the BIG remembering dreams topic part IV

I have strategically placed a reminder on my alarm clock to remind me to lay in bed and attempt to remember my dreams. However, it never seems to work for me. I never recall them at all. Also, I hardly ever wake up in the middle of the night, whether I intend to or not.

Edit: Grammar.

Out of interest, how long do you sleep for during the average night? Since REM cycles increase in length throughout the time you’re asleep (ten minutes at first, an hour at its peak), you tend to have a much better chance of recalling something if you sleep for at least eight hours. In fact, if you slept for ten hours, you would dream twice as much in total than you would have just in the first eight. Equally, you’ll dream approximately twice as much in eight hours of sleep than you will in six. You may be amazed at what you remember after a nine or ten hour sleep.

Also, it tends to be a lot easier to remember dreams if you actually wake up directly from one, rather than from an NREM (non-dreaming) cycle well after the dream ends. Given that REM cycles begin every 90 minutes on average, I would try setting your alarm for some multiple of 90 (6 hours works well), so that it will hopefully wake you up while you’re dreaming. Sure, it might cut the dream short, but at least you’ll have a much better chance of remembering something.

If all these are failing for you, you should improve your daily memory so that it will carry over into your dreams. I knew a girl who would record all her daily thoughts and attempted to remember ‘everything’. She did it young, and now she is a natural LD’er.

I usually go to bed around 12am, and wake up at about 7am… so about 6-7 hours on average I suppose. I set my alarm last night to wake me up at 6am, so that it would be at about 6 hours of sleep in hopes of remembering something, but it didn’t work. And once again, I had a very hard time trying to make myself repeat statements in my head while I was trying to go to sleep.

Now I’m as motivated as the next guy, but I don’t think I would be able to make myself write down every thought I had throughout the day. That would be an insane amount of writing, and it would consist of me sitting down and writing in a notebook nonstop all day. I just don’t see that happening.

Wow, I learned something new! That seems pretty logical, looking back at my DJ…

Dream Recall is pretty frustrating. Work on sleeping in when you can spare the time, and focusing really hard on “where was I just now?”

Repeat it exactly 30 times, then forget about it and go to sleep. You will wake up from your dreams during the night and remember them all. It’s the magic number! Seriously. Why? I don’t know; why is the sky blue? Do it and tell us of your success.

As for your questions of outside things. Marijuana is known to affect memory. Dreams recall is obviously not going to be an exception. I don’t know if you meant to say you do smoke weed but if you do. you could try to cut down or avoid it for a while and see if it helps.
Also i’ve read that people quit smoking cigarettes dream more during the abstinence.

The 30 times method did not work for me either.

Lol oh damn it, I was wondering if it would work. It was supposed to work because I told you it would, like a placebo. Oh well.

Hi Xeric,

First of all, it seems that you’re expecting immediate results from autosuggestion techniques. I doesn’t work like this at all. It takes some time.

Then what sentence do you repeat? And why do you wake up in the middle of the night? As Atheist said, you have less dreams in the middle of the night. And it’s no use to practise WBTB or induction techniques if you are not able to remember your dreams. Thus 1) you increase your dream recall. 2) when you can recall about 1 dream per night, you practise LD’ing techniques.

You know that autosuggestion has worked when your first thought when you wake up is remembering dreams. And if you wake up with an alarm clock, as soon as you switch off the alarm, you return back in the position you woke up from. It’s said to be better. Good luck! :smile:

I’m not necessarily expecting immediate results, but I did think that I would make more progress than I have over 9 or 10 nights. I’ve managed to remember three dreams out of 10 days/nights, and 2 of them were from naps I took during the day. I lay in bed when I wake up and try to remember my dreams. Last night was the only one I’ve recalled from a full night of sleep. However, my dreams that I remember are always very vague and it seems like they are in sections persay. I remember little parts of a dream.

I don’t wake up in the middle of the night most of the time. The reason I said something about it was because someone told me to train myself to wake up after each dream and try to remember it.

That’s completely normal, think about yesterday: I bet you can’t remember what happened that vividly and you probably can’t remember absolutely everything. This is no different than remembering your dreams and is normal but you can improve on the norm when you practice.

Making progress with remembering what I dream~ They’re always nice and weird. But sometimes when i wake up halfway through the night I forget to journal and then i forget the dream… Have no time to lie in bed in the mornings… because my mom rushes me off to school…bleh.

end useless post =P

ive only just started trying to remember my dreams, but last night i said before i fell asleep “tonight i will dream and when i wake up i will remember it”. I had a dream and remembered it vividly when i woke up at 5:00am, and didnt bother to write it down! only now 8 hours later i just remembered it! it really helps to keep a dream journal right next to your bed

Oh wow.
I haven’t been able to remember my dreams for a while, but yesterday when I went to bed, I just kept saying to myself that I will remember my dreams, but then in Dutch this time.
I have to say, it really worked. I remembered 6 dreams (and one really vague scene) today, and it took me quite some time to write them all down since they were all relatively long and/or detailed.

I did a bad thing though, when I woke up the first time (that was around 08:00AM, 3 hours after my alarm went off… It was still ringing) I didn’t write down my first couple of dreams. I do remember them quite well though because I relived my dream in reverse a couple of times, just like the book Exploring The World Of Lucid Dreaming said. However, I forgot one fine detail, I forgot what a girl said to me and actually that was quite important. Ahh well, at least I remember how I felt back then.

merged into the BIG remembering dreams topic :content:

I have ultimately bad dream recall, i’m afraid :ack:

I was wondering, I tell myself to remember my dreams, and i kinda keep a dream journal. (although it’s hard when I never remember my dreams) So, what can I do to improve it? :help:

Thanks and hugs to anyone that helps!! :hugs:

First: Try not to move when you wake up. Just lay there and try to remember your dreams. Eventually, you WILL remember something.

Then, write down EVERYTHING you feel when waking up. Do you feel sad, angry or happy? Write it down. Do you think of dolphins and water, or cars and explosions? Just write it down, and DON’T think “Well, if I just skip one day it won’t matter”, because it really does.

Maybe you’d like to combine this with Palina’s 30 day to success?

Hugs back :hugs:

Remind yourself before you go to sleep, to remember your dreams, reapeat it to yourself until you fall asleep. Then upon waking up in the morning, (or night) don’t move, don’t budge. And keep your eyes closed. And think back on what you were just dreaming about. If you can’t remember anything, think about how you felt when waking up. Just don’t try to forcefully bring back the dream. Softly think about it and it should come to you ^^ and that’s my advice, dunno if it will work.

I feel your frusturation, I am starting from scratch pretty much with my Dream Recall. Melissa and Viking are right in what they say you just have to write down everything.

For example, last night I had three dreams, but I could only remember a fragment of the last dream I had, I remembered legend of zelda, as I was writing down the experience, the room I was playing it in for example, I remembered people in the room, I wrote down what they were doing, something they did reminded me of a dream I had before that, I wrote that down about a flood and whatnot, I then remembered more of the 3rd dream. eventually I remembered the first dream right before I did my WBTB.

Its a tricky process expecially when your starting out, definatly see what works best for you, I usually have the best luck, as soon as I wake up, lay there and try to remember as much as I can (dont focus to hard) then after about a minute or so, go and start writing, explaining every detail, I usually remember more this way.

one time i had a dream that my school was a mall/factory, and my friend accadentally broke a small rule, so the security gaurds put a $2 billion bounty on his and my head because i knew him, so we ran from them, it was fun