Methods of Remembering Dreams

Interesting method Atheist. I never thought of purposefully waking up multiple times in a night. Sometimes i find it hard to fall asleep again no matter how early it is. Do you ever come across this? what should i do to battle it?

I didn’t realize it until recently, but a lot of people seem to be that way. I just assumed everyone had the ability to drift back to sleep mere seconds after waking up any number of times during the night. Anyway, I guess you can try not moving at all when you wake up. Or as little as possible, anyway (you might have to turn off an alarm, or something). If your body is still entirely relaxed, it might be easier to fall asleep again.

It could just be that I’ve gotten used to doing it.

I pick up my notepad and pen and write the dream down, then put it back, and go back to sleep.

I don’t use an external means to wake me up. But I wake up aa couple of times in the night naturally, everytime I wake up I spend time trying to think back and recall any dreams. If I remember any, I go to the bathroom with my small journal and pen and scribble them down. Then go back to bed and wait to fall asleep again…this trip to the bathroom works like a mini WBTB

I also tend to wake up naturally during the course of the night. The first time is usually 3:00-3:30 and the second time is around 5:30-6:00. Who knows why… I tend to really have a lot of trouble falling back to sleep. Sometimes I wake up around 4 or 5 and just never have the ability to catch any more Z’s.

So, recording my dreams is a very delicate operation during the two “windows” of oppurtunity I have during the night. I have my DJ and a pen hanging on a stick-on hook on the wall next to my bed. During those times I wake up, I just jot down a few key words from my dreams, like “driving to pick up my dad”, or “big party at my brothers place”. It’s like what Atheist described. When I look at these phrases in the morning, it sparks my memory and I can then hopefully remember the bulk of the dream.

I really recommend that method to anyone who has a problem with getting back to sleep… or is just too tired to write for long.

Often the memories of the dreams will be in fragments, and it takes a few minutes of recollection to make them all “snap” together. Some of your dreams may strangely come to you an hour or two after you wake up, in a sudden burst. This is often the case with me. Its important not to rush or push your mind too much in the morning to recall your dreams… just let them flow.

Hopefully I’m not just repeating what everyone else said, lol… time to go to bed… :sleep:

Thanks for all the great tips I’ve tried athiest’s method and I ended up not waking up to my alarm at 2:30 and I actually slept in 'till 7:30. So I’m not sure I’ll try that again, I mean I will, just on a night that I don’t need to be up in the morning.

I’ll try some of your other methods and get back to you on how they went.

-Nova-

I must confess, I am one of those lazy people that doesn’t write down anything at night or in the morning. I usually don’t remember a non-LD unless it’s really disturbing or something. After I wake up from an LD or LD’s, I lay in my bed and go over the details in my mind. Usually I start from the most recent LD and work my way back, then forward again. After I finally get up (which is often after the LD period of my sleep), I eventually get around to recording the LD’s on my computer.

hello everyone, i am new here. i have also been having some trouble with dream recall. it used to be real good. i was recording 2 to3 dreams a nite and have recorded a max of 6 in one nite but latley it has not been real good. i found a little tip while searching the net that has really seemed to help me out. drink 2 or 3 glasses of water before bed. that way u will wake up naturally and usually will rember a dream. i then record the dream and drink another glass of water and go back to bed and repeat the process. it can cause u to get up several times in the night but it sure seems to help in remebering multiple dreams. but again if u have trouble going back to sleep this may not be good for you…

hmm what a funny elaboration on the water before bed tech… thanks,

Dr.Phil.

Ok heres my big problem maybe you guys can help. When I wake up in the morning for school I am awoken by an alarm clock. For some strange reason I am almost completely unable to remember my dreams because of this. On weekends and whenever I wake up before th alaram I can, but why can I remember them after the alarm? Any tips?

Oh and by the way I’ve never had a problem with dream recall cause during the summer I started lucid dreaming and did very well and even had some LD’s! yea! But now because of school I have been without one for a while, and I think this is partially because of my lack of dream recall.

What’s happening is that your alarm clock probably cuts down your sleep by a few hours. The REM (vivid dreaming) periods are every 90 minutes progressing from 10 to 45 minutes long. You’re missing out the longest dreams.

I have that as well! I wish I could find a solution to this. As soon as my alarm clock goes off it’s like my dream memory is instantly erased. Maybe I should train my mind to remember instead of forget when I hear the sound of the alarm clock?

The other night something annoying happened… I woke up from a great dream and grabbed my notebook next to my bed, thinking ‘I want to write this down and remember’ and when I put the pen to the paper I found I suddenly couldn’t remember a thing. :sad:

I’m actually just very lazy… so I often don’t write dreams down even if I remember (I know! shame *shame) I’m thinking about designing a form that’s easy to fill out… because often I also can’t make sense of my handwriting during the night and my notes are a mess. T_T Also, it’s a strange gamble but maybe if I design the form in a certain way that’s unique it will also help trigger my dream memory (like that tip I read somewhere about writing in your DJ with a weird pen colour.)

Then there’s this deja-vu thing. On certain days I just randomly suddenly remember a whole dream and it’s weird, like I’m back in the middle of that dream. It’s strange proof of how the memory of the dream is probably there, but you just can’t access it. This makes me wonder if there’s some sort of meditation or technique to access that memory?

Thanks. Any other tips?

When I do make the effort I use a note pad and pen. I can’t always remember events from my dream in the right order and it can seem like 10 unrelated short dreams in one. I write as much as possible about the colours, sounds, setting, characters, thoughts etc. It’s hard to stay awake if I’m already tired from late nights (which is most of the time unfortunately) and my handwriting is all over the place :tongue:

Thanks for the tips guys. If you have anything else thats fine too!

About that whole “my alarm clock makes me forget my dreams” topic:

When you are woken up by external means (alarmclock, someone wakes you up etc.) it is very possible that you wake from NREM sleep. When you wake up naturally, you wake up at the end of a REM period.

This is very important because when you wake up from NREM, you will probably have forgotten what you dreamt about in the earlier REM periods. So it would be much better for recall if you could wake up naturally.

The thing is, you do wake up after each REM period, but you are awake for a very short period and you usually don’t think rationally enough to even realise that you are awake. I think you can train yourself to wake up after each REM period simply by remembering that the next time you find yourself laying in bed with your mind drifting , you should awake fully. I have succeeded some with this, and for me it’s the key to remembering dreams.

Hey thanks a million odd2k. I finally know now why it happens. I’ll be sure to try that.

Argh! I’ve been trying to make sure I wake up after I dream so I can jot it down, but I havent had much success!

I was sort of inspired by my last post, so I decided to try this “wake up” technique once more. Tonight was the first night I’ve tried it in a long time.

Anyway, it did work, kind of. I was laying in my bed in a very unaware state, somewhere between waking and dreaming. And I suddenly remembered, I was supposed to wake up tonight. I think I slept about six hours before awakening, so I didn’t really succeed on the earlier REM periods.

I’m not sure, but I think that if you know you have to get up very early this will put some pressure on you, and waking up will become a lot harder. I have no facts to back this up, it’s just a feeling I have.