Step 1:
First, you need to work on your dream recall. Keep a dream journal beside the bed and when you wake from a dream, write it down. Don’t get up and go to the bathroom or brush your teeth. Write down your dream before you forget it.

Step 2:
After a week or so of writing down your dreams, you’ll realize that you only recall a few. In reality, you have many dreams each night. Dreams occur when you enter REM sleep, which tends to happen after about 90 minutes of sleep. So set your alarm. Wake up every 90 minutes or so and write down your dreams. Although it sounds annoying, it doesn’t take long to scribble what you remember about your dream and fall right back to sleep.

Step 3:
Continue with the dream journal until you consistently remember at least four or five dreams each night. Once you’ve done that, you’re ready for the next step: reality checks. Every time you dream, something will happen that can’t really happen in your day-to-day life. Watch for it! This is what will clue you in to the dream.

Step 4:
One way to set up a reality check is force it. Every day, set up a routine and watch for differences. If there is a difference, you’re dreaming! For example: pinch your nose shut and close your mouth, then try to breathe. In real life, this doesn’t work, but if you do it in your dream and you can breathe, you will know that you’re not actually awake. Other examples include: check your watch, look away, check it again. Was it the same time? If not, you’re dreaming!

Step 5:
Be patient. Using these triggers each and every day, it may still take a while for you to notice it in your dream. It may seem silly to have to look at your watch twice, but when it becomes a habit, then it comes into your dreams.

Step 6:
Expect failure. In your first few attempts, don’t be surprised if your reality check fails and you get so excited that you wake up! It feels like you failed, but you didn’t. You’re on the right path and once you get used to seeing those little reality checks fail, then you’ll be able to start taking control.

Step 7:
When you start to realize that you’re dreaming, take it slow. Try to control only your actions, not everyone around you right away. Try changing the scenery or the color of a flower with your mind. By starting slow you’ll develop the best habits for controlling your dreams later.

Step 8:
Keep trying! This process can be super-speedy or super-slow. Everyone who tries has different results and if it’s taking a while for your reality checks to click in, don’t stress. It will come, just keep trying!

For some reason it always ended with me sacrificing myself to the Vampire so everyone could escape him.

I'm often back in school, usually high school, sometimes college, once in a rare while is grammar school.

I dreamt McCain tried to have me assassinated via airstrike the other night. And then when that didn't work, he came and killed me in person with a gun. It was, um, weird.

Another common theme, at time, is the inability to run. I'll have many dreams where I need to go somewhere byt it's like my feet are made of lead and I can't move them faster than a casual walk. Or, much less frequently, I can run but get winded very, very quickly.

Another common theme, at time, is the inability to run. I'll have many dreams where I need to go somewhere byt it's like my feet are made of lead and I can't move them faster than a casual walk. Or, much less frequently, I can run but get winded very, very quickly.
Not hard dreams to interpret. These show up during job searches and the like, I think, so I shouldn't have to worry about them for a while now.

I hate dreaming. Because when you sleep, you wanna sleep. Dreaming is work, you know - there I am in a comfortable bed, the next thing you know I have to build a go-kart with my ex-landlord. I want a dream of me watching myself sleep.

I'm often back in school, usually high school, sometimes college, once in a rare while is grammar school. And I'm usually either stressed because I didn't do my homework

I've had a similar recurring theme but instead of not being able to move fast enough, it usually involves having to shoot someone to save myself or someone close to me (my father more often than not for some reason) and being unable to pull the trigger because the trigger pull is too heavy. I'll grip the gun with both hands and use two fingers to pull the trigger and not be able to squeeze off the shot or if I do I can't aim it properly because of all the force i'm using to pull the trigger.

Holy shit, tell me you're not subliminally craving cock.

When I was reading this thread yesterday I was thinking how I haven't had any memorable dreams in a long time.

Then I had a nightmare last night so bad that I woke up screaming.

Oh come on now you have to tell us what it was about. Either that, or we'll start guessing.

I bet it was that killed everyone you cared about by accident after you found out you could change everything to Skittles with one touch.

Or, maybe you were reporting on the Rangers and stumbled into a small lockerroom at MSG only to find Chris Drury and Henrik making out.

Or, maybe a snapping turtle was terrorizing your neighborhood.

Had another one last night. Nothing spectacular. I was watching a crossword puzzle being filled out. There was no pencil or person. Just the puzzle and the letters were being filled in. Not words either, just the same letters being entered in a different order in the grid.

Oh man, i just remembered a recurring dream I had as a kid. It was me, my sister and four family friends wandering around a jungled up Manhattan. We had to get to the top of the Twin Towers before the T-Rex got us. For some reason I remember having this dream once a year right around New Years. Haven't had that one since I was about 10.

There was another recurring dream that I'd have at least once a week when I was 16. I don't remember all the particulars, but I have a very vivid memory of a gigantic bridge that I had to traverse to get somewhere important. I remember this bridge being huge and the only way to get across was to walk up this really long staircase that went practically straight up then walk across a narrow gangway that had to accomodate two-way foot traffic. It was also very dusty, almost desert-like. I had that one all throughout my first semester of college. I don't recall having it afterwards.

I have no idea. I wake up and i don't remember any dream that i had unless it's a nightmare.

I honestly worried that, as I was receiving my doctorate, I'd hear my mother's voice waking me up for my first day of kindergarten.

This is the kind of thing that would lead a five-year-old to eat a pistol.

The main things really are just the can't run or an exam I did not know about. Recently, however, that exam I do not know about has morphed a bit. It no longer makes me panic, instead I just tend to smile and play it off.

When I was 8 or so I had a lucid dream in which GI Joe had built a base in my backyard. That ruled.

Anyone ever have one of those dreams which, later on, you can't remember whether or not it was a dream? At least once in the past six months I referenced a conversation to someone and had them say "I don't remember that." I responded with something along the lines of "yeah you do, you'd just gotten back from that mission to mars to meet your dead grandmother... wait, no that makes no sense, must have been a dream..." Not quite that far out there but close enough.

I dreamed last night that I was drinking a beer, which is odd, because I haven't had a beer in 16 months. The dream was so vivid that I could actually taste the beer...... and I hate waking up thirsty like that.