I need to ask u guys a question how many dreams should i be able to remember a week or weeks for me to be ready to start lucid dreaming?
I’d say at least one dream a night. Normally LDs are easier to remember, because they have a deeper emotional impact. If you can remember one dream a night, there’s an increased chance that this dream is the LD you had. If you can’t remember anything, you have to trace back the dream through emotions, impressions and the general feeling you had upon awakening. And that’s pretty difficult
Good luck!
I’m nearly ready to start attempting LDs (I had one already by accident), as I can remember my dreams…but only if I go to bed with that intention. As Shadowless said, the mind is truly incredible. I just use “I’m going to dream now, and when I wake up I’m going to remember my dreams”, and repeat that until I fall asleep. Often when i wake up I can’t remember anything, but within about 5 mins (and an RC, which I almost always forget), the dream memories come right back.
Tonight will be probably my last night of focusing 100% on dream recall (based on your thoughts), and whether I should attenpt LDs now or not. You can check my current progress in my dream diary.
Hi,
Im having trouble remembering my dreams, I’ve started a dream journal and I remembered one dream on my first day trying then nothing the next three days. When I go to fall asleep should I repeat “Im going to remember my dreams in the morning” over and over again in my head or should I just say it to myself once then think about something else?
Thanks
Hi cramis1! Since it’s your first post… welcome to the forum!
About your question… I think it’s best to repeat it constantly while you’re falling asleep. This way, it’s the last thing in your mind before you actually fall asleep, and so the message has certainly come through in your subconsciousness. But don’t just repeat it in a tearing rush… instead, you can repeat it according to your breath. For instance: when you inhale deeply, repeat the sentence slowly and clearly. When you exhale, strengthen your intention strongly (for instance by seeing yourself writing up your dreams in the morning; KNOW that you are going to remember them). Then the cycle continues… It’s very crucial that you convince yourself that you will remember a dream. Combine this with laying still in the morning, while trying to remember dream fragments, and you will soon notice improvements in dream recall. Ofcourse there will be days that you don’t remember much… don’t let this discourage you, but keep practicing meticulously. It always takes ups and downs to master a skill, but in the end there’s always a good improvement.
Hope this helped a bit
Good luck!
Thanks for the welcome, okay I’ll try this out tonight.
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Ok. But don’t forget it can take a few days before you may notice some changes. Only when you’ve developped a fairly good dream recall, you can slowly shorten the practice, because then you’ll see your dream recall remains the same if you just repeat very strongly to yourself that you WILL remember your dreams. Just a quick affirmation of your intention will do then. This is possible because then you’ve already done the hard work: developping the neural pathways in your brain which facilitate good dream recall. Once these are developped, you only need to maintain them, hence the reason you get the same results with lesser practice then.
Let us know how it goes
HI
I tried it out last night and I didnt have dream recall in the morning (Even after staying in bed for 5 minutes in the morning). Before going to bed I constantly again and again reaffirmed I was to dream and i was to remember it the morning. However it didnt seem to help my poor dream recall. Any suggestions are very welcome.
Thanks
As I said in my previous posts… don’t expect it to work immediately. Give it time and keep practicing everyday and in a few days you might see some improvements. There’s no (natural) method which gives you immediate results. It’s like expecting a little child to ride a bike from scratch. That doesn’t work… Always keep that in mind while you’re practicing. If you want to succeed in this, it will take dedication, patience and a LOT of practice. Improvement comes with ups and downs, and often only in little steps. So I’d suggest to try it for a week or more and than see if you notice some changes.
Keep us updated
Good luck!
okay, so I’d just like to clarify from your last reply, at first before I go to sleep I should contstantly reaffirm that I’m going to remember my dream and then as I get better I will need to reaffirm less and less?
Thanks for the reply
Yes. I don’t think you really need to experiment with this, because once you make good progress, you’ll notice automatically when you can decrease your practice a bit to get the same results. However, you don’t HAVE to do this, because if you keep practicing at the same strength, dream recall can only improve better. I mentioned it because the practice is always twofold:
- First, lots of practice is needed to create the neural pathways to make an increase in dream recall possible.
- Once these are established, maintenance is needed to make sure the pathways don’t disintegrate again. In general, less practice is needed for that, but that’s optional, not necessary. Normally, increased practice is always beneficial because it can strengthen the pathways.
I hope this clears things up
Happy dreaming!
what works for me is to lay in bed in the position that I woke up in and review what dream I just had.
Also, you might wont to try disrupting some of your ruteens (i cant spell well) like sleeping on your back if you usualy sleep on your side or eat at diferant times of the day, eat foods you normaly would not. That might help produce some dreams.
I’m not so good in dream recall. How can I increase my dream recall?
(I write down the dreams I remember, but what shall I do when I don’t remember dreams?)
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 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!
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.
Thx for clarifying my post r3m0t
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.
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? 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!