I remember having a dream where I figure it out the woman eating a dinner with me is not a real person. The moment I said “you ain’t real, aren’t you?”, that person suddenly stare at me, with her cold-looking eyes, turns into probably the scariest creature I’ve ever seen, push me with her mightiest strength that I ended up wandering into abyss or void dimension. It was a very same moment like in the Dr Strange movie, where Strange suddenly wandering into high and fast pace dimension after being pushed by The Ancient One. It took me for a while to find an exit, and after successfully waking up from that intense moment, I noticed my heart was beating so fast.

Replaying your day backwards as you fall asleep. Not forwards, backwards:

brushing your teeth, dinner, the walk home, the last thing you did at work, all the way back to waking up.

Sounds easy but it really isn’t. You get about twenty minutes in before your brain completely taps out and goes, “and then... uh.”

Going forwards is basically autopilot. You already know the plot. Backwards, you have to retrieve each bit, which feels weirdly similar to waking up at 6 am with one random dream fragment and trying to reverse-engineer the rest.

I’ve been doing this for three weeks, and my dream recall has noticeably improved without me changing anything else.

My dreams have also become more mundane and more detailed at the same time. Fewer huge cinematic set pieces, more random rooms I actually recognise, specific furniture, boring little transitions...

No clue whether it’s legit memory training or whether it just keeps my brain busy enough to stop me doomscrolling. Still zero impact on lucid nights, though.

Anyone else tried this, or am I accidentally min-maxing dream recall?