A Lucid Dream Journal can be extremely effective at not only helping you see patterns in what helps you achieve lucidity, but it can also ensure that you remember your dreams. Many people have had spontaneous lucid dreams, whether they intended to or not. Many times these first lucid dreaming experiences involve either a revisiting of a place from their past, or doing something highly familiar in the present. These lucid dreaming experiences usually are so exciting that the dreamer wakes up almost immediately. The meaning behind these types of dreams being the first lucid experiences is not clear, but perhaps they are in some ways the safest and easiest dreams to become lucid in since the surroundings and actions are so familiar. In some cases, however, without a lucid dreaming journal you may not remember the details.
We believe that spontaneous lucid dreaming is actually much more common than most people know. In many cases, as with most dreams, the dream is probably forgotten or only remembered in a hazy fashion. Thus the very first step in your journey to lucidity, before you go practicing the how to techniques you will find here, is to make sure you are remembering as many dreams as possible, Keeping a Lucid Dreaming Journal is an excellent way to do this – and as motivation keep in mind that it may be that you are having lucid dreams but just not remembering them!
Online lucid dream journal
Right now Lucid Dream Journals do not have to be boring notebooks that you have to write in each morning. Instead use technology. Many smart phones allow you to dictate into text, or skip text altogether and have an audio dream journal. One way or another, this way of recording what you have dreamed about first thing in the morning will help you ensure that when you do start to have lucid dreams because you follow the techniques here – or even when you have natural and spontaneous lucid dreams – you will remember them.
Lucid Dream Journal Entries
The main reason to use a Lucid Dreaming Journal journal is to track your successes and challenges while sleeping to know which techniques are working and which need to be adapted further. But we also want to discuss a different kind of entry in a Lucid Dream Journal, those that involve tracking your wake time and have nothing to do with your lucid dreaming techniques.
Some people find that they are more likely to have lucid dreams some days rather than others for reasons having little to do with their techniques. Instead they come to realize that their likelihood of having dream control may have to do with the amount of sleep they got the night before, their diet that day, how much caffeine they had, or the amount of stress their day involved. There may even be more subtle reasons such as their mood when they went to bed, how warm it was in their room, the weather outside, or what kind of day lay ahead.
Thus we suggest that your Lucid Dreaming Journal also should describe your waking time in detail, in fact in as much detail as possible especially until patterns emerge. You might be surprised at the patterns that do emerge, so keep an open mind an analyze your wake time journal carefully. Again, an online lucid dream journal may be the easiest path, though some people prefer to simply write things down.
What to write in your lucid dream journal
Some examples of what you might write in your lucid dream journal include:
- The beginning, middle, and end of the story (or some other way to consistently write about the content)
- The people encountered and places visited
- Why and how it ended
- Anything you attempted to do, successfully or not
- What you did the day before – what you ate, how much sleep you got the previous night, how active/tired you were, etc.
- Any specific object or vision worth writing in more detail about
- The overall mood in your dream
Keeping a Lucid Dreaming Journal
The biggest mistake people sometimes make when they start to have lucidity is that they abandon their dream journal. The assumption is that now that their dreams are lucid they will remember them naturally, and the dream journal was a helpful step in the process that is no longer needed. That assumption often proves wrong, and in our estimation often leads the dreamer to forget many non-lucid dreams that may have interesting meanings, and even some fully lucid dream experiences!
After you stop using your journal you may gradually find that you are only remembering those dreams that are particularly dynamic and powerful, or those that happen right around the time that you wake up. You may still remember most of your lucid dreams, but keep in mind that sometimes knowing your non-lucid dreams can help you visualize keys and pathways into lucidity – literally allowing you to plant the suggestion, “the next time I dream about that, I will be lucid”
Using a Lucid Dream Journal
Nothing has been proven to help you remember more detail and depth of your dreams than a good Lucid Dream Journal that you keep diligently. If you stray from using a Lucid Dreaming Journal you take the risk that you will slow your progress toward having more, and longer, and more detailed lucid dream experiences. You dream for hours each night but the average person only remembers a few dreams each morning.
World of Lucid Dreaming also has information about a lucid dream journal and if you are curious about lucid dream journal online or dream journal software here is a list at LucidWiki.
Remember that using a Lucid Dreaming Journal to promote lucid dreaming has never been easier. Technology allows for dream journals to be written, like they’ve traditionally been, spoken or even videotaped using a smartphone, or written on a tablet or pad. It has never been easier to start and maintain a lucid dreaming journal, and therefore by extension never easier to remember your dreams – hopefully even a few that are lucid. Please feel free to share your own ideas and suggestions about a Lucid Dream Journal below.