Enhancing Dream Recall
March 9th, 2006 by Erin Pavlina
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People are amazed that I can clearly remember the details of my most intriguing dreams even years after I had them. It’s actually a skill I developed in my teenage years that has really served me well. I want to share the technique with you so that you can do it to.
The benefits of being able to clearly recall the details of your dreams are:
- It makes it easier to analyze your dreams.
- You don’t have to keep a dream journal anymore.
- If the information in the dream was useful, you can actually use it if you can recall it. (Like when I studied for my Creb’s cycle test in Biology.)
- You begin to see patterns, which allows you to discern and categorize the types of dream experiences you’re having, which in turn will give you a glimpse into the unknown.
First of all, I cannot recall every dream I’ve ever had. No reason to go that far. But when I’m having a great dream with a strong message, I don’t want to forget it. Because I’ve been working for years at mastering lucid dreaming and maintaining my awareness during a dream, I’ve developed skills for remembering them.
First, I have the dream. If it was a lucid dream, great, I’m halfway there. You automatically have higher recall of details if you had a lucid vs. a non-lucid dream. But if the dream was not a lucid one, then as I am transitioning from that dream to the next stage of sleep I make a mental note that the dream I just had was important to me and I want to remember it. This happens on a near-subconscious level.
Next, I create a dream (programming a dream is an advanced skill) where I am telling another dream character what I just dreamed. This has the effect of making a more indelible impression on my memory of the dream content. Now I’ve not only dreamed the content, I’ve verbally discussed the details of the dream in my second dream. If I don’t feel that’s enough to make me remember, I program a third dream where I dream I wake up and remark to myself what an interesting dream I just had and think about the dream in my mind. Then I really do wake up.
If that sounds like a lot of work or a lot of trouble, it’s really not. It’s very easy for me to do this. I generally do this only for dreams where I feel I’ve received a spiritual message or that are particularly interesting to me (like my dates with Brad, Keanu, or Angelina) 
In the morning, if the dream was especially important, I will tell Steve what I dreamed. And then it becomes as real to my memory as if it had really happened while I was awake. Speaking your dream out loud is a great way to remember it, because not only are you remembering your dream, you are also remembering what you heard yourself say about the dream. I think the input goes to multiple parts of the brain. Like reading about something and also hearing a professor speak about it. Multiple modalities and all that.
I really encourage you to work on remembering your dreams. Spending all night doing something just so that you forget in the morning seems like a waste of a night. Why have dreams at all if you’re not going to remember them? When you start recalling your dreams, you will have more vivid dreams. You may also slip into that realm where you discover a little bit more about what dreams really are. That information I will save for another blog entry. But suffice it to say, if you can’t remember your dreams, you’re missing a third of your life experiences.
Start out by recording your dreams in a dream journal. Next, work on having lucid dreams. Listen to my podcast on Lucid Dreaming for details on how to do that. Next, work on recalling your dreams by discussing them with friends or family. Start looking for patterns. Then work on programming dream content.
In no time you’ll be remembering your dreams clearly and easily, even years later. Once you can recall your dreams clearly and see the patterns, a whole new world will open up to you.
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March 9th, 2006 at 6:39 am
Erin,
Thank you for these suggestions. My dream recall has come and gone over the years. I think I’ve found that my recall is best during times when I consistently write my dreams down in a journal.
I want to hear more about your techniques for programming a dream. I’ve tried dream incubation techniques in the past, but with no success.
March 11th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
So, Erin, you can do all that and still sleep soundly through the night without ever waking up?
I haven’t worked much at remembering my dreams, but for the most part, I only remember ones where I wake up right after them (or during them), or if I’m sleeping late in the morning and am sort of half sleeping / half awake.
I had a weird one a few weeks ago during that sleeping late time. I thought I was awake, but just not wanting to get up yet. Then I thought I heard someone come into my house (which would have been extremely unusual at this time of morning, and I was the only one home). I was even thinking that my 17 year old daughter must have come home for some reason, because I could have sworn I heard her plunk her backpack down and her TV go on. But she had gone to school like usual perhaps an hour earlier.
I tried to open my eyes and listen to who came in, but I couldn’t open them! I guess because I wasn’t really awake, but still dreaming. But it was so weird because I thought I was awake, and it was scary not to be able to open my eyes! Finally, I think I forced myself to turn over, and that woke me up for real. I listened closely for any signs of anyone in the house, but nope, no TV on, no sounds of anyone. I did get up at this point to make sure, but I was definitely the only one home.
Was very weird!
March 11th, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Jill what you experienced was a hypnogogic (sp?) illusion. Very common. happens a lot in the early morning hours before waking. I get those all the time. It’s frustrating to hear people in your house and feel people on your bed and be totally paralyzed but “awake”.
And yeah, I sleep great at night. Transitioning from one dream to the next is easy for me. i can keep myself asleep and still program the next dream. It’s all advanced stuff.
March 19th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Hey Erin, thanks for the interesting article. At the moment I am trying to work on my dream recall and keeping a dream journal. I’m certainly coming up with some reoccuring themes. Can you suggest any good resources for dream interpretation? Cheers!
June 29th, 2006 at 10:05 am
Erin,
I listened to the podcast and read this article. My question has a twist. I had a dream 4.5 years ago. It had extreme significance. It was precognitive of a major world event, though I didn’t recognize it until after the event happened. I was even lucid through much of the dream. I tried to wake myself, and succeeded, only to go “back in”.
Your podcast got me thinking, though, that I would vary much like to go back to that dream and understand why I was given such a profound dream, that was obviously precognitive, but for which the outcome of the real event I could not realistically affect (trust me!).
And now that the event is past, I mostly want to know why, I suppose for my own development, I had the dream at all. This particular dream has similar qualities to other very profound lucid dreams that I had prior to that one and since then, but I would like to understand why I have had each one.
Is there a way to go back to those dreams and ask, even if they were a long time ago?
Can you comment, though this original blog post is archived?
mahalo
June 29th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Stephanie: I have gone back to a dream many times but never when so much time has passed. I’m not sure you can do it but I say give it a try. Concentrate very hard on the dream and try to remember the details as a sequence. Then go to sleep and see if you can get some insight. Ask a guide to help you.
As for why these precognitive dreams happen… you probably have a wide open third eye chakra and are able to receive these precognitive dreams. Practice and your skill will further develop.
June 29th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Erin, thanks for that insight. Leads to another question about another dream that had significant impact on me…
Is it possible that detailed dreams that are obviously from another time period are of past lives? And how would you know one way or another?
What does it mean when a dream is in a past era and incredibly detailed and takes place in real locations, but what happened in the dream does not match what happened in the known “real life” for that location?
Is it just that I had a very detailed dream that pulled locations from my memories as part of the general landscape, and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the “meaning” of the dream?
October 5th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
[...] In Enhancing Dream Recall, she shares the skills she uses to remember her dreams, including the clever act of remember a dream by becoming lucid and talking about it with a dream character in the dream that follows. [...]