The BIG Remembering Dreams Topic - Part II

Some things you can do:

=> When you wake up, don’t move a muscle. If you think you’ll forget this, repeat the intention of remembering it during the evening. So when you lie there upon awakening, close your eyes and think back at the previous dreams. Don’t push it but let it come to you. If you have ANY impression, visuals, dream fragments or noises, use them to gather more information about it. The more pieces of the previous dream you find back in your memory, the better you will be able to fill the gaps between them. THis way you can reconstruct the dream.
If you really can’t remember anything, even if you lay still for 10 minutes, visualize the things you might have dreamed about. Visualize your major dream places or dream persons. If you have actually dreamed of them, visualizing them before your mind eye can trigger the flow of memories which will lead you to the reconstruction of the dream. This way you can get access to the dream memories indirectly.

=> When you go to bed, repeat to yourself that you WILL remember your dreams upon awakening. Don’t just say it constantly, but repeat it with motivation and strength. This way the message gets deeper into your subconsciousness. It may not work the first time you try it, because it takes time before the message has penetrated the subconsciousness sufficiently enough to have some real effects. So keep practicing if it doesn’t work at first!!

=> Set your alarm to wake you up after 4.5, 6, 7.5 or 9hrs, because then you’re probably in the middle of a REM cycle. When you wake up in the middle of a dream you have ofcourse the best chance of remembering something.

=> Ofcourse it’s best to keep a dream diary. Write down everything you can remember, even if it’s only a slight impression of a dream fragment. During the day, reread your dreams. This way you can get familiar with the nature of your own dreams and its dreamsigns. If you know your dreams, it’s easier to remember them in the morning by visualizing possible dream situations before your mind eye.

I hope this helps a bit :smile: Remember, if it doesn’t work at first, don’t panic or anything. Have patience and keep practicing, no matter how long it takes. Only if you keep practicing you’ll notice improvements in time.

Good luck! :smile:

Main diff between what mystic said and what is written in the wikibook:

mystic’s #2 is often called MILD. A similar thing is autosuggestion. Nobody here cares when you mix them up, but if you have failures with one, the other may be worth a try.

#3: Kind of obvious, but set your alarm to those times after you fall asleep. You can even do MILD when going back to sleep.

#4: Also obvious, but you might want to use a tape, special ld4all dream journal, personal organiser, etc. Whatever. You might also want to rewrite your dreams later. Then you won’t worry about getting stuff down neat or in order. You can also miss out boring details like “it was night-time” and add them on the rewrite. :smile:

Thx for clarifying my post r3m0t :wink:

My #2 was actually autosuggestion. MILD can be practiced if you wake up in the morning after say 6hrs of sleep, not during the evening. MILD is also about inducing LDs, and not really about getting a better dream recall.

As I said: Nobody cares if people mix them up. At least, I don’t. :smile:

I usually am able to recall a dream everynight. Last night I had 3 dreams but was only able to recall one of them, the first one. I wonder why I couldn’t recall the others since they happened later than the first.

zak, did you wake up from the 1st dream? and maybe the last 2 were after you went back to sleep and slept for a time after the dreams??

Usually if you wake up during a dream they are more easy to recall.

I’ve read things (like at lucidity.com) that say the best way to remember dreams, when you awaken, “DO NOT MOVE” to help you recall them. How the heck am I not supposed to move when I have to get up to turn off my alarm clock? :confused: Or does that instruction only apply when I wake up on my own?

So what DO I do when I have to get up to my alarm? For instance, I had a really vivid ND this morning before wakey-wakey time but I couldn’t recall it after I turned off my clock. But when I went to the kitchen to turn on the coffeepot, suddenly that triggered a memory from my dream, possibly because my dream was that I was late for work and/or playing hookey from work and I recalled being naturally very concerned about it in my dream since I wasn’t lucid. I noted in my DJ that when I learn to have LDs I won’t have to “waste time” on such foolish dreams as worrying about being late for work as it doesn’t even matter in dream land! :content:

Move as little as possible… just move your arm to turn off the alarm … then lie still and try and recapture the dream. :smile:

LOL !
When your alarm wakes you up, notice your sleep position and after stopping your alarm, lie in the same position again.

