About “focusing intent”: mkutblue, Cynster, the terms look perhaps like complicated, but it just means that the goal you have to reach is immediatly remembering when you wake up that you have to recall your dreams - and not start to think of anything else nor begin to move. So you have to enhance your intention of recalling dreams and if you experience some difficulties in doing it, autosuggestion can help for instance.
I believe it’s quite simple to enhance dream recall with very few practice.
And welcome on the forum, charldutoit and mkutblue!
I think for starters I’m a person who relies way too much IRL on notes. I’m always afraid I’ll forget to do things so I write myself a lot of notes (I am the Post-It Princess!). So maybe this bad memory IRL affects my future memory for dream stuff…if I have poor intention to remember to, say pick up milk on the way home from work without an external reminder like a note, how good can my intention possibly be to reach my dream goals? I lie in bed at night waiting for sleep and concentrating really hard on my intention but I keep thinking, am I supposed to really be feeling something here, feeling my intention, because it just doesn’t seem like it’s doing anything!
Maybe if I could train myself to stop relying so much on external reminders IRL, I could remember my dreams better (and remember to recognize I’m dreaming). I know there are some good exercises in EWLD, so perhaps I need to practice those. A lot.
Cynster… You should leave a note beside your bed to remember your dreams! That is one way of focusing your intent.
Its not a feeling you get. It is as BW stated… the action of concentrating on the goal… remembering your dreams… just thinking about remembering your dreams IS focusing your intent.
You’re right Cynster. Many autosuggestion techniques like MILD for instance are based upon prospective memory, that is remembering things you planned to do. Thus I think you should train this memory by stopping relying on external reminders and by practising the prospective memory enhancing techniques in EWLD.
Cynster, here are a few tips to help you improve your recall:
1. Improve your RL memory: that’s the toughest, but the one that will probably pay off the best. Try to keep a RL journal, and update it frequently. If you’re not friends with paper and pencils, a blog will work just as fine. Play crosswords and try to memorize quotes. Do whatever fits you best, just try to enhance your memory.
2. Set the intention on having a good recall. Not just tell yourself. See yourself having a better recall! As you lie in bed before drifting into sleep, visulize yourself waking up in a calmer pace. You’ll wake up but on’t open your eyes. You’ll recall your dream. Visulize yourself opening your dreamjournal and writing your dreams. If you’re a person of icons, grab the pencil as you visualize yourself writing with it. Tell yourself that’s what’s going to happen tomorrow: you’ll remember your dreams and write them down, because that’s important to you.
3. Meditate. You’re not into new age? That’s just fine, meditate either way. When you have some free time, and you’re bound to, close your eyes and focus on your thoughts. Try to do memory excercises, ask yourself about the past day or week. Ponder your current issues and business. Try to recall your dreams of today again: not just what happened, try to bring the whole scene back to your mind. Ask yourself what a person of your acquaintance looks like and try to answer. Just try to isolate yourself from the outside for a while, get into meditative state, in which you’re in closer touch with your inner self, and try to work your thoughts and set your intention on recalling dreams. Tell yourself you don’t wanna depend on post–its anymore.
Some small tips from a person that had serious memory issues.
I think too much about this LD thing… Im starting to think that it would be better i havent foudn this… I have to fix my grades in school or i will be punished by non- playing computer for whole holidays!!! Oh well…
I remember dreams by writing one word down somewhere. When I see that word I can remember almost the entire dream. This only works if you can remember your dream for a short time after you wake up.
i find that sometimes during the day seeing someone or something can spark the memory of a dream. for example, i have a dream but i cant remember anything about it, even immediately after i wake up. in the afternoon, i see my friend and suddenly i remember my dream and what it was about. i find it amazing how that works out
have you tried the water trick? because i had one heck of a time with recall for almost a year, and i tried the water trick last night (you drink 1/2 the glass before bed, and 1/2 the glass when you wake up, telling yourself that you’ll remember…) and it definitely helped. i remembered a very long and complex dream this morning, so i have nothing but the highest praise for this technique.
Hi. I’ve lurked on this board from time to time, but this is my first post. I’ve always had good dream recall. I’ve had the occasional LD, but it’s been years since the last one. As you might guess, I’m trying harder but with no luck, yet. I’ve been keeping a DJ since January, but only started doing RC in the last week.
