This is part IV of the BIG Remembering Dreams topic.
Part I can be found here.
Part II can be found here.
Part III can be found here.
What’s the longest anyone here has gone without recalling dreams (and I mean you actually tell yourself before bed that you will remember them and when you wake up you try to recall them and you still can’t)?
I’m going on about a month or more now and the most recall I have is maybe once a week I’ll recall one thing like “the Volkswagen logo” and that’s it, no story or anything and I feel lucky if I can even remember one thing like that. What has happened to me??? I had gotten very good at dream recall since I started this journey in the dreamworld back in December of 2004 and could recall every night, sometimes more than once, and now suddenly it’s like my brain has hit a brick wall and I can’t recall at all so there go my hopes of being lucid…how can I ever hope to become lucid when my dream recall has gone down the toilet?
My longest time without dream recall is like 1 week.
Some week I got dream each day , some week 1 per 3 day and sometime none. Its really random.
I dont truly believe in the REM cycle. If everyone say so that the REM cycle have to be 90 minutes sleeping and after your dream then why yesterday I done a WBTB method and in 30 minutes I had a dream of about 15 minutes. Thats was quick so REM cycle is weird…
Two years ago, when I didn’t practice LD’ing, I had quite no dream recall at all cause I didn’t try to remember dreams when I woke up. Is recalling dreams the first thing you think about when you wake up? If it isn’t, it’s normal that you don’t remember them. And did you change your sleep schedule a month ago?
I am setting my alarm a little earlier, Basilus, but that’s only been about three weeks now and the zero recall thing has been going on for about five weeks. I do try to remember my dreams when I first turn off the alarm and waking to an alarm is something I was doing when I was having great recall for over a year…I even have trouble recalling dreams on the weekends when I don’t use an alarm. On the nights I do use an alarm, I try to set it so that I wake up only after increments of 90 minutes for a better chance of waking up during or just after a dream.
I’ve always been a person who has trouble waking up and I do tend to hit the snooze button a lot although that generally didn’t hurt my recall in the past, in fact it’s helped it sometimes…but I’m not taking any chances anymore, I’m so sick of not remembering my dreams, hopefully the progressive alarm will be the answer to my prayers!
I’m afraid that you have already read the whole thread and I can’t give you any more advices. If I had such a long dryspell, I certainly would start again my DR practice from the beginning, that is using autosuggestion before going to sleep in order to remember my dreams in the morning.
I suppose you know the following tip? When you wake up and don’t remember dreams, (of course you don’t move) you make associations by thinking about random things: “a bat… a time machine… scampi… a street lamp…” until you feel one of this words makes you remember something from your dreams. Then you focus on this tiny feeling and you can sometimes remember a dream fragment, from which you can rebuild your dream in the reverse order, wondering what happened before. And even if you just remember a feeling or a fragment, you write it down nevertheless.
Do you practice a special technique in order to recall your dreams?
Maybe a couple of days, tops. But even then I always wake up with a vague residual, knowing that I have had a dream and approximately how long it was, whether it was good or boring, etc, even if I can’t remember what actually happened. However, if I make an effort to recall them when I first wake up I always can. It’s usually only if something distracts me when I wake up that makes me forget.
You know lately I have been remembering several dreams at once. Like I’ll wake up after one and just go back to sleep and wake up again and still remember it, but I atleast recap over the dreams to remember them.
Yes, that happens to me - only sometimes. I still find it risky to go to sleep after waking up, because there is still the chance that I will completely forget it.
No you shouldn’t. Please don’t post twice the same topic in two different locations.
Okay, last week I would go to bed around 1:30 or so and wake up around 7:30 for WBTB, because I was on Spring Break. And every day I could remember atleast one dream and that how I had my lucid. But now that I’m back at school sleeping times have shifted and I think they have affected my dream recall and dream ability. Now I go to bed around 10:30 and wake up in the middle of the night for WBTB at about 3:30, and I can barely remember anything or I won’t remember anything period. So tonight I’m experimenting with sleeping until 4:00, but I don’t know how to get back to my best dream recall period. Any suggestions?
