# Lucid Dreaming > Attaining Lucidity > Dream Signs and Recall >  >  Guide to rapid increasing Dream Recall

## xxdanxx

*Dan's Ultimate Dream Recall Guide*

What is Dream Recall?

Dream recall is the ability to recall a dream once you have awoken from it.

Dream recall is one of the most important factors in becoming Lucid and living out your dreams. You may be conciously aware in your dreams but you still need a good dream recall otherwise you'll either forget you were even lucid or you may remember you were lucid but don't remember what you did or saw.
          Now... having a lucid dream and not remembering it is a freaking bummer, so we'll have to prepare ourselves and improve our dream recall.

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So, how do we do that?

Many guide on internet tell you to write everything, now that is a problem right there. Many users interpret this as just, write down the important events that occur within the dream. Wrong. Everything means everything. If you want to rapidly increase your dream recall there needs to be lots of details.

Let's take a sample part of a simple dream recall a newbie may have down in their first entry
E.g
                                                 '_I was inside my house talking to Mum about cats_'

Now I can tell you, this is an *ineffective* dream recall attempt. Why? Lacks detail. It's like school, in your native language you are expected to write tonnes of description about poems, films, school and the like. This implies here.

Now let's take a sample word from that example: _House_ <--- The person says they were in their house so lets develop from that

* Where were you in the house?
* Was the room the same? (Flooring, wall, colour...) If you were in your bedroom was everything in the same place (i.e Bed.. Table...) Did your bed have the same coloured coverings.
* Layout of the house (Different or same)

Act as if it was your language assignment to describe in FULL detail your house from what you saw. 

Not just locations but describe people as fully as possible. The first quote mentioned talking to their mum so:

* What was your mum/person wearing
* Did they sound the same
* Do you usually talk to them?
* Description of clothes including shoes (Colour)
* Jot down any words you remember them saying even if it's just "but what if..."

Your strainging your brain to remember these fine details and eventually the brain will be like, I don't want to strain anymore, I'll just remember what I saw... 

*Other Aspects*

Food

* Did you eat? (What did you eat, did it taste the same, look the same, feel the same?)

Environment

* Daytime or Night / Cold or Warm / Good smell or Bad Smell (What DID it smell of / Was it normal?)



Basically your trying to mimic your waking memory, why? Our waking memory has become so advanced that we remember parts of our day even when we didn't want/try to yet we still do.

E.g) If your friend came to you and said: What is cloudy yesterday?

                    Unless for a specific reason, because I certainly don't, you would know the answer even if you didn't look at the sky and say it's cloudy. You know without needing to look up or even think, it's an instant thing. <--- That's what we want to harness for our dreams. If you can, you'll remember your dreams so much better.


Also, if you don't remember what a character was wearing, WRITE DOWN WHAT YOU DO KNOW, it's not the amount you write that improves your dream recall, it's the straining/intention of remembering, remember that  :wink2:

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## ShadowOfSelf

Good simple guide man, my dream recall has been struggling a bit lately, will be sure to use some of your tips thx!

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## enak101

Good idea. That makes a lot of sense but it does seem people don't describe the environment much or the senses. That's genius.

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## xxdanxx

Just updated thread layout and added more description. Thanks for the good comments and tell me how this works out and if it's helped more than what you previously wrote down for your dreams.

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## Spyguy

Good guide! It's certainly true. More details = faster increase of recall. The downside is that not everyone has the time to write that much down. But I think that thinking hard about all the details is the most important thing, not the writing. So I think it might work if you write down the dream in general, but really THINK about how it looked and what it was like. Naturally, if you do have the time to write it down, just do it  :tongue2:

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## xxdanxx

> Good guide! It's certainly true. More details = faster increase of recall. The downside is that not everyone has the time to write that much down. But I think that thinking hard about all the details is the most important thing, not the writing. So I think it might work if you write down the dream in general, but really THINK about how it looked and what it was like. Naturally, if you do have the time to write it down, just do it



Oh certainly. Dream recall is increased through training/straining the brain to remember the details, it's not what you write down that has the profound effect. Dream journals are useful for those who use to techniques to find reoccuring dreamsigns and general nosiness of your dreams.

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## Dragonworkz

Nice guide. My recall has been horrible lately, so I'll give this a try. I usually just jot down every small details I can after waking up, then later I look over those details and piece together the whole dream that way (that's only if I don't have time to fully write after waking though).

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## Choi

Good guide  :smiley:  

Just make sure to not focus too much on the details as well. The pupose of recalling dreams is not to recall all the details, the true goal is to pracctise awareness. Unless you want to interpret your dreams or something like that. 

So in other words ONE dream with recalled VIVIDNESS (means awareness) and detail is better than FIVE dreams without VIVIDNESS (not as much awareness).

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