Thread: My Drean Journal

I found at first my dream journal entries were just a few sentences and even now, they aren't that long. I think that dream journaling will help increase the amount of dreams and the amount of the dreams you remember, but also things such as having a reliable sleep pattern or avoiding things that suppress REM sleep stages also will help with increasing dream length and quality.

My dream journals are at least 2-3 pages/day...and I still don't remember everything. Are you sure you're writing down every detail you remember? Think about the scenery and be specific..since you're a writer it should be easy to come up with some relevant adjectives about your surroundings. Really try to relive it. Try and recall all your senses...you don't always see things in a dream but feel them. I've always been blessed with excellent dream recall but some nights aren't as a great as others so if I spend time really thinking about the details then it usually brings up more details and scenarios I had forgotten completely. Keep it in the back of your mind throughout the day and sometimes something during the day will remind you of a forgotten dream or detail.
It also helps me to recall daily events in my head. During a RC stop and ask yourself what you were just doing. I visualize my life in rewind and go back as far as I can remember. It's surprising how many parts of the day can be lost. It's the same way with dreams. This process is similar to recalling dreams and helps with memory recall in general. And done consistently, this will also increase awareness throughout the day

Thank, I've never thought of it that way. I usually just recall the events of the dream I never write about the scenery but I'll get right now that tonight!

I don't always wake up during the night and recall dreams.

But when I do, I only write down a paragraph at most.

When you wake up during the night, just write down the key points of the dream. Enough so that you remember the main plot points. Then when you wake up in the morning, you can re-read those notes and get back every detail of the dream with the main points reminding you. It's a good idea not to wake up in the night and write down a multi page DJ entry as you may lose a lot of sleep or wake yourself up too much and be unable to go back to sleep. But once it's morning, by all means write as many details as you can recall.

Like Lunagoddess said, you can train your dream recall by training your recall in waking life. That's why, when I go to bed, I always try to remember everything that happened that day.
Good luck!