Lately I've been trying to focus specifically on increasing my dream recall (and more broadly, recall of any nonphysical-based memories). I'm doing that, but most of my dreams happen in the form of short fragments throughout the night that don't seem to have much to do with each other. I'm shooting for vividness, length and dreams of a more "episodic" nature. Lucidity too, but I figure that will be built on top of the foundation of the others. I've been doing some of the usually suggested recall-aids, especially writing dreams down, but I think I've hit on something else I haven't seen suggested that's having good effects.
Usually I'll remember bits and pieces of things as I wake up, and I often find that I'll spontaneously have more details, or whole frags, pop into awareness throughout the day. It occurred to me that the basis of dream recall is that the dream is 1. recorded in the subconscious mind, and 2. turned over to conscious awareness. I think it's often taken for granted that all dreams are recorded, but based on RB's ideas about memory download, this may not be the case.
So based on those two premises, every time I have *any* recall, I've been thanking my subconscious mind for faithfully recording and then releasing this information to my awareness, and then adding a good-natured prod to shoot for even more detail, vividness and length next time. This seems to be working very well -- framing it in terms of working with this part of myself as a friend, using thankfulness and good-natured self-competitiveness as tools to build on what I've got already.
I'm hoping this will also work to alter the kind of dreams I'm likely to have. I.e. go from "fragmented pulp fiction mostly involving regular people and events" to "long continuous episodes with lots of fun surreal elements" but I haven't necessarily seen any indication of that yet.
For the sake of discussion, because I'm looking to exchange and incorporate more useful ideas -- what specific methods have worked for you, in practice, to increase dream recall (and possibly the nature of the dreams themselves)?
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