Thread: The Dream Journal Method

I think it's an awesome idea Roller. I hope you'll keep posting your experiences with this.

I'm also one of those people that has pretty solid dream recall (I usually remember 2-5 dreams every morning), but like you said, I tend to just "switch off" until I wake up.

I've been journaling almost every day for the past 3 months, and just recently I started to wonder if it was worth it, since I already had good recall anyway. The thought of using my journal entries to help induce lucidity never occured to me. I'm definitely gonna try this.



On a side note, I thought I'd mention that in my daily entries, I always separate one page for dreams, and the other to briefly describe general daily events, moods, physical condition, and sleeping patterns, so I have a background to refer to.

This is especially helpful if you're using brainwave entrainment, melatonin, herbs, or anything that might affect your sleeping patterns and REM states. It makes it easier to keep track of what works, what doesn't, and how it affects your dreams. Of course, it also uses up paper twice as fast, but I think it's worth it.

Yeah I'd never thought of using a dream-journal to achieve lucidity until Griffon mentioned it, but I guess it makes sense.

The hardest thing is keeping up the effort, and staying dedicated enough to be able to use it well.

I like your way of one page for the journal entries, the other for thoughts and ideas etc... I think just seperating them like that will help you become more involved etc. At the moment I write that stuff after the entry, but I might take your tip on that one.

It's funny, cuz after reading Griffon's post, I also thought of this and started doing it. I saw Griffon's idea as a key to understand better our Dream World, which would make it easier to have spontaneous LDs, since we would suddenly realize we're dreaming, as a result of our better understanding of our dreams.

Im writing down in my journal every day. Im re-reading my dreams a couple of times during the day and I really try to vividly picture the dreams, so as to really feel inside the dream again.

I think Pandragon's idea of writing down a couple of daily entries, such as mood, recent events,etc, is a really good idea. How many times have we seen that we dream about important things that happened to us recently? I think it would help us understand our dream world (therefor achieving more awareness), which is our goal when we use the Dream Journal Method (DJM).

Hmm maybe it should be called the "griffon method" ???

Aready I'm beginning to become a little more aware as I dream, and this morning I think I almost had a LD, I should have done a WILD, but I was too tired. Oh well.

Have you had any progress yet with it Kaimelar? I'm keen to know... it would be great if this helped a lot of people, but who knows.

Since I started doing it only two days ago, I can't report any progress, but I will when I start seeing it. I'm pretty confident in this method as it deals primarily with awareness, which is the main goal in LDing.

Hmmm I had a little progress this morning. I had a dream that I was in some outdoors painting class with some mates and all of a sudden we were wearing suits... it gave me a weird sense of dream dejavu.... I then told my mates "hey this is really weird, I think i've had a dream about this before".....BUT IT WAS A DREAM!!!! grr

I don't know whether I actually had dreamt it before, or whether it was just my subconsciousness trying to get through to me. It's a little frustrating, but I think I might be on the right track - the dream journal method is slowly raising my awareness of my dreams.

See what happens tonight.

ahahahaha "Ive had a dream like this before" dang thats sucks man lol

Since I started using the DJM, I can't report an increase in my awareness, not yet anyway, but my dream recall has increased dramatically. I'm now remembering 3 to 4 dreams on week days and even more on weekends, which is twice as more as I used to remember. I haven't done anything differently, so I can only blame the DJM for this.

Yeah my recall is getting much better, which by itself is a good thing I guess. I'm trying to do a lot of auto-suggestion (repeating "I will lucid dream" etc before I go to sleep), which I think will speed up the process a lot better, I doubt it will help achive lucidity by itself.

This morning I had a similar semi-aware dream, which is encouraging. I was walking around in my mates shoes that were made of organge peels all glued together. I remember thinking as i was crossing the street in these shoe "whoa I've got to tell someone about these shoes when I wake up, this is such a weird dream" but despite thinking this I did not become lucid. I then had another dream that I found some hair in a pie I was eating, I then thought to myself "Yuck, I don't like this, I'm going to wake up" and I did.

It's a little frustrating, but it shows that I am becoming much more aware of my dreams, which is quite pleasing. I think that tomorrow I'm going to try and wake early and do a MILD. I think I'm starting to see a few benefits from this method, but I'm afraid that I will lose interest before I start becoming lucid from it. I can only keep working hard at it I guess.

Hey guys just read the thread and its great to know that people are using the information I have given. Yea Roller I know what you mean by the big increase in awareness, it might not be giving you a huge amount of lucid dreams but it’s making you more conscious in your dreams. It’s kind of like in waking life we have a conscience where we can think, and slowly the increased awareness is giving us a conscience where we can think in our dreams. As you said before “There is a hair in my dream I’m going to wake up now”. I also had a similar dream where I found my self fighting with a 40 year old female teacher I had 3 years ago for English. In the dream I said this is just a dream I’m not going to fight my teacher, and just moved to a different dream, not becoming lucid just more aware.

when is started my DJ for the first time i got my first LD a few weeks later and I noticed a real affefct of it in real life to I was having better grades and more effecient plus i was remembering dreams I had months before starting a DJ but i only wrote the new ones not the old ones down.maybe because it was involved with my Sub consciouse then I quite doing DJ for a week or two restarted and my grades and recall have never been as good as then.