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Increasing dream recall?

Trijhaos

00:44 / 18.09.02

So as a part of working through Modern Magick, I've had to keep a dream journal. This is one part of the whole thing that I've been consistent about doing. It's helped a great deal in remembering my dreams, but I'm still not remembering enough of them.

Are there any ways I can give my recall a little boost or is writing down what I remember the only way to increase recall?

Nietzsch E. Coyote

03:49 / 18.09.02

Its just the best one.

There are other methods, I'll see if I can find them.

Hieronymus

03:59 / 18.09.02

Personally, if you can be conscious of it before slipping off, I've found that repeating the phrase "I will remember my dreams" in my head just before I go to sleep, first in various fonts and then breaking them down into iconic representations (eye for "I", mental picture of a Wil Wheaton or Will Shakespeare for "will" etc) helps me to remember my dreams the next day.

It's also been said, here I think, that if you get up and move around, it tends to shift your conscious mind back into play, and thus make dream recall much more difficult. Write it down before you get up, so the story goes.

illmatic

07:40 / 18.09.02

One method of triggering lucid dreams, which would help recall, is to repeat to yourself as you're going about your day to day business, "Am I dreaming?". If you can establish this as a habit, eventually you'll start doing it in your sleep, and you'll be able wake up and participate in your dreams.

11:15 / 18.09.02

There is a pretty simple method to increase the number of dreams that one remembers, which is simply to wake oneself up soon after having a dream, rather than dozing some more. Aside from waking yourself up from within your dreams, experiment with setting an alarm clock to go off at different times. With trial and error and a bit of luck you can wake yourself up just after a period of REM sleep. I find that if I go to bed at around 11:30pm, I can remember my dreams if I wake up at 7- 7:30am ish, or 11:00am ish. Getting a lot of sleep can really help those lucid dreams too, I tend to find the most vivid and lucid dreams I have had are after about 10- 11 hours of sleep.

Also, IIRC, there is some sort of device that one can buy that some how monitors for REM sleep and can wake one up during it. But I can't remember where I read about that, sorry.

ciarconn

15:53 / 18.09.02

Sleep what you need (if you can), do not use alarm clocks. Allow yourself to awaken slowly and naturaly. And try to remember what you dreamed

Wrecks City-Zen

20:49 / 18.09.02

Crystal shards placed between the knuckles.

21:44 / 18.09.02

I have to disagree with ciarconn about waking up slowly. The problem with that technique is that it is all too easy to convince yourself that you are going to remember your dream, and then fall asleep again and forget the whole thing... Ok, so alarm clocks are far from ideal too.

I think one of the key things to aid dream recall is to be asleep but not actually be very tired, if you see what I mean.

Tamayyurt

23:08 / 18.09.02

Ok this is more the dream as precog anecdote but, um, I recalled it!

Last night I had a very vivid dream about an ex who I haven't spoken to in about six months. Now, I'm not all hung up on this girl. I have a girlfriend and she has a boyfriend and she's living in another city and all that... but I woke up in the middle of the night and I wrote down on a note pad, "Isobel is going to call me today." and went back to sleep.

She called me today.

I couldn't believe it! I asked her why she called me and she said that she woke up wanting to talk to me. Weird.

Trijhaos

23:41 / 18.09.02

I think part of my problem may be that I have trouble sleeping the whole night through. I'm constantly being jolted out of sleep by noises that are out of the ordinary. I don't use an alarm clock. I usually set it, but I'm awake before it goes off. I might need to put my diary closer to my bed instead of on my desk so that I can record them right when I wake up.

It's not so much remebering the dreams I'm having trouble with, it's remembering details of conversations I have or things I might have read or seen. I can remember the general gist of them, but nothing specific.

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