This is part 1 of the BIG Remembering Dreams topic.
Part 2 can be found here.
hi everybody
i’ve been trying to have lucid dreams for about two months now, all i had were 4 very short low level lucid dreams, and i can remember 1 dream per night most of the time but not every night! any idea how to improve my dream recall?
how is it to have a reall lucid dream? what i heard it must be very fascinating! but my short LD’s were not that fascinating! is that going to get better with experience?
I would suggest keeping a dream journal and make a habit out of writing down your dreams whenever possible. I also wake up at a certain time every night and whenever I can’t recall a dream I think about my entire day so that a memory from my waking life will trigger the rememberance of a dream. I have had several low quality lds as well. It is a exhilirating when you have your first full blown ld. I have had lds that are more vivid than reality. Good Luck.
I would recomend setting your alarm clock to go off at the latter stages of sleep. Preferably after 4+1/2, 6, and 7+1/2 hours after you went to bed.
Then when you wake up shut your alarm off and lye in bed and let your mind wonder. You may not remeber anything at first… but if you wait a couple of minutes you might catch a fragment of a dream and rebuild it from there.
If you dont remeber anything, write in your journal anyway just to get into the habit of it.
Good Luck!
My dream recall lately has been very bad. I will wake up and rember like one small thing, but I won’t move over to write it down before I fall back to sleep. Now I am rembering 1 dream every 2 or 3 nights if I am lucky. Also to rember the dream I have to get up for awhile and it will just come to me.
I am also having trouble with identifying my lucid dreams or if I am dreaming of lucid dreams. Nothing has changed lately, but I can say I have been having alot of problems with my back and neck, so maybe that is it. Hopefully I will be back to my old 2-3 dreams a night thing and back on track for lucid dreaming in a few weeks 
And David, I would say just keep at it. When you wake up and remember a dream, keep a notepad by your bed and just write the dream down really quick, like me I will write down “Trip With Cousin + Possible Lucid” and whenever I read that in the morning I almost always rember the full thing. And I would recomend writeing down the full dream ASAP because if you are like me, you rember the dream but alot of the details fade away as the day goes on 
Wil
EDIT: I am back to me 2-3 dreams a night thing
what i do when i wake up is, think of the last thing i remember being in the dream… the last event that i remember. then from there i concentrate on what happened immediately before that event until i’ve gone backwards through the dream as far as i can go. it helps a lot, as you concentrate things just seem to keep coming to you. mbb809’s tip is good as well 
Hi,
I find I’m waking up remembering loads of dream but cant get myself out of bed (dont want to wake my wife!!) to write it all down. By the morning I’ve had another dream and struggle to recall any earlier. Think I might hav to put pen and paper in the bathroom!!
2 programs I’ve fpound good for keeping a journal are Liquid Dream (freeware) and Alchera (has to be registerd).
Liquid dream is at :-
Desperatley want to go for a WILD tonight and see if I remember it!!
happy dreaming everyone, watch the Matrix, makes you wonder if this is all real anyway!!
I really concentrate on remembering my dreams as I’m falling asleep. I think that is one of the most important steps for me. As soon as I wake up I remember that I should be remembering my dream!! (if that makes much sense!) It then starts coming to me in waves.
i go through phases of dreaming. I dream for a few days and then for a week or two i forget about the motivation of dream recall so i write a stick note somewhere where i visit each day before i go to bed >> above my pillow
Kayos,
I have a similar problem that I don’t want to disturb my husband when I awake from a dream. I have (somehow) taught myself to write in the dark. I don’t write the whole dream down - just enough keywords to recall in the morning. I always keep a pen and paper on the table next to my bed.
The writing is a bit scribbly, and I use the glow from my alarm clock to make sure I am not writing over what I have written before.
Doing this means that I have a lot better recall than trying to remember everything when I wake up.
Nothing works so good for dreamrecall as strong coffee smell.
Sensing smell is not blocked by dreaming or deep sleep.
So i tested awsome strong coffee smell in a totally air closed bedroom.
I put a coffee machine next to my bed…2 hours before waking it makes coffee, awfully strong coffee lol…and it has a strong effect on dream recall…i had an average of 2 dreams i can remember…now they are 6 i can remember. Weak point of this experiment is that the machine makes noise lol. Its based on the idea that drug dealers use coffee powder to block drug dogs from smelling the coke. So it has to have a strong signalling power for smell senses. I tried and indeed it is true!
Jeff
wow i’ll have to try the coffee thing…
(Z)
Can using this…
angelfire.com/biz6/Picvault/Dream.html
…every night help you remember your dreams? I heard that it did. Also, is using it every night bad or something?
I dont Know. I never could Remember My Dreams Until I started Reading And Knowing About them. Now everything Comes Pretty Natural For me. I can Remember Almost Every Dream, Every Night.
Heres a Simple Tip to Remembering Some dreams, Usually When I wake Up In the Middle of the Night, Ive had a Dream, So Instead of going Back to bed I record On my Voice Recorder, then thats All.
Hi everyone !
I just started a dream journal, but I can only recall some fragments of dreams I had just before waking up.
Is there anything I can do to remember what I dreamed about during the night ?
Well fdoyon thats a start!
You have to start somewhere 
Still even with fragments its important to write them down.
Let us know how you do in some time, if the dream fragments get longer.
Jeff
Just out of curiosity, how do you record your dreams? What sort of format do you use? I have found a whole bunch of different formats around the internet and in some of the dream workbooks that I have read, and I’m just a little curious about what works the best for everyone regarding dream recall.
Thanks.
I read this on dreamviews.com/dreamrecall.html :
“During the course of the night, you have many different dreams–at least one per REM period of sleep. The brain seems to erase the previous dream during the intermediate stages between REM periods. Thus, to remember your dreams, you will need to wake up during the REM period.”
Is this true ?
Yes, but not always im my experience. Sometimes i do remember dreams from earlier REM periods (or that’s what i htink), but that’s kinda very hard.
Xetrov…
or maybe you remember parts from non rem sleep dreams.
Jeff
waitwait Jeff, I thought your dreams are only during the REM periods of sleep?? Is that right? Then how can you remember when you aren’t dreaming?