I’ve been trying to have lucid dreams for about 10 months now, I got my first one a few months ago, but my dream recall lately doesn’t seem to be good. I have days where I can recall it easily and then other days where I have a lot of difficulty and can’t like today. Are there any tips with dream recall? also, I want to take lucid dreaming more seriously but it sometimes feels like defeat. I want to try WILD, any tips you have for me there? Ive only tried techniques with DILD.
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I just want to preface this that I may repeat what the others have said, so, I apologize if that does indeed happen.
Dream recall fluctuates so much - one week I'm remembering multiple dreams and the next week I'm struggling to even remember a split second of a dream. It just happens, even if you're doing everything "right". That being said, there may be some things that are happening that aren't the best for inspiring recall.
I'm just going to be saying some general things that could be harming dream recall - the first being not getting enough sleep. For the past few days, I've been woken up about an hour before I would naturally wake up, and falling asleep much later than I normally do. Last week, I got a 5 hour sleep with no nap in the day, and I couldn't recall anything. The results have been the same with a 6 and 7 hour sleep - I've been having very inconsistent dream recall to the point of questioning if they were dreams or random thoughts I had when I was falling asleep.
Also, are you naturally waking up or is something or someone else waking you up? I find that if my dog (he's very cute, but, definitely not helping me with recall) wakes me up, dreams fade much quicker if they were mundane. Speaking on that, I do often let dreams go if they were "mundane" or "boring" and though I know better, I still do. Again, these are just some reasons why I find my dream recall slacking, yours may have different reasons or no reasons at all!
For getting dream recall back, I personally just try and remember dreams I've had before, even if they were older dreams. I also try and talk to my friends about dreams I've had recently and that seems to bring back some recall. If you have a dream journal, look through it. I find that looking back at the dreams I had written down anywhere helps.
As for WILDs, while I've never had one, I've been somewhat close. This is all a matter of "do as I say, not as I did" due to me not being able to obtain a WILD yet. First off, don't be afraid of sleep paralysis kicking in. While I move during my WILD attempts, I move due to the fear of a sleep demon appearing in my doorway, even though I know the chances are low (but that does very person to person). I would recommend using some sort of anchor when trying to obtain a WILD due to how my mind can quickly spiral away from my mind focus. I use guided meditations for this, and though they are ones for "shifting", they do work well for keeping your mind steady and focused. If guided meditations aren't your flavor or anchoring doesn't seem to be working, have patience.
Again, lucid dreaming varies person to person, so, I could be saying things that don't relate to you but relate to others. Don't worry to much about dream recall fading because it does fluctuate for most people. Good luck on your journey!
Saffrinian has already linked a couple of good videos for you, and I recommend you check those out! It's also wise to keep in mind that, like Saffrinian says, dream recall will fluctuate naturally for the vast majority of us.
That said, I wanted to ask you if you've tried using a sleep mask? Wearing a sleep mask does seem to help massively with dream recall for a lot of us (it certainly does for me). If you don't already own a sleep mask, I encourage you to watch the two videos below:
Sleep Masks in One Minute
How to Lucid Dream for LONGER - Proven Tips from a LD Professional (If my link doesn't take you directly there, please skip to "Silence and Darkness" at 7:45 to go directly to the part that covers the importance of sleeping in a dark and quiet environment for lucid dreaming in general.)
Regarding trying for a WILD: There's a great list of techniques on this website, here: https://www.thelucidguide.com/lucid-dreaming-techniques
You will notice that there is one column stating what type of lucid dream the technique in question may help you achieve (WILD and/or DILD), and another column that lists what sense(s) the technique focuses on, If you want to find out what type of sense you use the most for learning, Lucid Dream Portal has a video to help you establish this:
Lucid Dream Test - How to Make Lucid Dreaming Easier
Perhaps a good place to start would be to establish what sense you rely on the most, and then having a look through the list of articles on techniques that I've linked above, and see what techniques may work best / appeal the most to you? From there, there's an abundance of videos to watch on Lucid Dream Portal's channel on YouTube that should be very helpful 😊 Good luck!
Hello, and welcome to the forum @BeginnerDreamer! Dream recall fluctuations are normal and expected. I’ll link a few videos here to answer your questions:
Dream recall meditation: https://youtu.be/xedZm736yuQ
WILD tutorial:
https://youtu.be/6pVclLPvZ8g
Enjoy the forum, and stay lucid!