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    1. Two Week Dream Journal

      by , 06-18-2014 at 09:57 AM
      The following is a dream journal and analysis that I did for a research project. I wanted to share my experience and ask for everyone's opinions on the meaning of the dreams and the way I went about it.

      Inquiry 20 Dream Journal
      Dream Journal Entries

      June 4th, 10:36 PM
      Regular sleep (I think):
      Some people I know and I were at some big electronics store taking some sort of tour with the owner. He gave me a couple of monitors/televisions for free. I only remembered this dream because I remembered about my new free stuff before realizing it never happened.

      June 5th, 2014, 8:13 AM
      Nap:
      I went to some store like a gas station, hobby shop or CO-OP hardware store (weird places to think of) and I ran into someone from my basketball team. As we walking through we found more and more people, some already together. The coincidence was too much, I thought maybe it was planned (never considered I was dreaming). I found our coach there, too. I think there was someone I knew who wasn’t on the team as well. Also, I think there was a payphone somewhere.

      June 7th, 2014, 12:05 PM
      Regular sleep (no delayed nap this day):
      Someone followed me on Instagram and I went to change my name but never did. I had a different phone (Samsung Galaxy S5?) and didn't notice.

      June 9th, 2014, 9:05 AM
      Regular sleep:
      Running down 8th street east to west, coming from Arlington to Circle. I remember someone telling me to watch out for the speed trap but what I was doing was too important for me to care.

      Nap:
      I was playing in a basketball game and I was doing well, but my right hip was starting to hurt more and more. I got a pass on a fast break and had and open lane to the basket but at this point I could hardly move. I put up the layup and didn't even check if it went in because I immediately subbed out (even though there was no whistle).

      June 10th, 2014, 7:44 AM
      Regular sleep:
      Dreams were very scattered and disconnected. There was something about some sort of rating system of something (very faint memory). I remember having a cold ice pack on that was warm 10 minutes before and it hadn't been cooled. I told a friend about that. There was a pickup basketball game with people I know. I wasn't playing but I wasn't watching from nearby either. It was like a movie - I wasn't even there. There was a very rich couple who were having a guest from Europe come and so they were planning a mansion party with hundreds of people and they were arguing about it. I also noticed the Facebook Messenger app on my phone was very old and outdated. I don't remember messaging anyone.

      June 14th, 2014, 10:12 AM
      Nap:
      I was going on vacation somewhere really strange. I don’t believe my family was coming along.

      June 16th, 2014
      Regular sleep:
      7:18 PM
      Two dreams - one in which I think I was a security guard and another that I can't remember at all.
      7:45 AM
      Update: upon seeing my mother this morning I know that she was in one of these dreams along with other family members, I just don't know how. I was so close to remembering one of the dreams.

      Nap:
      8:20 AM
      I went to the gym at Walter Murray for basketball practice, but knew that our practice wasn't there that day because both gyms were taken. I was surprised that much of our team was waiting by the gyms. However, the gyms weren't like normal. It was almost like they were on the second story of some castle. The walls were all stone. Anyway, I thought we were in the wrestling room instead for some reason but our coach showed up and it turned out the boys' gym was open.

      () = odd observations about dream details
      Dream Journal Analysis
      Recurring Themes
      The most recurring theme I have noticed in my dreams by far is the connection to basketball. Basketball has on my mind a lot lately due to all of the practices tournaments and the NBA playoffs. All of the nights that I dreamt of something basketball related were either the night before or after basketball practice (I only have two practices each week). They tended to be on Monday mornings/Sunday nights.
      I also noticed that in many dreams I was surprised to see people I know in unexpected places. I never arrived at the destination with them – I arrived there and then ran into them. I would like to note that although I remembered many specific names, I left them out of this journal.

      Connections to Reality:
      Entry 1: I have wanted to buy a new monitor or two for quite a while now. I believe the store was a Fry’s Electronics, a large American chain which I visited once over the February break.

      Entry 2: I have not had any interactions with a hobby store lately but I did have practice with the people on that team right before sleeping that night.

      Entry 3: I have wanted to change my name on Instagram for a while now but have not bothered to do so. I have not had any thoughts about a different phone, though.

      Entry 4:
      Dream 1: I think this was a result of the speed trap setup in this exact area recently, but I don’t know why I was running that fast.
      Dream 2: This one very closely predicted what followed that night. My hip had been hurting for quite a while and it was getting to be quite severe at that point. I knew I had a basketball game the following night. Because I also had football practice right before, by the time the game came around it was bothering me quite a bit while running or moving laterally. I couldn’t really sit out, though, because we were already short on numbers. There was no missed wide open layup, though.

      Entry 5: The only connection to reality with this dream is that there was a news story around this time about some ridiculously huge party some kid threw in his parents’ mansion. My dream wasn’t focused on the party, however, but on the drama between the couple.

      Entry 6: This dream occurred the night before I went to Regina for a Roughriders game. I went with my brother and mother and met my father there (he was already there for work). I guess that I did go without some of my family but it was still a family trip, and not really a vacation.

      Entry 7:
      Dream 1: I have been watching a television show that involves security guards a lot lately.
      Dream 2: I did have basketball practice later that day, but it was with a completely different team.

      Overall:
      There was not a single dream without a connection to my real life in this journal. Although I know that dreams tend to be based on real-life aspects it is possible that I only remembered the dreams involving components from reality. Looking over the parts of the dreams I remembered or did not, it tended to be the more obscure elements that were most difficult to remember. I would remember key points but rarely any specific storyline.

      The Delayed Nap Effect
      In total, I had five dreams in my regular sleeping time and four dreams in the half hour of napping after a half hour awake. That may seem like a lot because of how much more time I spent asleep in regular sleep, but it is important to remember that it takes a long time to reach REM sleep and begin dreaming in regular sleep, whereas a nap within an hour of waking up tends to go straight back into REM sleep, allowing for immediate dreaming.
      Three of these four nap dreams were very vivid and detailed when recalling afterward, while only two out of five regular sleep dreams had very much detail. This could be due to all of the naps being short enough that I woke up not long after dreaming. In regular sleep it could have been a while since I had been dreaming. In addition, the lack of deep sleep (N3 stage) in the naps likely made recall easier.

      Recall Improvement
      I actually began keeping this journal on June 2nd but did not have a dream to enter until the 5th. The dreaming was pretty evenly spaced. I did not have most of the dreams near the end. There was a stretch between the 10th and 14th where I could remember dreaming every night but could not remember the dream itself. This did not happen when I first began keeping track; I simply had no memory of a dream. By the end, however, I remembered dreaming almost every night. With more time my recall of the dream itself might improve as well.

      Achieving Lucidity
      I did not achieve lucidity in the time that I kept this journal. Two weeks is not much time for this to occur. The main strategies I put in place were the delayed nap, the dream journal, thinking to myself that I am lucid dreaming before the naps and reality checks. Now that I am done with this particular experiment I will probably adjust my strategy in the future. Although it is disappointing that I did not experience a lucid dream, I learned a lot more about dreaming than I expected to. I am going to share my findings on the websites listed in my learning journal. I think that there were a lot of interesting findings that these communities would benefit from reading about. In addition, they can give me tips on how to progress and achieve lucidity.
      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid