Thread: 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?

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?

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 =].