Thread: DEILD or Dream Journal?

How is your recall? Thats the clue question.

If you struggle on dream recall, you must avoid DEILD. If you recall at least two dreams per night (and it would be nice 3 some night) then you have a decent dream recall and you can try DEILD.

It's also up to you, if you had a boring dream, just go and DEILD... no problem if its gone, but if you had a large epic dream, you should wake up at all costs and write it down, as larger dreams are harder to recall everything.

I also do not recommend in going greedy and chaining over three dreams, you might risk loosing all of them!

Welcome to DV btw!!!

Take a look over our tuts, they will help you out a lot.

I struggled with this question for a while, myself!!

The solution I came up for myself is...

I have chained in the past, and DEILD'ed twice, so I know I can do it (knowing this affects my solution, trust me!).

There are two days (sometimes 3) out of the week where I have to work night shifts. It's really, really difficult for me to practice my normal technique when it's light outside (I wear a sleep mask, but I have to take it off if I need to go to the washroom Just seeing the light turns my brain back on, because regardless of how little sleep I may have gotten, it thinks "Daylight! Awake time!"). Dream chaining is pretty much perfect for these days, since you're not really supposed to move So that was deciding factor #1.

Now, in regards to the recall... yeah, I am forgoing recall if I decide to DEILD. But the way I see it, on these days where I don't really want to wake myself up too much anyways, I find that slipping back into a dream rather than taking notes is preferable, anyways, since I don't want to risk losing sleep by taking notes.

That said, here's where it helps knowing myself. I have, once, been able to slip back into a dream after I'd gotten out of bed, gone to the washroom, AND taken notes. It wasn't lucid, but there were elements from the first dream present in this new one. It wasn't really a true dream chain, but all I did was fall asleep thinking about the previous dream.

So, you could play around here, a little bit. If you can find a way of unobtrusively taking down some notes from your dream without moving too much, or waking up too much, try it! I actually text myself an email with my dream notes I find that it doesn't actually wake me up too much to do that (I've managed, once, to text myself a sentence, and not remember even doing it... unfortunately, the sentence made no sense, and didn't help my recall, either, lol!). I naturally wake up facing my nightstand, so I guess I'm lucky that way, too. I don't have to move too much to text myself my notes.

Don't feel that each time you wake up, you need to record the whole dream. Most people just write little reminders. Depending on how long a dream was, for me, depends on how many notes I wrote. Generally, each "scene" gets a note. Typically, my notes look something like

Based off of this dream, so you can see how the expanded version looks compared to the notes I might take.

0500-0930
-Hanging out with popular chicks
-Phone call for birthday
-Douchebag boyfriends at our apartment
-Mine sprayed liquid out his nose
-Went to see real friend

1300-1330
-Working in basement bistro
-Hot fudge sundaes
-Stressed out chick/co-worker

I try to make my notes so that they highlight key plot points, but also so that they aren't overly lengthy. They are meant to just remind me of the scene, and I can generally fill in and expand on the gaps from there.

It's also important to note the experience I had today. I decided to forego the recall in favour of a DEILD... when I woke up around mid-morning, I could barely recall the dream. That's fairly typical of me. The dream wasn't lost and I could have recalled it, with some effort. Instead, I took the vague fragment I woke up with, and tried to DEILD with it. It failed! So, that's a lesson learned for me! If I only have a vague scene, I SHOULD attempt to recall and write some notes, rather than try to DEILD with a half-assed scene.

Hm ... I usually remember just a dream per night, sometimes two. That means it would be interesting to write down my dreams.
One problem I've been facing is that, when I wake up (6:30 am), I have to go to school, so I don't have much time to write down my dreams. This week I'm going to start waking up earlier to try to record them.
And my street is very noisy, it's hard to relax completely. I think that influences a bit. I have to buy some earplugs

Another question: the way that I wake influences my dream recall? For example, if I am awakened by an alarm clock, I remember less than if I wake up normally?

Another question: the way that I wake influences my dream recall? For example, if I am awakened by an alarm clock, I remember less than if I wake up normally?

It's the same for me, unfortunately. Alarm clocks usually mean less recall

But! the alarm clock was the only way I could start recalling more dreams per night. On a normal night (where I know I can get 8+ hours of sleep, and I don't have to wake up early), I will generally set my alarm for 3hrs, 4.5hrs and 6 hrs after I fall asleep. That gives me 3-4 dreams I can recall and also 2-3 WBTB attempts. Usually, if I know I've done that, I will wake up once the dream finishes naturally, and usually that happens before the alarm. Nice recall, AND no alarm ring Took about a week for this to start working.

I think it should work, I'm going to try it. Thanks!

I leave for school early as well, usually on the train around 7, i just write my DJ on my ipod there while i'm bored, then transfer it to my book at home right before i go to sleep