On the positive side, I find that I have at least one dream to record almost every day. However, my mind seems to be resisting dream recall. The first two tactics are rather amusing, but the third bothers me.
Dreaming that I wrote down my dream. When this happens, usually all I recall on waking is that I dreamed I wrote it down and told myself I didn’t have to remember the rest.
Laziness. If I wake remembering a long dream with lots of detail, I tell myself I’m “too tired” to make notes. Or it’s still dark. I tell myself that I’ll do it later. If I do remember later, then all I have left are scraps.
Unpleasant dreams. By this I mean disturbing or frightening images, or I do things I would think wrong IRL. Whether or not I record them, these often bother me all day. Writing them down doesn’t dispel them; only time does that. Rereading them brings the images back full force.
This last seems to be happening more often lately. I suspect the unpleasant dreams were there all along, but I was resisting remembering them at all. I also suspect my dream mind is trying to tell me something that I don’t want to confront. Maybe if I could get lucid, I could find out what it is, but I feel like I’m stuck.
Have any of you been through something like this? How did you handle it?
As you seem to have a good DR, I think you’re ready to get LD’s. The first problem could be some help to you indeed. If it happens very often, you should try to perform RC’s before writing your DJ down. Thus you could realize that you’re dreaming when you have false awakenings.
About your third problem, don’t apply moral criterions to your dreams. You’re not really responsible of them (especially if you’re not lucid). Another thing: don’t try to suspect your dreams to tell you something. If they really want to tell you something, you’ll understand it when you wake up (“I had this dream because I’ve seen this thing last day”). So if you don’t understand what a dream means, just don’t worry about it and write it down.
Topic merged into the BIG remembering dreams topic
I have a lot of trouble remembering dreams. Most of the time I fall asleep without noticing it and I wake up again (it’s like blinking with your eyes, and it’s the next day). I remember absolutely nothing of my dreams. This has been like that for years.
I’ve only remembered some dreams, I think I can count them on two, or perhaps even on one hand. There are two dreams I remember completely, one is a horrible nightmare, and the other one was the best dream of my life (up till now).
Now, I’ve read up on the site here a little bit, and I think I’ll try some of those remembering methods, but I’m not sure if it will work with me, since I can’t recall anything from my sleep.
How is it done? Sometimes I just feel like giving up, because I know I won’t remember it anyway.
How do you know it was the best dream of your life if you remember hardly any of your dreams?
Anyway, I was wondering it is really necessary to keep a DJ.
A journal really isn’t my sort of thing. I don’t even know how to put down most of the stuff from my dreams in words (if I could even bring myself to record some of the stuff from my dreams.)
If I go over the details of my dream in my head a few times after I wake up I won’t forget it, so I’m not sure if a DJ will necessarily help me remember better.
Joshiii_Kun, you’re suggesting yourself in a negative way. Dreams are very easy to remember and most of the people who tried increased greatly their dream recall in less than a week.
Yes it is. If you don’t keep a DJ, it generally means that:
you’re not very interested in your dreams.
you lack motivation cause you don’t make the first effort which is required.
Oh I’m interested in them (and motivated), I’m just not very interested in writing about them.
I started a DJ none the less, but I’m not sure if it’s helping, though. My DR was at least one (sometimes two) per night before starting a DJ and keeping a DJ hasn’t made it increase or help me remember better. Yet (it’s only been a couple of days).
Perhaps I should keep an electronic or online DJ because that is much more my thing.
Okay, I bought a journal, and I’ve actually been able to remember dreams more often! There are days that I don’t remember anything, and there are days that I remember up to six dreams. It’s pretty cool.
I keep missing all the reality checks though. Last night was so obvious, but I never noticed. I had to infiltrate some building to get something, and some people quickly built a wall to stop me, but I just kept running towards the wall, and I said “Heh, who said I can’t walk through walls?” and I ran right through the wall as if I was a ghost.
That one was so obvious, if only I was more aware! Funny how walking through walls seemed so natural
Dreams are very easy to remember and most of the people who tried increased greatly their dream recall in less than a week.
