Dream Recall
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org,
please feel free to visit the school website)
Dream recall is a necessary skill to develop before you will have success with lucid dreaming. You must be able to remember your dreams in order to have lucid dreams. This is not a difficult skill to develop, and it only takes vigilance, persistence, and determination to make this a reality in your life. I offered some tips on this in the Dreams and Dreaming course, but let's recap what some of those strategies are for recalling your dreams.
Keep A Dream Journal
- Keep a notebook at your beside. As soon as you wake up, begin to write everything you can remember about the dream, even if it doesn't make sense. Make notes about characters, colors, feelings, events, and the general tone.
- Use a hand-held recorder. If writing is too laborious or wakes you up too much so that you're not able to go back to sleep, or you have a partner who would be woken up by the light if you turn it on, this is a good option. I particularly like this one because I was able to mumble a dream into my recorder in the middle of the night and go right back to sleep with hardly waking up at all. In the morning I would have as many as five or six dreams recorded that I didn't remember at all if I hadn't spoken them into the recorder. As time went on I got better at remembering them.
- Set an alarm. – You can use a clock to wake yourself up at various times during the night so that you can remember the dream you were just having and write it down or record it.
- Write anything you remember, even little fragments. Nothing in a dream is insignificant. Write down every detail and analyze it later as to why it is there, even if it doesn't make sense to you in the moment.
- Title each dream. You are the star of your own dreams. Give each dream a title so that you can later refer to them quickly when revisiting their content or comparing them to other dreams that are similar. This is a useful way to organize your dreams, and eventually you may want to put groupings of dreams together that have similar themes so that you can analyze them more precisely.
Dream Recall Aids
- Get extra sleep. Get up, then go back to bed 20 minutes later. When you go back to bed, you will have dreams because your mind is still in the cycle for dreaming. Most lucid dreams happen in the morning, close to the time you wake up. If you wake up and go back to sleep, this increases your chances for having a lucid dream.
- Set your intention. Setting intentions in all matters is essential to success. Set your intention to recall your dreams every night when you go to sleep. Say an affirmation or visualize yourself having a lucid dream on a regular basis, for this trains the mind to expect this sort of experience.
- Leave reminder notes around your house. Put notes around the house reminding you to always remember your dreams. Again, this acts as a training method for the mind to do what it is told to do. Repetition of intention is the best method for getting the mind to do something new.
- Ask the question - "What did I just dream?" Even if you are in the waking state, examine events around you as if they had just happened in a dream. Pretend that you had just awoken from a dream, and you are remembering it and writing it down.
- Use an alarm clock. Again, an alarm clock can awaken you at the times when you will most likely be dreaming, and therefore you will have more chances for remembering your dreams.
- Use the NovaDreamer dream alarm feature. This is a device which we will discuss in more detail shortly in this course. However, this device has a feature where it can wake you up at a time that you have been dreaming so that you can immediately recall your dream.
Dream Recall Goal Setting
- Establish long term goals for dream recall and how often you want to achieve lucidity (every night, once a week, once per month…).
- Record your progress, and stick with it!
- Evaluate each month to see if you are progressing and getting better at dream recall.
- Keep working toward your long term goals; if expectations are too high, lower your goals.
- Reach goals and make new ones.
Next: Dreamwork Questions: Get the Most Out Of Your Lucid Dreams >>