School never stopped me from going to bed at 1:30! Mind you, I perfected the art of getting ready in the mornings in ten minutes flat. If you’re willing to sacrifice breakfast time and other morning routines to sleep in, you should have no problem going back to your old sleep times.
First impression: there were 6 hours between the moment when you went to bed and your WBTB in your first sleep schedule. Now there are just 5 hours. Thus you wake up during n-REM sleep and that’s perhaps the reason why you don’t recall dreams. As sleep cycles last 1.5 hours, you should choose a 4.5 hours or 6 hours sleep duration.
Cynster I’ve been having a very similar problem to you, but instead of going for 5 weeks I’ve been having dream recall like this for at least half a year (before I joined LD4all). I used to have perfect recall, but nothing that I do seems to be able to bring it back, the only thing I’ve had any slight success with is using wbtb. Sometimes after I wake up the second time I will remember something.
I’m hoping that the problem is because my sleep schedule has changed since I became a teenager and hopefully it will return to normal in a year, but it’s annoying not being able to practice LDing.
Well, I’m glad I’m not alone, TAG. Since I posted my other message, I’ve had small improvements…my dream recall is slowly coming back but it’s still nowhere near the level it used to be. The most dreams I remember are ones when I wake up in the night…lately I think my alarm clock is messing me up more than it used to, causing me to fail to recall my longer morning dreams even though I can feel them, I just can’t reach them. It’s like IRL trying very hard to reach something you can see but your fingers are just one inch too far away to touch it…that’s how it feels lately. I can feel the feeling of having dreamt but no matter how I try, most of the time I just can’t grasp the memory.
I also wonder if it could be residual trauma from my dad’s death back in November. When he first died I didn’t recalll at all for a couple weeks then my recall went back to normal for a while before this drought. But in the last couple months it seems like the few dreams I do remember, almost half the time, have my dad in them. So maybe it’s just that. I just hope I live long enough to conquer this recall thing and the lucid thing, too!
Maybe my lack of dream recall is due to anxiety about school. Almost all of the dreams I can remember feature school in some way and involve me forgeting ot losing something important. I also seem to remember more dreams during the holidays too.
I hope that your dream recall improves soon Cynster and I feel sorry for you losing your dad.
I have been practicing dr and ld about a week and a half now, and in the begining my dream recall was excellent. However, the past few days my DR has been weird. I will have absolutely no recollection of any sort of dream when i wake up, but the afternoon (about 9-10 hours) after i will remember quiet a few things from the night before. I’m glad that i still remember a few things, but anyone have any tips on how to have a more detailed recollection when i first wake up (I do just about everything that you have mentioned).
Well, I haven’t read this thread since I can recall my dreams alright, but I’ll answer you anyway Count.
I don’t have any tips except to be patient. That you think dreams are important is probably imbedded in your subconscious by now. So if you try to remember your dreams, even if it’s just a ‘feeling’ you woke up with, it will probably just take time. Be patient.
About a year ago I couldn’t remember any dreams. I stopped [utting in alot of effort after about a month, but then I noticed that I slowly started to remember them without even realizing it. Now i remember at least one dream a night.
Don’t worry count - you’ll remember in time.
I was thinking that recall might actually help with LDing, not just to remember when you have one, but actually help you to be more conscious during dreams. See, if you aren’t conscious during the dream, then why would it be in your conscious memory? May be why ppl remember LDs better than NDs. Although I don’t really know about the science behind this, it was just an interesting idea I had.
Any thoughts?
there are several good methods for good recall, simply before going to bed set up the intent to remember your dreams when you wake up, write down quick phrases in your DJ and fill in details afterwards, and when your going to sleep at night reflect on your dreams from the previous night and see what else you remember about them.
those increased my recall by a lot, from fragments to full vivid dreams.
My recall is improving slowly but the best recall I have is still usually after my first sleep cycle of the night when I wake up naturally, usually to go to the bathroom.
My biggest problem now is the alarm in the morning intruding upon my dreams…I didn’t used to have such a problem with the alarm in the past, so I need to re-conquer that one.
If I had such a long dryspell, I certainly would start again my DR practice from the beginning, that is using autosuggestion before going to sleep in order to remember my dreams in the morning.
I didn’t know that…
CountDonoho introduce yourself in the “hi im new here topic” 
