Thread: Dream Recall

Dream recall improves a lot if you learn your sleep pattern. For example, having a regular sleeping schedule would help you figure out your REM times. This means you can just put an alarm at the right time and you should have no troubles recalling your previous dream.

About simpler ways, motivation and determination to recall dreams helps. Try to go to bed 10minutes earlier, and then strengthen your will in recalling your dreams when you wake up. Giving yourself some fixed amount of time (like 15minutes) after you wake up (especially useful if you got school and what not) also helps, because you wake up less stressed due having that time just to focus on the task.

I would also suggest trying a bit harder in the sense that sometimes I wake up without any dream in my head. But I lay down again and close my eyes. After some minutes of waiting, memories flood my mind, and I bring out the last 2-3 dreams. If I want to increase recall, I just put an alarm to a cycle earlier.
For last, take note of your dream signs. The person that always shows up, the emotions (very important this one), the scenarios. This is because any of these details when reviewed, can lead to a trigger in recall which literally means you can pull a dream just by going though them. Good luck!

Keeping a regular dream journal is essential in improving recall. Which I know is difficult if you fall back asleep before you are able to write anything down.

You know, I read somewhere that you forget like 75% of what you dreamt the moment you wake up, then you forget 90% of the remaining 25% as the day goes on. So it is vital to jot down as much as possible, as soon as possible. My recall always improves vastly when I keep a regular journal. You can keep yours by your bed so you can write things down immediately upon waking up.

Good luck! Though I must say, one or two dreams a night is really good.

None of us are in our right minds when we first wake up in the morning. Prepare ahead of time to make things easier. When you go to bed at night, open your dream journal to a blank page, record the date, and write a sentence stating your intention.

"January 24th, 2012, I will wake at 4:30am and record my dreams."

Also, don't count on remembering all your dreams in the morning. If you have a dream at 2:30am, record it at 2:30am. Recording after every dream cycle, like this, will make a huge difference.

@zoth00 About that, i go to sleep usually around 1:30 AM to 2:10 AM which is awful now that i think about it. Then i have my alarm set for 8:00 AM and wake up at 10:00 AM. At 8:00 AM my original plan is to spend around 10 minutes detailing my dreams and writing them down in my journal and then try to WILD. About motivation, i convince myself before going to bed i will vividly remember my dreams when i wake up so i think i have that covered. I'm having troubles finding dream signs though. Maybe the information i write down concerning my dreams in my dream journal isn't good. What do you usually write down? I.E i write down what my behaviour was like, and what was really off in my dream and what should've triggered the dream if i had noticed it. Thanks for your advice though! i usually give up when i don't remember anything after like 30 seconds but i'll try for longer then and check for results

@OpheliaBlue I'm keeping a journal close to my bed so i can write down my dreams immediately (if i don't fall asleep while trying to recall them of course :p). I then type what i wrote in the journal into a Word document on my desktop. Do most people usually keep their dreams on paper outside their computer? i've heard from a few friends they do and i'm wondering what would make more sense. And thanks for the convidence booster hearing 1 or 2 dreams per night is really good does make me more confident in becoming a lucid dreamer. I'm very motivated to try and improve my dream recall to the max though while working on All Day Awareness.

@Robot_Butler Yeah i have a bit of an issue with that. First off i have no idea when my dream cycles are, and second i think my parents would go absolutely mad because of my alarms. I keep my door open because my cat goes mad if he can't enter my room and keep watch from behind my window (it's like his personal watchtower). Maybe i'm just too soft really :p

Originally Posted by Aziq

Do most people usually keep their dreams on paper outside their computer? i've heard from a few friends they do and i'm wondering what would make more sense. And thanks for the convidence booster hearing 1 or 2 dreams per night is really good does make me more confident in becoming a lucid dreamer. I'm very motivated to try and improve my dream recall to the max though while working on All Day Awareness.

You know that's a good question, I'm not sure what most do. I know I used to keep a written one back when my recall was kinda shady at best. Then I would transfer the dream to my online journal here at DV. Now I just go straight to DV, in part out of laziness, but in part because I don't feel I need the written one as much as I used to. I'm sure it's different for everybody.

Glad you're getting more motivated about lucid dreaming! This place does it to you

Originally Posted by OpheliaBlue

I know I used to keep a written one back when my recall was kinda shady at best. Then I would transfer the dream to my online journal here at DV. Now I just go straight to DV, in part out of laziness, but in part because I don't feel I need the written one as much as I used to.

That's a fine idea but I don't think it'd work for me because I tend to find it very hard to get up in the first place . That's why i write them down first so that I can transfer them into a very organized dream journal on my computer when I'm not affected by my massive laziness. Everyone has his best strategies and ways after all .

That's actually quite an interesting question which I made myself several times. What is more important, conversing the dream memory, or the way you do it has any relevance? Do you focus more on recall when you write your dreams in paper?

