The supplement ZMA gives me good recall of my dreams pretty frequently.
Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
41–50 of 180 posts
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#42I learned to lucid dream as a teenager - it was incredible for resolving internal conflict and doing emotional work (everything in a dream is a reflection of the mind). Since then I’ve used it to solve both rock climbing problems and software problems. The basis of lucid dreaming is dream recall and a healthy skepticism about the permanence or validity of “reality.” It sounds like a difficult skill to develop but any…
Personally, I expanded on this to enter a dream state at will in quiet, comfortable circumstances. I find it fun to run my own mental holodeck.
I dropped regular lucid dreaming once I gained this ability and focused on improving “dreaming” at will.
Interestingly, I haven’t had any lucid dreaming since starting antipsychotic medication. Hasn’t affected entering states at will. If anything, it’s made it easier because I have much clearer cognition and the difference reality and imagination is more well-defined.
The body and mind is fascinating. :)
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#43I have strong personal anecdotal evidence that dreaming and creativity are interconnected. I began dream journaling a few years back, recording descriptions of my dreams along with sketches and drawings. These sketches and notes often led to inspiration in my painting and drawing practice. Doing this also actually increased the lucidity and frequency of memorable dreams I was having in a kind of feedback loop. I have talked about this with other people who have tried dream journaling and it seems to be a common phenomenon.
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#44Interesting byproduct. When I learned about lucid dreaming in my 20s, I spent an inordinate amount of time (every day for years) developing the skill, including journaling — in as much detail as possible — my dream as soon as I woke up. Unfortunately, I cannot turn off the ability now and now have to deal with the consequence of recalling all my dreams: good and bad.
I did the same thing in college and learned fairly quickly that I don't really care to remember all of my dreams. Nights where I remember all of my dreams don't feel restful and are sort of disorienting.
It's hard to describe exactly what was so unpleasant about it for me, but there's some element of time perception involved...it was as though my memories of dreams were encoded on the same track as my waking memories, and my days were missing the "pause between songs" so to speak.
Thankfully, at least for me, this is an effect that goes away quickly after I stop keeping a dream journal. I have had a similar effect when stressed/overworked, though, where I start dreaming in code. That's terrible.
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#45I don't get particularly vivid dreams but I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie, I'm not the main character but I'm just kind of watching it unfold. What's really interesting is that these "dream movies" always have a half-decent plot. IMO a lot of movie plots are really bad and stick to typical tropes and lessons. My dreams don't stick to these tropes and have actual…
I consider myself very fortunate that I have very vivid and often lucid dreams - for 50 years since I was a child. My dreams are like cinematic productions - crazy camera work and all. I dream in color and sound. Many of my dreams have soundtracks. I often wake up in the morning with the soundtrack still playing in my head and I turn on my phone and record. I have dozens of them now. When I was ten years old I had a…
I too am fortunate to have frequent vivid and lucid dreams. Some of the music generated in my dreams has been the most beautiful I have ever heard. I've always been afraid that I would have less lucid dreams as I got older after reading statistics on lucid dreams, but it's reassuring to hear that you were still able to experience vivid dreams as you got older
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#46Dreams are a mixed bag, they can be quite positive or negative experiences, or just a tedious regurgiation of one's daily experiences that one could do without. The phrase "a deep and dreamless sleep" generally implies a good night's sleep, and excessively vivid dreaming can be rather exhausting.
Curiously there are some ways to manage dreams, here's an interesting article on researchers investigating what's apparently a form of lucid dreaming, very Inception-like work:
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-entered-p...
Interestingly I find those long Youtube 'relaxing sleep' videos to be a good way to moderate dreaming, possibly via a similar mechanism. Maybe white noise has a similar effect. One I use has waves quietly crashing on the beach, although once it resulted in a dream of walking through a thunderstorm in a forest and I'm pretty sure every time the waves crashed I'd experience a lightning-and-thunder strike which was rather alarming, complete with vivid imagery, and eventually woke me up. However, using the same video over and over again seems to result in a constant point of reference when dreaming, leading to more peaceful and less intensely random dreams. (Right after the Ukraine war broke out I started having vivid nuclear annihilation dreams, which were a bit much, and using these Youtube videos mitigated most of that)
For those who struggle with sleeping through really intense dreams, strong indica cannabis will suppress dreams for many people, but the side effects are a lot of grogginess the next morning. Maybe for PTSD it's worth the tradeoff, but for many the cost-benefit ratio will be too negative.
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#47Dreams are weird. Last night I had an eye surgery, but they did it from the inside, by removing the top half of my skull. Then they attached it with three wing bolts. I was worried that it would fall off, because it was wobbly, and I tried to fasten the bolts but it didn't seem to work very well.
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious what you consider to be the bad consequences of recalling your dreams? I remember at least one dream every night and enjoy going back over any of them. I especially like that I can identify a dream as the cause if I wake up in a weird mood. I worry that if I didn't have this recall, I might wake up just being vaguely pissed at my husband (because he was being a jerk in a dream).
Nightmares are a thing. This can get particularly bad if you relive traumatic events.
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Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#49The supplement ZMA gives me good recall of my dreams pretty frequently.
I was gonna comment about this. ZMA really seems to have an impact on how vivid my dreams are. When I forget to order another bottle my dreams are far less interesting.
It's quite odd. It makes me think about how heavily our experience of life is impacted by our chemistry.
Re: Heightened dream recall ability linked to increased creativity, connectivity
#50I don't get particularly vivid dreams but I sometimes get dreams of really interesting stories. The dream itself is like a movie, I'm not the main character but I'm just kind of watching it unfold. What's really interesting is that these "dream movies" always have a half-decent plot. IMO a lot of movie plots are really bad and stick to typical tropes and lessons. My dreams don't stick to these tropes and have actual…
I consider myself very fortunate that I have very vivid and often lucid dreams - for 50 years since I was a child. My dreams are like cinematic productions - crazy camera work and all. I dream in color and sound. Many of my dreams have soundtracks. I often wake up in the morning with the soundtrack still playing in my head and I turn on my phone and record. I have dozens of them now. When I was ten years old I had a…
I realize that I have amazing dreams of intricate complexity and richness but only recall the impression I had of the dreams upon waking. The rich details dissolve away within minutes. I am left only with the sketchy, and disappointing, meta-data--the impression--I had of the dream.