I have been practicing the LD techniques for about a week now and I understand the first step in achieving LDs is to remember your dreams. I have a dream journal but despite this fact, I still have trouble remembering dreams. I lay awake for a bit after waking up and have my book ready but nothing seems to come. I try to mentalize before I go to bed but still nothing helps. Is there any additional advice you could give me?
when you wake up, keep your eyes closed and dont move a bit and then start to think what were you dreaming about, and slowly the fragments should start coming back to you…
Thanks for the tip. I definitley will try. You recommend anything like Calea or Salvia?
I agree exactly. It also helps (in my opinion) if you read over your dream journal a lot. I have no idea why, but it does, at least for me.
No. I don’t recommend them. 
I don’t like medicinal shortcuts, which could damage your health, and it’s really so easy to remember your dreams. The more you practice, the more is easy. Rubberduck gave you very good advices. I will add some more.
- do in such a way that the first thought you’ll have when you wake up is remembering your dream. If you think about anything else, the dream will fade. In order to do that, autosuggestion is perfect. For instance, repeat 20 times before getting to sleep: “tomorrow morning, I’ll remember my dreams”.
- if you don’t remember anything, try and think at random words “a dog… a plane… an ice cream… etc.” until one of them brings you back the feeling it could be related with a dream. Then focus on this feeling until you remember a fragment.
- when you have a fragment, rebuild the dream in the reverse order, wondering what happend before.
- if you just remember fragments of your dream, write them down. Sometimes, when you write your dream, some other fragments come back in your mind.
- if nothing come in your mind after two minutes, it doesn’t worth to continue!
- but even if you don’t remember anything, write something in your DJ. It could be just the feeling you had when you woke up. And don’t be upset. Be sure it will be better next morning.
I’d agree with what Basilus said there. When you wake up you need to lie there quietly for a while and run through those fragments of dreams and you will find you can reconstruct whole dreams by working backwards (or forwards). I think that changing your position in bed (left side/right side/back) can also help as you are more likely to remember a certain dream if you put yourself in the position you were in while experiencing it.
Another good tip is to wake an hour or two before your usuall waking time. You are very likely to be in the middle of a dream here and if you can rouse yourself enough to just jot down some key points about your dream before you go back to sleep this will really help to jog your memory and you may remember dreams you would otherwise have forgotten by the morning.
Here’s my two favourite ways:
- When going to sleep, repeat the mantra, ‘I will remember my dreams’ in your head until you fall asleep/get bored.
1b) Alternatively, try the mantra, ‘I will wake up after each dream.’
- When you wake up in the morning, don’t move (as has been said). Try and ‘backtrack’ your last thoughts and/or emotions.
Although I agree that you should not depend on substances like these, you could use calea once in a long while just for the fun and to give DR a huge boost. Salvia is not usable in this way and I would strongly suggest you dont experiment with that just for DR. Another useful substance is b6/12 vitamine though, works pretty good (also if you’re in a kind of drought, just to get it going again).
I agree that Calea Z can be amazing when used occasionally and seems to make your dreams hugely vivid, strange and significant. It seems to lose it’s potency if used too often anyway. As with anything remotely hallucinogenic, it’s best avoided if you have had any negative issues with simillar drugs/substances in the past as it can lead to daytime flashbacks in my experience.
I don’t agree with that, sometimes in the morning i can’t remember anything but when i think of it later some fragments come to my mind. It also happens often that something that i hear or see reminds me of something in the dream and thats all i need to rebuild the whole dream.
Yes, but there’s no point sitting in your bed for mroe than two minutes if you don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Wonder around, see things, let your thoughts flow.
Occasionly these things can lead to you remember your dreams.
I personaly find a good way to remember dreams is to just think about one or two. More and more start popping into your head as you go on.
You’re right Nightshade, it happens to me too. But it seems I don’t have to explain further my opinion, Sureal did it perfectly for me!