How long will I need to practice Dream Recall?

I just started working on lucid dreaming last night, after reading through Chapter 3 in LaBerge's book. I kept a journal on my bed and wrote down my dreams every time I woke up. I woke up around 4 or 5 times, and recalled 7 or 8 dreams. Will I need to write down my dreams several times during the night for as long as I want to have lucid dreams? Or do I just need to do it for a couple weeks? It was a very time-consuming process, especially since I wrote two full pages of notes last night. And if you eventually stop this practice, what makes you stop? Will I eventually just be able to remember every dream I had the next morning, or is the point of this exercise just to help increase your dream recall?

I guess what I'm asking is, for those of you that are experienced with this, do you do the same thing every night, or do you guys actually sleep through an entire 8 hours without waking up every hour and writing things down?

Its different for other people.
But as for me i only kept a DJ for the first 2 weeks or so, then i could remember my dreams already.

Did you still wake up after each dream? Or are you simply able to wake up normally in the morning and remember most of the dreams you had?

There are a few reasons for keeping a dream journal. The first is like you said, to train your ability to recall your dreams upon waking. After diligently recording your dreams for a month or two, you should be pretty good at that. However, even with excellent dream recall, dream memories tend to fade quickly. So the second purpose of keeping a dream journal is simply to have a concrete record of your dreams. This is useful for analyzing to find what your most common dream signs are, which is helpful in inducing lucidity. It's also just entertaining to read through your old dreams.

To answer your question about waking up during the night - dream memories being as fragile as they are, I doubt there are many people at all who can remember every single dream they have every single night upon waking in the morning. While training your dream recall can allow you to remember several or even most of your dreams in the morning, dream recall will always be enhanced by waking up immediately after a dream and recording it.

Ya, if you record right away then you will remember so much more than 5 minutes later.

You need to practice dream recall as long as you want to lucid dream. If you can't recall your LD, what's the point in having it?

I still keep practise the dream recall. i ain't that good at LD, but i got lot's of recalled dreams. even if i don't practise LDing it could be fun to recall dreams and just see how weird they can be.

I have a really good recall but I still keep on writing down my dreams. If you can, I suggest having a book (I use my diary) next to your bed and instantly after waking up (even in the middle of the night) writing down the details of the dreams you had. I think the details are most important: they are the thing that make the dream realistic and interesting. By writing/drawing them down you'll learn to see them in your dreams too and that'll make your dreams better and longer.

This is what my notes look like:
http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/8...ettadl0.th.jpghttp://img245.imageshack.us/img245/8...inkipr5.th.jpg
(It's Finnish, not English :P)

I also map my dreams with my computer. You can check them out in my DJ.

this might be unrelated but is there anyway I can pratice too wake up after each dream? I never wake up in the middle of the night and in the morning I remeber like 2 dreams, tops.

I guess if woke up in the middle of the night i'd have better recall and make better progress.

You could use an alarm clock. It usually helps me remember multiple dreams a night.

yeah, i've done that a couple of times, but the problem is that if I don't use the alarm clock i don't wake up. I don't really want to be dependent on a alarm clock I wanna learn to wake up automatically after dreams

Well the truth is you do wake up after every dream, according to LaBerge, everyone does. It's just that you don't remember it in the morning.

yeah i read that in "exploring the world of lucid dreaming" to bad he didn't give any tips on how to make to most of these awakenings

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Originally Posted by ollei

yeah i read that in "exploring the world of lucid dreaming" to bad he didn't give any tips on how to make to most of these awakenings

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Waking up as in exiting REM sleep? Or waking up as in being aware you're awake and then falling asleep right away?

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Originally Posted by icebird3

Waking up as in exiting REM sleep? Or waking up as in being aware you're awake and then falling asleep right away?

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well, i mean, when I wake up after each REM period I never remeber it, I would like to learn to be aware that i've woken up. If I could do that, wouldn't it be more easy to improve recall? If i was more aware of the awakenings I could remeber more dreams and write them down in my DJ

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Originally Posted by logan1

I just started working on lucid dreaming last night, after reading through Chapter 3 in LaBerge's book. I kept a journal on my bed and wrote down my dreams every time I woke up. I woke up around 4 or 5 times, and recalled 7 or 8 dreams. Will I need to write down my dreams several times during the night for as long as I want to have lucid dreams? Or do I just need to do it for a couple weeks? It was a very time-consuming process, especially since I wrote two full pages of notes last night. And if you eventually stop this practice, what makes you stop? Will I eventually just be able to remember every dream I had the next morning, or is the point of this exercise just to help increase your dream recall?

I guess what I'm asking is, for those of you that are experienced with this, do you do the same thing every night, or do you guys actually sleep through an entire 8 hours without waking up every hour and writing things down?

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I will continue to keep a DJ even after I remember my dreams. It like a log of all my dream. It is fun to read =].