Hello. ?

Hello,
I have been interested in lucid dreaming on and off for the past year. The very first night I tried I was able to successfully realize I was dreaming. ( I did use a mantra.) That was over the Summer and I am just now getting back into it and Have a few questions.

I am starting my dream journal and am wondering how long on average it take to have a good enough dream recall to remember at least one dream a night?

I am now really devoted and ready to develop my ability to lucid dream and plan on trying for Dilds and Milds so I know I'm am going to be using Reality checks but does anyone have any suggestions on how to get myself to remember to do reality checks throughout the day. Thankyou.

Welcome to dreamviews. I've only been here myself for about a month but its a pretty vibrant community.

If you want to improve your dream recall, the number one most important thing is being able to wake up between dreams as your dream memory often gets refreshed after every dream. Put a dream journal and pen next to your bed's sidetable with a lamp. Either drink a lot of water before sleeping or set an alarm to go off after 4-6 hours of sleep. After waking up recall and then write your dreams. Also I have to stress that you should make your enteries as detailed as possible or if your quite tired, write the key details down. Make sure you always mark your dream enteries with the time as this will help you to later analyse your sleep cycles. Also do yourself a favour and do the simple technique outlined here: http://www.dreamviews.com/f15/if-you...ams-try-93005/

As for the reality check business, the best tip I can give is perform one whenever an unusual event occurs. It doesn't have to be incredibly zany, just mildly eventful is fine. Also always perform a reality check when waking up and when going to sleep as this will safegaurd you against false awakenings. I would advise you to not rely on reality checks too much as >90% of lucids are not triggered by them but are merely verified. The most important factor in lucidity is awareness. Theres plenty of good guides on how to foster awareness. A pretty good one for beginners especially is this: Puffin's DILD Guide - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views Once you've become fairly adept at that, you can try ADA. Although I haven't reached any level of profeciency on either of them, I'm planning on combining the two, using ADA like a constant increased awareness filter on my day puncuated by brief SAT periods of hyper focus.
Don't be deluded by the DILD tag present. Awareness is important for all lucid dreams and even in dream recall and normal dream vividity.

Probably one of the better induction techniques both in ease and consistency is SSILD which manages to combine DILD and WILD while being literally a lazy technique.