DJ Questions

[New_Lucid_Dreamer]

Regarding a dream journal. What are some tips in keeping one? What are some of the best methods of improving dream recall? I'm supposed to keep a dream journal for my English class and I've had no dream recalls in the past few days. I was just wondering if there was a more effective way of increasing it. Thanks. EDIT: To clarify, I need to remember at least an idea about what the dreams were about. It's all about interpreting dreams.

[Barns]

It is best to keep something to write on right next to your bed so you can write down dreams as soon as you wake up. And as for increasing recall, autosuggestion works best: keep on telling yourself that you will remember your dreams and then you will.

[Rare]

Some tips in keeping a DJ? Hrms... for my DJ I usualy start the entry with the date \ # of hours slept \ if I attempted lucid dreams or not. then under neath the # of normal dreams and lucid dreams I had. Sun Jan 13th - 10 Hours - LD Attempted 3ND - 0LD This way I can keep track of various stats for my dreams. But in the end it really depends on what information you want recorded in your dream journal. There are many ways to do it, and all of them are right As for dream recall.. I'll let someone else handle that question....

[nautilus]

What I do to remember dreams: -When I'm falling asleep, I think about how I basically want to see what's going to happen in my dream. I find that if I fall asleep focusing on what I'm going to do when I'm awake, I have much more vague dreams. When I catch my mind wandering into the various worries of daily life, I tell myself to focus on the here and now, and that I have nothing to worry about because I need my sleep and my alarm clock will wake me up when needed. -I have a tendency to hit the snooze button a few times, and in between the beeping (about 9 minutes), I will be anywhere between totally asleep again and dreaming and somewhat awake and remembering bits of my dreams from that night. -When it comes to the actual remembering of the dreams, I think of any little bit that comes into my head, then expand my memory from there. If when I wake up all I have is a vauge feeling, I try to recreate that feeling with as much detail as possible. Not by mentally describing it, but by trying to actually re-live it. This has to be done very passively without rushing, then once I'm a bit more sure of what the feeling was, I think something along the lines of "I wonder what that was all about..." and start thinking about what came before or after. If in the middle of doing that another dream fragment pops up, I work on that one a little bit. It's like a puzzle, and not always sequential. -I like to record my dreams on the computer because it's easier to add in details and I can figure out the order of events after first getting them down.