Why Do I Never Dream?

[PinealisGlandia]

Thank you for your reply, I have saved some pictures on my phone of Artemisia Vulgaris so that I source the correct variant. I am going out again this afternoon to see if I can find some. My intention is to make it into tea. I will indeed try the notebook by the bed and see if that helps with any recall.
It is all so frustrating as I want to do some shadow work and everything says - "dream analysis" and "record your dreams"! I would if I could ever recall them. I want to unblock whatever is causing my issue and I need to get to my subconscious without taking illegal drugs as they are quite hot on that in the UK.

This thread is bringing a lot of memories back to me from when I did my heavy dreamwork. I just remembered my "13th floor recipe", which was mugwort tea, plus valerian, plus melatonin. You see, the mugwort gives you the vividity and presence for recall, but the valerian helps you get deeper to experience those dreams in the first place, and the melatonin helps you get under to begin with. I will disclaim that I have since learned that if you take OTC melatonin supplements too often, your brain can stop producing natural melatonin, making sleep very difficult. So I do suggest just the valerian and mugwort, leave the melatonin out except maybe once a week maximum.

I think I saw you mention you're in Wales, so I'm not sure about availability, but at least in the US there's a brand of tea called Celestial Seasonings and their "Sleepytime EXTRA" blend has valerian in it. I always just drank a cup of it and a cup of mugwort tea about 30 minutes before bed.

If valerian + mugwort fails to produce results after a few tries, I'd definitely consider that most shadowwork advice is geared towards dreamers and just doesn't apply to you. Keep in mind I'm not positive about this, it's just a bit of a hypothesis after working with a lot of stuck dreamers, but I do wonder if this "how to dream better" advice is like an owner's manual for a car. For 99% of people, it's just fine, but 1% of people need cars with those special hand-pedals because their legs don't work. Maybe stuck dreamers are like those people, and they just need a different setup, like those hand-pedals but for shadowwork. An idea I'd have would be to take unusual aspects of your day-to-day life and run them through a dream interpretation filter as though your waking life were a dream, and see how that works out.

 

[priestess-jocasta]

could be you are dreaming but repressing it because the dream content troubles you?

 

[solxyz]

I don't know if this has been mentioned yet, but regular cannabis use suppresses dreaming. I don't know if that is a factor for you, but something to keep in mind.

 

[priestess-jocasta]

some freudian psychology might help here. he made great study of dreams and their power. freud made great importance of repression and its effects. we all have instinctive drives that are socially unacceptable and repressed as dream content. for example freud pointed out that adult males often have a strong sexual desire towards their own mother, so they surpress the drive however it wasnt always so, in ancient egypt sexual intercourse between mothers and adult sons was revered and adult sons often married their own mother if the father died at a young age. that was normal back then and ancient egyptian texts describe mother/adult son lovemaking as being 'the greatest of pleasures'

 

[reverendsteveii]

glad to see marijuana mentioned here. i've found it has a significant impact on my ability to recall dreams. i don't typically recall dreams when i'm smoking regularly, quitting causes tons of really intense dreams, and when i play with the wake back to sleep method of astral projection/oobe or just doze after waking up in the morning, that's when i actually have dreams that i can recall upon waking. it all seems to come down to the amount of thc active in my system.

I can also echo the effectiveness of both mugwort and damiana leaf in enhancing dreams.

 

[ewiz]

glad to see marijuana mentioned here. i've found it has a significant impact on my ability to recall dreams. i don't typically recall dreams when i'm smoking regularly, quitting causes tons of really intense dreams, and when i play with the wake back to sleep method of astral projection/oobe or just doze after waking up in the morning, that's when i actually have dreams that i can recall upon waking. it all seems to come down to the amount of thc active in my system.

I can also echo the effectiveness of both mugwort and damiana leaf in enhancing dreams.

I was about to mention the wake back to bed method for lucid dreaming, as that would definitely be worth a try for the OP. It's been my experience that WBTB has the highest success rates in the most people for inducing lucidity, and in turn recall.