I might be wrong, but the conclusion I've arrived at is that it doesn't matter. It's not that you're writing something to recall later, it's the recall itself (that is mostly already made) that is going into text. How you choose to create that text doesn't matter. At first I started to get annoyed because it's really painful having to write long dreams in paper, and then in computer. Now I just put the computer near the bed, wake up, think about them, and then quickly open the pc and start typing. Not to mention most people type way faster than they write. I find no evidences that lead me to believe that writing paper is better, since the process of creating words and sentences is exactly the same. All that changes is the way you print them in the paper. On topic:

Dream signs may be things that you hardly notice at first. They can be small things as you always carrying a watch, or things you'd never think about, like in the crowd of dream characters you usually see there's always someone who is a computer expert. Going to your dream journal, you can take some time to notice patterns, but they are there. Things like emotions (how you felt at the time) are particular useful because memories are really dependent on them - do you recall more easily an intense nightmare or a dream about chips ?

I have cats and unfortunately I have to close my door, but they, I think your cats don't like to sleep in your face, so you should be fine in there Notice that alarms don't necessarily need to be loud, but they work for a simple reason: The alarm is there as a clock. If you put an alarm every single day for 6 am, chances are that you will start waking up in your own. Which means recall! Or even...a DEILD
Also, that time before going to bed is where you should be getting your mind empty. If you go to bed with the thought "hm, tomorrow I think I'll go to the shop and buy that sciences magazine" the first thing in the morning you will do will much likely be "time to wake up! Hey, I really have to buy that magazine today...*remember your meant to be recalling dreams* dam it slipped away!" MILD is effective for this same reason: what you queue in brain as a to-do task, is what the brain will make effort of remembering yourself about!

Originally Posted by zoth00

On topic:

Dream signs may be things that you hardly notice at first. They can be small things as you always carrying a watch, or things you'd never think about, like in the crowd of dream characters you usually see there's always someone who is a computer expert. Going to your dream journal, you can take some time to notice patterns, but they are there. Things like emotions (how you felt at the time) are particular useful because memories are really dependent on them - do you recall more easily an intense nightmare or a dream about chips ?

Can you list a few things you find recurring in your dreams? I've started noting down my emotions in the dreams, along with my behaviour in the dream but i can't think of other things that may keep occuring in my dreams.

Also i've had a period of about a month in which i kept trying DEILD's but i couldn't get rid of the habit of moving after waking up. Either that held me back, or i fell asleep even when i did succeed in staying still. I'm willing to continue DEILD's but i don't know what to do about those problems really

Hm, some things that show up in almost all the dreams I recall:

Scenario: work, university, In-out transitions (I'm almost always on the move, even during a single dream)
Elements: my sister, cats (especially my but almost every night I recall seeing one), university ex-colleagues. In many dreams I take the bus, which is a clear reference to my daily routine.
Ego: I'm always with people near me, I rarely spend time alone in my dreams. My most frequent dream characters that accompany me are my sister and a friend of my.
Oddities: the weirdest things about my dreams are not about elements, scenarios or people. Context is the most weirdest thing, like meeting X person at X place. Your dreams may be more "fantasy" like or like my, more "realistic". The deal is there is always something wrong.
Context: there are 2 main dream signs here: I'm either running/avoiding someone or trying to find someone/something. Very rarely I'm just hanging out/doing something.
Emotions: my most frequent emotions are being nervous due interacting with some one, and joy when I'm with certain people. I don't usually experience fear, anger, excitement in my recalls.

As you can see there's loads of things to notice. The most important thing is knowing how to use your dream signs. Take an example in my: barely I'm in a strange place, which means I have rare chances of becoming lucid due saying "why I'm in planet mars?" or "why I'm at the circus?". What works in this particular kind of dream signs is "why am I at work? Is it time to be at work?". Just like people. In my dreams I barely am with some one who is strange to me. From all this, what works best for me is context. When I'm engaged to something during the day, I always make a quick check if the scene is coherent: if I'm talking to a colleague I see if I should be working; when I find myself in the bus I locate myself in the previous and in the prior 15minutes. For some other people it's more a question of "why I'm I taking an airplane?" or "why I always leave a building through the window?".

Dream signs are important. They are your first lucid-aid, because they are reliable due their frequent occurrence. By no means they are the only source of lucidity, but it's helpful to be aware of them since they act as a bridge for recall and even "warm-up" your brain to doubt even the most "common" situations.

I've been working on figuring out what some of my dream signs are lately too. Here's a couple things I've been noticing:

1. There's often a cat. Or multiple cats. I have one cat in real life and sometimes she's in the dream, but I see a lot of different and random cats in my dreams.

2. Stretch-armstrong arms. I often have an unnatural reach with my arms. I've reached across rooms, backyards, and a castle all in the past few days to pick something up or touch something like that's just a normal thing to do.

3. Shopping. I'm shopping almost every night in my dreams. I almost never shop in real life. I shop, at most, once a week for groceries. In dreams, it's usually an odd fair, mall, or underground black market that I'm shopping in.

4. Tornadoes. I often see one or multiple tornadoes. Or there's a tornado warning on TV. Or it's storming and I'm scared there will be a tornado.

5. Old acquaintances from high school I never even talk to are often dream characters.

I've heard drinking pomegrante juice in the morning helps

If a loud alarm would wake your family, try a vibrating alarm on a cell phone. You can put it in your sock or under your pillow.