if I would "probe around" as you said, Matte, I would think of way different things what I have dreamt about... I also do not see any images or so (do you really mean "see" or just "think of") in the morning. I tried to "brain storm" what my dreams were about but I had no luck. Of course I will try again, don't get me wrong, I will be patient and if it takes months I will continue trying :

I was just wondering if it is normal not to remember any dreams at all when you first start trying it :D What was if like for you, when you heard about lucid dreaming? Could you recall any dreams of the past months, or not even the weirdest stuff (that I don't doubt we all dream).

I am proud of myself having checked the reality every 10 minutes today, even in school :D I am already kinda used to it. It is kinda weird imagining every few minutes what you would do if you realised you were only dreaming :D But I am very unsure about one thing: if I become lucid in a dream, will I wake up at the end or will I probably just continue to sleep and forget that I had an LD until I wake up? Or will I be conscious enough so that when I become lucid I remember I planned to wake up afterwards so I won't forget everything? Do you usually wake up or do you just remember every detail of your dream in the morning as if it really happend?

Thanks for your help, it means alot to me.

PS: My brother is also fascinated. I will cooperate with him some night so one of us checks every 10 minutes or so if the other one is REM dreaming and if so wakes him up to practice dream recall :D Do you think this is a good idea? Or might it destroy something (except the good sleep)?

You don't have to do RC every 10 minutes, but atleast twice an hour should be fine :) Also okay. What I meant by probe around is to take the bits of memory you might have of a dream and put it in different scenarios. For example: I wake up and the word banana is in my head. I don't know why, but I figure it's got to do with what I just dreamt. First I think of bananas, did I eat bananas? Did I mix them? Did I eat any other fruit? Monkeys? Oh yeah! I then remember there were monkeys, throwing bananas all around. Something like that.

Some people don't dream much at all, and some dream alot. It's possible to train your recall though, no matter how little you dream. Aslong as you have the intentions and just try hard, your recall will improve. I myself already had dreams almost every night.

When you become lucid the first time, you will most likely wake up prematurely. The excitement you feel will make you wake up, and after that just get up and write it down asap! I use to lie still for a while to make sure I have the entire dream recalled before I move though, but make sure you don't fall back asleep.

If it's early in the night, you might have a hard time lying still without falling asleep, so I then suggest as soon as you start to wake up, intend to get up and write it down. Also doing that cooperation with your brother sounds a bit overkill. Learning how to Lucid Dream is just like any sports. If you overdo it in the beginning, it's going to put you off. If you wake up and lose alot of sleep, you will associate this with being tired and feeling like shit, so I suggest you don't do that :P

No problem! If you have more questions, ask away :)

Thanks for being realistig :D I will try again tonight (yeah no school tomorrow) and see if I can recall. So the type of mantra is always what I want to achieve that night, for me it should be "I will remember my dream" now? Did I get that right?

A mantra should be as short as possible, and when you do it, try to visualize doing what your saying. "I'm dreaming" you should visualize becoming lucid in a dream. But for recall, yeah people have said using that particular mantra works, I haven't tried it myself, but I'm sure it will work :) Do the mantra and lie still when you wake up, and then do the probing. You should remember something.

If you still can't recall anything, you could do a REM rebound. Sleep less than 5 hours one day, and the next sleep as much as you can. Everytime you wake up you try to remember something you dreamt. That will definitely give you some dreams.

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Originally Posted by Matte87

Everytime you wake up

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Too sad I usually only wake up in the morning, not during the night (healthy youth's sleep :D). As for the exact phrasing of the mantra I will translate it to German (native language) and see what fits best, so it will be something like "Ich werde mich erinnern" (in German is sometimes kinda tricky to keep sentences short). Well maybe I keep it English, of course I will have to try out :D Enlish just feels better and is also pretty natural for me (used to dream/think in English while I was in Ireland as an exchange student).

I actually do my mantras in English, but aslong as you know the meaning you're fine. Also it doesn't have to be grammaticly correct. A mantra can be: "I lucid dream".

Lol :D It worked :D I woke up at 6 am. by my alarm clock and could recall 2 dreams, wrote my DJ entry, then went back to bed, woke up at 10 am. and knew I had been dreaming, but sadly the "probing" didnt work that time :D At least I have something to start with. Thank you!

Great! :) Keep it up and you will start having several dreams each week.