I have found that if I get up and do something (like going to the bathroom) and then go back to the bed I can sometimes remember more of my dreams before I fall asleep :cool_laugh: So I don’t think that you have to not move at all. And moving just a little shouldn’t be that big a deal at all according to me :tongue:

…i can have trouble waking up sometimes so i put my clock so i physically have to get out of bed to turn it off… :wink: that’s why i was worried about the “DO NOT MOVE” advice from the LI :content:

it’s quite frustrating to me that i’ve always considered myself a vivid dreamer with good recall, but since i’ve started keeping my DJ i’ve only recalled two dreams in four nights, only one of which was pretty vivid…but my EWLD and Lucid Dreams in 30 Days books came today so they should help…i think i need to do more RCs too, definitely.

thanks for your advice.

I wouldnt worry too much yet after 4 nights, if you would spend a month in the same condition or so then it would be time to worry
Good luck with your DJ :content:

Thanks for the advice, everyone here is very nice and helpful. I know I’m just excited to do it but I know that wanting it too much can also hinder instead of helping me. :eh:

I’m unlucky yet lucky enough to have today off from work so I am definitely going to be napping and reading my LD books that just came in the mail. I’m so busy during the week that it’s hard to sleep properly and try to have LD 's or even ND 's too. I’ll definitely post in the “first LD” topic after I have my first one. :content:

BTW, I know this is off-topic, but if there’s anyone else in this forum who lives in the Philly listening area and listens to Preston and Steve in the mornings, let me just say “Boooooooh!” :tongue: Camp Out for Hunger and Lost were great last night!

I think i’m trying too hard. So far, I have remembered and written down 3 dreams in 9 days, and two of the three were on the first two days. The strange thing about this is that the dreams I remembered were extremely vivid. I was able to recall almost a page and a half of details on my latest dream. Anyway, what can I do to improve my dream recall? It’s amazingly cool to be able to write a completely made-up story out of nowhere! I really want to develop this skill! I’ve been using the MILD adapted technique for developing DR, the one on ld4all where you tell yourself that you will remember your dream.

PS- If this matters, I keep highly irregular (if predictable) hours. During the week (sun-thurs, and sorry I don’t know what it is in Tzolkien,) I sleep from about 10:30 to 6:10. On friday, I go to bed at 11 or so and wake up around 8:30. On saturday, I go to bed from 12:30-2:00 and generally wake up around 10. Does this matter? Sorry for such a long post.

Does remembering a snippet of a dream count as dream recall or does it have to be more, like a whole scene?

I know that I dreamed a lot last night but I didn’t recall anything because too many other thoughts got in the way each time I awoke, but something triggered one little dream memory about a half-hour after I woke so I wrote it in my DJ, but does this count toward LaBerge’s recommendation of remembering at least one dream per night before attempting to have LD 's? :help:

The dream snippet was actually funny to me, I was reaching for the toilet paper in the bathroom to blow my nose and I had a vision of my boyfriend restocking the toilet paper in the cabinet we keep it in in the bathroom but I said wait a minute, he never does that, that’s something only I do, and I checked the cabinet to be sure and sure enough it wasn’t filled up with toilet paper so I knew it was a dream memory and not something that really happened and I told him about it and he laughed and said yeah you know that’s not something I would do so you were definitely dreaming! :lol:

It’s dreamsigns like that that should eventually tell me that I’m dreaming!

Dream recall is recalling dreams is remembering dreams.

Remembering part of a dream counts as a little dream recall.

Yes, stress can affect my dream recall too.

It’s only a guideline! I would say, though, that if you’re getting dream recall of one dream a night most nights, you’re ready.

Starting early won’t hurt, but you are unlikely to get results. It might be good to start early to get in the habit of doing RCs. :smile:

Yes, and good luck! :smile:

how do you count your dreams? i know it’s kinda weird but it always confuzzles me…

If you don’t remember your dream definetly don’t tell yourself it was unimportant, or you’ll never remember it.

In my case, different dreams have different emotional impact, so it’s often not hard to distinguish them. So although different scenes can occur in one dream, the whole dream nevertheless breathes the same atmosphere. It was easier to recognize the more I practiced.

I agree. This can be a handy trick to find cues more easily which you can then use to rebuild dream fragments, or even the whole dream. You can combine this together with paying closer attention to your daily life (environment, people, situations, objects), and with a bit of luck you might encounter an object, person,… you also encountered in your dream. If you’re aware of this, it can bring back the dream memories, often in big detail. I experience this quite often, yesterday for instance :smile:

I am suspecting that my allergy remedy is interfereing with my dream recall.

I’ve posted the full details here —> [url]Do allergy meds interfere with dream recall ?]
in the “the Stuff Dreams are made of…” forum.

This post here is just in case some people in this forum might be interested in that thread, or can throw some light on that issue.