It’s okay. Please update when you really have free time. 
Hmm, I think I really like this guide. I already wrote down a lot of dreams into my DJ for a long time now, but I still had the (subconscious?) idea that writing your dreams down wasn’t really that important. And I think I also wasn’t really lazy with it, but I just didn’t put that much effort into improving recall as I probably should.
Now, after reading this guide two days ago, I tried to squeeze out every detail of my dreams that I could remember. And I also tried hard to rediscover dreams and fragments I already forgot.
The result so far is that yesterday I did something in a dream I always wanted to try, but never dared to do. And today I awoke frustrated with no recall at all after about 6 hours of sleep, but after that I dozed off again and again and could remember a new dream about every 50 minutes. Those added up to 3 new pages in my DJ just for today, which is an all time highscore. When awakening from one of those dreams and recapitulating it I also caught me writing down details in my DJ in a new dream after that one, and I woke up from it because I thought I should better do that in reality 
I really think this guide is significant and I will continue with pushing recall. I also hope that it will help me to get lucid again in a dream, because of those slightly lucid characteristics stated above.
Thank you Rathez!
Please note the additional information posted in Stage 1:
After much talk with a fellow lucid dreamer, I found that they took an extremely passive stance to their dreams. They just let things happen because they were dreams, and never tried to figure out why certain things were happening.
We are trying to activate the logic section of our brain, so we must try to make some logical sense (in comparison to our waking life) of our dreams.
Great guide, thank you very much !
I’m at square one right now, I hope my dream recall will improve if i put some effort into it !
Plus, i heard that dream recall is linked with simple recalling, what i mean if that if you recall more vivid dreams, you will recall more vivid memories in real life. Is it true, did you notice a change ?
Another fact is that i don’t remember smells in my dreams, a little of sounds, the mental images are not really precise, sometimes a little taste and touch, but no more. Do you remember vivid smells, tastes or sounds ? Do you think i’ll remember more with training ?
Anyway, i’m impatient to see the second part of the guide,
thank you again.
I was wondering that too, even though my recall is OK 1-2 dreams a night, i never recall smells, and i only remember voices and no backround sound. (the only time i hear real sound was in one LD so i guess thats a start)
Welcome Wedgez to LD4all! I see you do know your business, dream memory and life memory are very related, like you said. In fact, I do advice training IWL recall in order to improve the dream one.
For the same reason, if you want to power up any particular sense recall/appearance in dreams, give it more importance during the day, stop and smell things, appreciate the tastes when you eat food.
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welcome 
Dream Recall sure gets better with practice. For me taste and smell are pretty rare, but I’m sure it’s just more practice and, as Tosxychor said, putting more attention on these senses.
Thanks for your answers.
Also to complete, i asked a successful writer who has a very vivid and strong visualisation, her five sens are very developped ( by what she says ) and whenever she reads or visualize, she says it is with incredible accuracy. ( her characters are detailed, they speak, move, etc., a real imaginary world )
And, even before i could ask for it, she said that she had incredibly vivid dreams since her childhood.
But, i’m wondering : how do we improve recalling through our five senses ?
Is it only by paying more and more attention to it, or through special practice ?
I have a personal problem : i don’t trust book or web content unless there is a real testimony about it that testify it actually worked.
Does anyone here have already noticed an appreciation of its recalling through any sense, even a small improvement ? ( i mean, with the dream journal the most seen improvement is in quantity, but is it in quality as well ? )
We can see everywhere exercices designed to improve visualisation ( recalling ), but do they work ?
( wilywalnut.com/Visualize-how … tion-skill s.html ← deals with the sight
There is also an exercice in the “Exploring the world of Lucid Dreaming” by Laberge coming from Yogis exercice, asking you to stare at an object, then watch the after image and do some mental manipulations with it.
And i found a very interesting one :
The thing i like about it is that it combines every sense.
Anyway, I think we will have no choice but experimenting it. Maybe we could make some sort of event as you do in the laboratory, combining many people so we could get different feedbacks ? It would motivate us and give us a real proof of wether or not it works. ( unless someone confirm that it does 
)
Because if we can improve RL recalling, it will improve dreaming, but i think it could drastically improve our lives overall. More pleasure when reading, easier to draw, better imagination, …
I just hope that someone has already tried such exercices.
Sorry for my broken english by the way.
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wedgez,
It is all acquired skills. If you want to smell more in your dream, become more aware of scents in your waking life. If you want to taste more, take more note of how things taste.
