Thread: How important really is a DJ?

Keeping a dream journal, for most people, is very important. I personaly can not remember dreams unless i start writing them down. It also depends on intent; if you tell your self to remember the dreams, you will start too. Your brain is naturally wired to forgot dreams, as it sees it as unimportant; you are essential re-wiring your brain to remember dreams.
Not too sure on dream vividness, but it depends on your dream recall. It depends if you can remember the vividness of the dreams.

Well I'm just natural at remembering them, but not vividly

Well, if you are naturally remembering them, you should still keep a dream journal. After you have a few (around 7-14) you should start seeing a common theme, or a sign. Use this to trigger a lucid dream! Idk about vividness though :/.... all my dreams are really vivid, well no sound, i never have sound in my dream <----- why is this?

For most people, dream journals are a huge part of dream recall. But not for everyone, as I know first hand.

My dream recall has always been fairly good, though not great. Once I started trying to keep a dream journal though, I was actually forgetting dreams MORE, because I kept having false awakenings in which I would write down the dream, then when I actually woke up, I couldn't remember them. Instead, I started just focusing on remembering the dreams by repeating them over and over for a few minutes when I woke up instead of writing them down, and that stopped the false awakenings. I still wrote them down though, but not until a little while after I'd woken up. Now, I remember more dreams than I ever did before, even though I'm no longer consciously trying to remember them.

The vividness of your dream recall seems - to me - to depend on the dream itself, and I've found that using a dream journal hasn't really increased the vividness of my dreams - which are really all over the place. My dreams are always "fuzzy" around the edges to varying degrees, but I've found that lucid dreaming itself tends to increase vividness if I can get some control over them early on. If I become lucid fairly late in the dream, I have basically no dream control, and the dream remains "fuzzy" and warped - it's kind of like the "rules" have already been established, and I can't break them if I'm not lucid early enough.

Originally Posted by Entaria

For most people, dream journals are a huge part of dream recall. But not for everyone, as I know first hand.

My dream recall has always been fairly good, though not great. Once I started trying to keep a dream journal though, I was actually forgetting dreams MORE, because I kept having false awakenings in which I would write down the dream, then when I actually woke up, I couldn't remember them. Instead, I started just focusing on remembering the dreams by repeating them over and over for a few minutes when I woke up instead of writing them down, and that stopped the false awakenings. I still wrote them down though, but not until a little while after I'd woken up. Now, I remember more dreams than I ever did before, even though I'm no longer consciously trying to remember them.

The vividness of your dream recall seems - to me - to depend on the dream itself, and I've found that using a dream journal hasn't really increased the vividness of my dreams - which are really all over the place. My dreams are always "fuzzy" around the edges to varying degrees, but I've found that lucid dreaming itself tends to increase vividness if I can get some control over them early on. If I become lucid fairly late in the dream, I have basically no dream control, and the dream remains "fuzzy" and warped - it's kind of like the "rules" have already been established, and I can't break them if I'm not lucid early enough.

why would you want to stop false awakenings? Free lucids, and to the other guy, I'm not sure, I just got taste into my dreams like 2 nights ago, so thats taste see and hearing. But I guess it comes with recall. I had a blueraspberry snowball thing and it tasted like crap but I still drank it

Originally Posted by n00bf0rlyf3

why would you want to stop false awakenings? Free lucids

Because I wasn't lucid during the false awakenings – I thought that I had woken up already. And it was driving me crazy to keep "waking up", writing down my dream (sometimes more than once in a row), and then almost immediately waking up again only to have forgotten the original dream. 99% of the time, my false awakenings only last a minute, if that, before I actually wake up (usually because my alarm clock has gone off. They almost never happen at night, only in the morning when I'm about to get up), so I don't even have time to figure out that I'm dreaming - or really do anything the few times that I did become lucid.

