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?
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!
It’s dreamsigns like that that should eventually tell me that I’m dreaming!
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
What happens to me sometimes when i use the “I am going to remember next dream” mantra is that while repeating , there are some moments when i forget to repeat it…
When i get back to repeating…i suddenly realise that i just had a dream…it’s quite surprising, because it seems that little time had passed…
It’s like there are two planes of awareness…one in which i repeat the mantra…and one in which i have the dream.
I used to be horrible at remembering dreams. It would be like a miracle if I remembered one dream a week, even if it was very vague.
I started MILD last night and I remembered 4 dreams, two of which were extremely vivid! I simply did the MILD techniques and repeated to myself “I will remember my dreams. I will wake up after every dream. I will have a lucid dream.” Try it, it really works!
it’s the third time I started a DJ, now im going to LD for real.
6 days have passed. In the first three i did get better and better recall, but last three days I didn’t remember anything!
When I’m awake, I don’t move my body, and try to remember (“What did i dream, what did i dream!”) But nothing happens…
I’m still very drowsy (and a bit chaotic in my mind - in the sense of, stil sleepy) , maybe I should be more awake?
It sounds to me I’m to sleepy to recall, and my mind is not clear enough.
Does anyone had the same problem?
What should I do?
First of all, don’t worry about this. The more you stress, the less you’ll be able to remember your dreams. It’s perfectly normal that we can’t sometimes recall our dreams, sometimes even during a few days.
If you’re on a dry spell, I would recommand to do all this practices :
before sleeping, repeat “Tomorrow morning, I’ll remember my dreams”.
when waking up, don’t move and don’t think “What did i dream, what did i dream!” : just let memories come on.
if after a minute, you don’t remember anything, try to make associations : think about random words, like “a dog… a plane… a camel, etc.” When one of this words makes you remember a feeling of your dreams, focus on this feeling until you catch a dream fragment. With this fragment, ask yourself what happend before, and thus you can build again your dream.
if you can just remember a feeling or a fragment, write it down nevertheless.
if after two minutes, you can’t remember anything, don’t worry : it will be better next time !
thanks for the reply basilus west.
i’d figured out i did stress it to much…
last two days my recall is back (14th and 15th march)
I’m now a bit troubled to choose a technique.
I can’t try to wake up and immediatly try to fall asleep again (WILD), because i also want to write down dreams to keep my recall up.
autosugesstion, VILD (maybe MILD), and WILD all seem promising.
but i’m offtopic now!
What a great thread. I think this will help me alot.
For the past 3 or 4 days I have had no recall. Normally I have Recall then a day or two off then recall again, ect…
I’ve started a dream journal recently within the past month or so and my recall improved for bit and now the dry period. Not only dry but I don’t even have the impression that I dreamed something which I usually do.
I’m going to try alot of the techniques I see here and see how they work for me. I want at least 1 dream a night before I start the LD techniques.
I’m beginning to have a very strong desire to LD again, this time to really explore what’s out there and see what I can do.
The background chatter in my mind keeps referring to it as “activating” for some reason. Little “voices” saying, “you must activate now”.
I still write in my dream journal even on the days I don’t recall any dreams because I like to take notes so I can try to improve my recall. For example, if I know that I dreamt but just can’t grasp the memories, I’ll write exactly that. Or if I have zero memory, I’ll write that down too. I even write down when I had a memory but was too lazy to sit up and write it down and consequently forgot it in the hopes that I won’t make that mistake again. I also keep track of my bedtime and waking time each night to see if the length of my slumber affects my ability to recall my dreams.
Don’t despair over your lack of recall; I recently went almost two weeks with zero recall, I’ve only ever had one low-level LD, still can’t recall a minimum of one dream per night, and I’ve been keeping my DJ for about five months now.
What’s the consensus on remembering dreams…with your eyes open or closed or both? I’m trying to think how I usually do it and I know that if I lie still and try to remember with my eyes closed sometimes I fall back to sleep and then I tend to forget the dream I was trying to recall, but then again if I open my eyes I can get too distracted by real life and not remember either. Although I guess remembering doesn’t necessarily matter either way because sometimes in the middle of the day when I’m wide awake something will strike me and give me a flash of a dream memory.
I just thought about how we say our eyes are open or closed when it’s actually our eyelids…I guess that old 80’s song by Kix “Don’t Close Your Eyes” would sound dumb if it was “Don’t Close Your Eyelids”.
Hi lots of |'s. (what kind of name is that anyway?)
That’s called a dry spell, and mostly it will pass pretty soon. It might work if you force it, by using a technique (like waking up during the night) or using certain substances (like b6 vitamins). But of course there’s no guarantee.
lots of |'s is kind of pseudonim, which can be written but not read. actually it does not mean something.
and 10x for giving me accurate reply. I didnt know that such phenomenon exist. is there some more information about this dry spell: when it occurs, how long it continues, why … etc.
I also keep track of my bedtime and waking time each night to see if the length of my slumber affects my ability to recall my dreams.