I knwo this is second nature to most of you but I'm having problems with it, in my manual it says it should work the second night if not the first, but it doesn't work for me

What I do is I relax (meditation) then I keep telling myself that I'll wake up after each dream and write it down, but in the morning nothing is written...

I remember from the first night that I woke up and wrote something, but I actually didn't, I dreamt
I did :D

should I keep trying and see if I cand o ti, should I sue another technique?
is 3 hrs of sleep enough to dream?

Dream recall is a tricky thing, I used to be really into it a number of years ago.

Personally I found best results simply by leaving a sketchbook and pen by my bed and allowing for a more organic schedule of adding to the book. I think that you will find it next to impossible to wake yourself up after every dream and record a detailed description of it. But you may find as you become more conscious of your dreams and your more vivid ones may stand out enough to kick you out of bed and get writing.

Keep it up and I think you’ll find that you get better at it.

Don't feel bad I hardly ever used to remember mine either - largely because I didn't care. In time, if you try to remember yours and put forth a good "relaxed but aware" (don't make it the main goal of your day, sometimes focusing intently actually hurts with these things more than it helps) effort you will surely see results soon.

Make sure to have a notebook nearby and a pen (or a computer will do for some people too). Whenever you awake during the night and recall a dream, at least write down a few words about the dream to jog your memory latter when you fully awake. ... Or if it suits you, draw picture. The thing to be aware of here is that any new dreams will often "overwrite" the old ones after you go back to sleep. You need the reminders (better to just write it all out ASAP) at least to fight this interference a bit.

When you first awake in the morning, pay attention to what pops in your head. Any feelings or images. Anything like that. Also, if you still are not seeing anything do not move when you wake up - if you can just lose your eyes and think about what you dreamt. Try to pull it all in. Once you get one little tidbit, other things should attach to it. Pay attention to feelings and people - of course, you might be very different than me.

If the natural way above does nothing, another technique is to wake yourself up with an alarm clock. But you should understand the sleep cycle to be able to do this. (look into it - specifically read up on REM sleep - www.google.com ) To get started, you might try on a normal day - where you had an average amopunt of sleep the night before and are nto exhausted - to set an alarm clock for 100 minutes from the time you anticipate falling asleep (e.g. if it takes you about five minutes to fall asleep after laying down, and you go to bed at midnight (1200) - set the alarm for 1:40am (1340). Likely this will time things so you wake up right after REM sleep. If this doesn't work, try adjusting things slightly by ten minutes or so, either way, one day at a time. And of course, you could set it again for another 2 hours again if it didn't work, or whatever....

Another trick I have heard, once you wake up in the morning, go back to sleep imediately. It is likely that you will fall back into REM sleep because the sleep cycle generally "shortens" as you sleep. Some people just hit "Snooze" continually on the alarm clock (we're lazy ;) )- but depending on how many minutes that equates to and your body/mind, it might not work so well for you because it may not be enough time. I find this one to be very much true and usually the more significant things usually occur right before the waking state for me. These are what are normally remembered best.

Bear in mind that when you do these things (especially waking yourself up 2 hours after falling asleep) you are sort of going against the natural order of things. It could cause you to awaken tired or otherwise throw off your whole day. Be careful please, it is not worth falling asleep behind the wheel or going psychotic over due to sleep depravation.

Actually I don't think it is necessary to use either of the above techniques and I don't use them myself (the snooze button thing is just laziness! ) . In time, you'll probably get to the point where you just wake up naturally remembering things everyday without trying.

oh and your last question - 3 hours might even be too much. You might not be awakening right after a REM cycle. Try two. And then if that won't work, try four... but this doesn't mean you only have to get that much sleep only. It only means to wake up and "pull in" any dreams and then put them to paper. Then go back to sleep before you hurt yourself.

Good luck. :)

wow, thanks for that long long looooooooooooooooooong post :D

anyway, today I found out that like an hour before I wake up, when I'm concious but stilla sleep, I can remember my dreams almost perfectly, wouldn't be able to write anything down though, but the moment I'm fully awake it all wanishes...

but it's nice, I have a general feeling of remembering even though I don't remember, I somehow feel that the night was not a blank mind but something was happening :D

You're welcome. I figure it doesn't make much sense to leave things out that I see as related that might help someone.

I have that too on a lower level, usually all that is needed is to just jog my memory a bit and focus in on what I recall immediately. If that won't work for you, I don't know what to say under your circumstances. Particularly if you are not immediately thinking about waking thoughts ("What time is it?" "Damn, I have to go to work today", etc) which would usually kill you in trying this.

But like I said if you can somehow bring *anything* to the surface about what you dreamt, while you are awake, the floodgates will open a bit with the memories. Even a word might be enough. You just need a starting point. Focus, damn it ! ;)

Sometimes, I find myself catching glimpses of dreams previous throughout the day....if you do this, write those down, it may trigger off more memory of it.

I remembered something strange that usualy happens to me and I was wondering if it happens to anyone else,

I almost always ahve problems about not being able to differ memmories made in dreams and the real ones, they are all the same for me, I got myself into quite some trouble becouse of that in the past :)

I'm trying to write my dreams down at the moment. The only reason it doesn't work much for me is because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered writing it down at 4 in the morning. Most of the time I don't need to write it down that night because I usually remember my dreams the next day, giving me time to write them down... if i'm not to lazy.
My bestfriend gave me a book specifically to write them in. I've written a couple down. I'm a bad bad girl!

Morrigan Moonchild

sopmething funny happened to me today

I remember waking up after a dream (first time I succeded at that btw) and first jsut being confused why the fuck I'm awake, then I remembered, but I didn't have anything handy, so I tried very hard to memorise the dream and went back to sleep

now I can only recal the incident and the two ppl the dream was about (what I strugled to memorise) but nothing else :lol:

Congratulations. You did it. :) Given everything else you said in the past being accurate, you have actually acheieved quite a bit with this.

Everything else will come with time.

It is kind of important to try not to let these things go when you have got them (recall) to finally start up. Paying attention to them at this stage and being dilligent will solidify. Not paying attention will likely just cause you to revert to the way you were. The next six months to a year will mean a lot. After that, it will probably stay with you without any effort and you'll probably wonder why you never remembered these things before.

Take care.