Personally for me, it's a mix of yes and no. It's mainly the act of actively trying to remember your dream when you wake up that puts the dream into memory. Our brains have multiple stages of memory, and dreams are only in our short term memory (as is everything) unless you actively put it into your long term memory. In this case, we do so by writing it down. All this basically is, is repetition, which helps you have a better chance of getting the dream into your long term memory. You could have the same effect by just thinking about the dream upon awakening and then continually replaying it over in your head throughout the day. The benefit of writing or recording a DJ, though, is that 1. it gets you in the habit, and 2. you have something to go back on if you happen to let the dream slip from your memory. sometimes we have memories in our long term memory, but we have recall problems. re-reading something about forgotten a dream can trigger it to jump back into your active memory.

again, i'm new here and to the LD thing, but I do know a bit about how our brain works, including memory and dreaming/sleeping. I think my point is, is that the better your memory and methodology for remembering your dreams, the better your brain will naturally be at dream recall. and this should eventually tie into lucid dreaming and better vividness/memory.

My recall went up from average 1 fragment if I was lucky, to average 2 full dreams + 1 fragment (3 full dreams if I'm lucky) per night in the TWO WEEKS since I started keeping a Dream Journal.

So for me, it's improved my recall greatly!

Heck, even if it wasn't important and only recommended (which it pretty much is) I'd keep one anyway. Think about all those awesome nightly adventures you go one and half or 3/4 of which you wouldn't remember after an hour or two upon wakening, or by then, only fragments. To me, i don't think it's worth it. I love all my dreams and the crazy shit that goes on.
What do we spend.. like, 1/3 of our lives sleeping?

Originally Posted by fOrceez

Heck, even if it wasn't important and only recommended (which it pretty much is) I'd keep one anyway. Think about all those awesome nightly adventures you go one and half or 3/4 of which you wouldn't remember after an hour or two upon wakening, or by then, only fragments. To me, i don't think it's worth it. I love all my dreams and the crazy shit that goes on.
What do we spend.. like, 1/3 of our lives sleeping?

I'm not sure but that sounds correct. 8 hrs sleeping 16 hours awake = 1/3

If you woke up and just tried to recall your dream it would probably have the same effect, even if you didn't write anything down. The problem is most people don't have the discipline to wake up and go over it in their mind, without falling back asleep. Dream journals are great for the little details though. When you are writing stuff down, think about the small details like what people are wearing, the colors of objects, and that sort of stuff. I think what you probably want is to focus on the details, since you already know the basics and already remember the major things.

For example if you talk to your friend bob you should write down something like, "I spoke to my friend bob about cookies, and he was wearing a red tshirt and jean pants. We were sitting on the red couch that I used to own back at my old house, though we were in my current house talking. He said "I like sugar cookies" and I said "So do I."

You want that kind of detail in it. If you just say, "I talked to my friend bob about sugar cookies", it will help you remember the dream but you will forget the details rather quickly.

depends on how good you are at remembering dreams just by saying them to yourself. I've had days where I wake up from a dream, and I realize I am late for something, and I rush to get ready and what happens is I'm so caught up in other things that I forget the dream within minutes. Other times I wake up in the middle of the night remembering a dream, I just say it over to myself once and when I wake up hours later, I still remember the dream. DJ'ing can help you find dream signs that you might be missing, and can sort of convince your mind to remember dreams more efficiently, because your mind thinks they are important to remember since you are recording them, but I don't know if this will ever build up to the point where you will completely remember every single dream you have without having to even think about it.

Some people are just naturally good at dream recall and don't need DJ, but no matter how good you are, A DJ can only help your LD'ing

I'm sure it's different for everyone, but for me a DJ is the most important aspect of dream recall. When I am too busy or distracted to keep a DJ, my recall completely fails, and it only comes back if I keep faithfully updating my journal every morning.

If you find you are keeping a DJ but it's not helping your recall, maybe you need to include more detail in your entries? The emotions you were feeling, your thoughts at the time, tiny visual details etc. etc.

I do not write any dream journal. But I only had WILDs so far. WILDs I do get reliably however and I do remember them, as long as I was lucid enough.

Keeping a dream journal will increase your dream recall more than you might ever realize.

I never appreciated my dream journal until one day I used it to discover that I had the same dream exactly one year later, at the same hour of the morning.