What are some natural things that make dreams more vivid?

I’m looking for natural remedies that can make my dreams more vivid. I’m hoping that more vivid dreams = better chances of achieving lucidity. Any foods, or scents, or whatever you can think of. No pills, just common household things that can help me.

I’ve often found that it doesn’t seem like my dreams are any more or less vivid at any time, but that my recall is the deciding factor in my perception of dream vividness. Like that if I have a good clear recall, it seems like my dreams were vivid, and if I have blurry recall my dreams seem like they were less vivid?

Not sure if this is anyone else’s experience though? I know that my lucid dreams tend to seem pretty vivid, but I also seem to recall them more clearly too.

So if I want to increase vividness, I like to focus on improving my dream recall.

Besides that, I am sure a mantra could help with dream vividness! You could add it as part of a MILD technique or just practice it on it’s own. Something like: “I have vivid dreams,” or “My dreams are detailed” or something like that.

As for foods, I’ve read several people claim things about different foods (like milk/dairy? and bananas???) but I’ve never really tried different foods to increase vividness myself. If you pick a certain food or scent you might be able to “train” yourself to associate it with dream vividness, like a placebo, though!
For example, if every time you have a vivid dream you eat a certain unique thing that you don’t usually have, or if you spray a certain scent, you might be able to induce the vividness later with that thing if you brain connects it to dream vividness.

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I second the recall notion. Better recall in most cases also means more vivid and simply more interesting dreams. It makes sense because your dreams should be similar in quality every night, and should probably be the same even for people who usually not have any recall (call them “wakers“, if you want :tongue:). So the difference is about how many of the details you’ll actually retain in waking life. That makes dream recall a big lever.

There’s another important aspect though. Let me ask you a simple yet profound question for you to reflect: What is your waking life like? Is it interesting? Full of new experiences? Do you pay attention to all the small details around you (seeing, hearing, sensing on your skin, smelling, tasting)? What about the details inside you (emotions, feelings, thoughts, wishes, hopes, fears)?

Your dreams are based on your waking life and for a large chunk just represent it in a remodeled fashion. If your waking life is interesting and you spend a lot of your attention on it (instead of say, your phone), then your dreams will be, too. In a sense you could say, live your waking life in the same way that you want your dream experiences to be. Go out there and do something new! If the pandemic permits, do it right now. And become more aware in the here and now. It will pay off in your dreams.

As for the dream foods, I tried several things. A banana some time before bed is my favorite. I’m not giving it a lot of credit for success though :stuck_out_tongue:

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Try mugwort tea. :grin: You can get mugwort online or at any herb shops.
Though I’ve never experienced a lucid dream from mugwort, the dreams tend to be more vivid when drinking that herb.

You could also try making banana tea. Yes that’s a thing. It’s quite tasty. You cut the banana in half and boil it with the skin on. I don’t know if it’ll give you lucid dreams, but it will definitely put you soundly to sleep.

Good luck!

Errr I’d recommend doing that with an organic banana* , and definitely wash it thoroughly before boiling.

The mystical and curious.

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I struggle with this as well but there is one thing that helped me.

Simply go to sleep and wake up at the same time. At first I didn’t think it would be important but when I started to do this, my recall and the vividness of my dreams got better. In the beginning I just remembered fragments, mostly I have two or three vivid dreams at night.

Good luck!

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