Dream journal questions

[lazytitan]

1. Should I be waking up in the middle of the night via alarm or pee break from water to write in my journal. Or should I just remember what I can in the morning when I wake up. When I was waking up in the middle of the night I was able to write down like 3-4 dreams. If I dont wake up I am lucky to get 2 dreams in. Usually its a mix of 2 dream that I just write down as 1 dream I think. 2. What is your preferred Android app for writing and tracking dreams.

[Irreo]

1. For starters they recommend to wake up via alarm, usually because your mind isn't still used to remember dreams. If you're not a starter I don't see the need of an alarm. It's true that the more dreams you remember, the better, but as far as I know (and unless you're too tired) once you get used to wake up after dream cycles, you will just wake up without the need of an alarm. In my case, I wake up every 1.5 - 2 hours almost every night. Some others my first wake up memory is after 6 hours of sleeping... In any case, I don't recommend waiting to the morning. Each time you wake up naturally, write. Also, thinking about remember it in the morning is a mistake. Very probably you won't, and sometimes even if you only have a glimpse of a scene, once you start writting a whole scene shows up, and probably more later. 2. I don't use the phone for dreams as I feel the screen too aggresive, specially in the middle of the night. I just try to remember my dreams in the dark after waking up, choose some keywords and repeat them to myself, then turn the light on and write the keywords on the notebook. Once done, I start writting the dream. It's amazing how fast dreams vanish sometimes... I usually have to check the keywords I wrote 5 minutes ago to know what the other dream was about... and just looking at one word shows me the whole dream (or scene).

[Fuzzman]

I hate alarms so I don't bother with them unless I have to. I'm still fairly new getting back into it but I've gotten to a point where I can wake up naturally after most of my dreams. I think telling yourself before bed that you will wake after your dreams should start to have an effect pretty quickly, at least it did for me. So I'd try that first if you don't want to use an alarm and have to guess when your dreams will be. I definitely wouldn't rely on trying to remember them all in the morning because it's really easy to lose the details.

[NyxCC]

Should I be waking up in the middle of the night via alarm or pee break from water to write in my journal. Or should I just remember what I can in the morning when I wake up While we recommend to improve dream recall while on the journey to lucidity, you don't necessarily have to keep purposefully waking up all night long in order to journal. The main idea is to become aware of natural awakenings and if you desire you may use them as wbtb and to write down dreams. You can also practice reviewing dreams in your mind in case you don't want to get up and write them down.

[DoubleHelix]

Lazytitan: You and I are pretty much grappling with the same noob issue - finding a balance between sleep and journal creation, and in my case, sleep partner courtesy. Progress in recording dreams to a journal does come quickly, though! Furthermore, it's also a hoot and a half to go back and re-read/re-live the unique and bizarre creative plots your brain can construct from nothingness. I have started to love and cherish my journal entries, which has motivated me all the more to get those dreams down as fully and efficiently as possible. Some experimentation may be required before you can settle on a particular method. The need for experimentation to establish the most efficient dream recall/journal creation seems to be dictated by the widely disparate individual living/sleeping/partner circumstances. Happily, there's a great variety of excellent advice on that very topic peppered throughout this forum. I bet if I looked hard enough, I'd find "there's an app for that" for many of the issues I've faced as a beginner-level lucid dreamer. In fact, I'm going to see about tucking my smart phone under my pillow after searching for an alarm app that can be set to vibrate every 90 or so minutes to see if I can quietly prompt myself to wake on cue w/o waking my wife. That way we can sleep in the same bed again. 4/25/14 Edit: Well, that didn't work out well. I set an alarm for 3:00am and I was awoken from a somewhat mundane dream which I was able to recall and record in my bedside note pad for inclusion in my journal. Tried to WILD after that, but was unable to fall back asleep! Also, the alarm app seems to kill my IPhone battery faster than any I've ever used. Not good. Frank