What to do or think about before falling asleep for dreams?

I want to remember my dream so I can continue my dream journal but I'm wondering what should I do or think about before I fall asleep to improve my vividness and lucidity of my dream tonight?

Wait for the dream to start. Be ready to catch it when it comes.

Drink apple juice before bed it increases vividness of dreams and repeat a mantra over and over until you fall asleep such as I will have an extremely vivid dream and remembe it or I will remember my vivid dream something along those lines good luck

TioW42, maybe best thing to do is not to stress over it. Just naturally enjoy whatever dreams you may experience whether they are lucid dreams or even if you will recall it at all. Try not to fuss over it. These days I fall asleep thinking of my recently departed significant other. I want to regain my ability to have lucid so I can interact with her, but by fussing over it I may end up not having or remembering dreams of her. Just naturally look forward to wonderful night of dreams about things you enjoy or someone dear to you and your desire to remember them in the morning would naturally improve as you write down the dreams. If you can't recall any dreams, then try again another day. It's no biggie. You can even write down some old dream that pops up in your head. Chances are it may have something to do with the dreams you are trying to recall. Eventually, you'll recall dreams easily. Maybe this becomes easier if you have a catalyst as deep as the one I have.

dolphin, I don't think he/she is talking about WILD attempts. People who are in the "improve dream recall" stage are rarely advanced enough to do WILD. I totally mastered dream recall and improved vividness of my recall half an year ago before I let it go because of life situations. At best I had only one WILD and that too only by accident.

I know they weren't talking about WILD attempts. The point I was trying to make is that intention can improve recall because it makes dreams more important and therefore easier to remember. Actively waiting for the dream sets and maintains this intention.

I usually think through what I did during the day and that seem to both increase my vividness of my dreams and my dream recall.

Done so every since 2010: http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-sign...reams-try.html

Now I also add meditation after that until I fall asleep and in that case I think nothing. :meditate:

Those actions are in my experience two simple ways to increase vividness of dreams and chance of lucidity.

Peace!

MasterMind, that's a great suggestion about recalling the day. I keep diaries so I write down my daily events during night time. Yes, I have a diary for my dreams and my waking day, my gf got annoyed at this sometimes. Anyway, I used to visualize my day during days I fond hard to fall asleep... It's a lot like visualization, on almost all times I replayed my days it has helped a lot and the activity itself seemed to reinforce my dream recall the following morning. Not to mention it calms the mind of racing thoughts. I had read about it somewhere long ago. People not keeping diary should definitely take a moment to reflect on the day. Most of us are unconscious about lot of the stuff we do daily, we may spot some small precious moments. It's healthy mentally and emotionally. These things are powerful catalysts for dream recall.