You need to tell your body and mind what is and isn’t important to you. If you work on the senses that you want, they will become more apparent in your dreams.
wedgez, I’ve noticed better quality in my dreams after the two years more or less keeping a DJ and simply trying to remember more. I used to remember only images 99% of the time, now sound is much more present, and touch too. Smell and taste are still rare, but they used to be non-existant
I’m very interested in developing my visualization skills! But I haven’t found anyone saying that those exercises actually helped. I only seem to find naturals 
Well, I don’t really practice much but I feel most of the exercises do nothing for me (of course that’s probably because I haven’t practiced enough to get any result… 
) The after image thing seems like it might help. I usually look out the window, it’s actually fun. I lack discipline though.
I visualization skills should really help LD’ing. There’s even a tech, V-WILD, which uses it to get into the dream.
Hello !
I read this guide some time ago. I lost it and that’s why I couldn’t post earlier. Perhaps some of you may allready know my personal LD story, but I’ll tell it again and again:
I found this site a year ago. I was very impressed and wanted to have LD’s too. I had a DJ and surprizingly I could remember dreams better. Then the “job” came in and ruined everything, BUT I won’t blame the job as I blame myself: I had my first LD. It was a boring one, but it seemed interesting because it was my first . But the grahpics in the dream were horrible so thaught “If this is what LDing is all about, with so awfull graphics, then I’ll leave it be and that’s it!” I gave up, which was a big mistake. I had some more LDs but with the same result. Then a year after or so, I joined the forum which gave me my hope back, thanks to the nice people around here 
. They told me tricks and advises how to increase vividness. I haven’t have had a LD in months, I can’t even remember the last one I had.
Anyway, I’m gonna start allover again. I’m quite dissapointed about myself that I gave up that easy…
Now about the DJ. I’ll start one tomorrow. To make my DD even more attractive for me and more pleasureable to write in it, Im gong to make it myself by glueing pages togther and stuff like that. I like making my own things, and I guess taht shall help me with my LDing. I won’t count the LDs I had 6 or 7 months ago, and start allover again.
I forgot allmost everything I learned the last year, so you can call me a beginner… remember, a beginner, NOT an amateur
This guide is great! It’s definitely different from the other guides on LDing.
This is a very good guide 
I guess I didn’t realise how important Dream Journals were before reading this. And now, I understand why they’re important, too. Thanks 
Rathez:
Great tutorial, focuses on the really important stuff. I had to find this out the hard way when I started out, confused by all the techniques and RCs. Great job writing it down so concisely.
Thanks for the guide.
I just discovered this website today along with Lucid Dreaming which I had heard about but had since forgotten. Currently I will only recall a dream or so a week but I plan on improving this with the help of a Dream Diary.
I am patient for progress to occur.
So I had quite some time away from LD4all. I started a new job and it took a lot to settle in.
I’m glad to see this guide is still helping everyone out! If you have any questions, PM me or post on the forum! I’d be more than happy to help you guys out!
Awesome! Thats good to hear!
The most important thing is to make it YOUR dream journal. It has to be in a form that works for you, not for others. I personally type my dreams out on the laptop, as I find I dont like hand writing, and the fact I’m a really fast typer
Lucid Dreaming shouldn’t be a chore, it should be something you enjoy working towards and doing!
This is a great guide. It has motivated me even more to stop slacking off when it comes to my dream journal. I can’t wait to write my dreams down tomorrow. I love how to stressed the importance of writing down all the details that you recall. I’m guilty of not really focusing on the details, so that’s something I’m going to have to improve on.
I cannot thank you enough for writing this guide. As soon as I read the bit about getting caught up in methods, I knew I had to read this…I’ve been trying to LD for two years with very little success.
In the past, I have noticed that keeping a DJ does wonders for my dream recall (Without a DJ, 0-1 dreams per night. With a DJ, up to 3), so I know the importance of keeping one. I’ve started it up again recently and intend to keep it running.
So thank you for this. It’s really changed my whole outlook on LD’ing…I feel very empowered to do this now. 
Since we cannot directly tell our brain what is important and what it needs to remember, we need an indirect method that allows us to communicate these needs to our brain.
I found that really stressing your memory every morning really sends the right message to your brain. If you really focus on the details in your dream journal (more specifically trying to figure out the hazy details), your brain will start thinking “Ok so when he/she wakes up, he’s going to want to remember everything that happened in these dreams, so I better pay attention!”
Please let me know if any of you need help. Its a difficult journey, but well worth it. This goes for anyone.