The dream journal

The teaching

As Stephen LaBerge's training in dream signs teaches it.

No recall, no lucidity

A lucid dream that is forgotten by morning is lost, and a dreamer who does not know their own dreams has little chance of recognising one from inside. So the training begins with remembering. LaBerge advises building recall until at least one dream a night comes back before working on lucidity itself, and the dream journal is how that recall is built.

Preparing the night

Keep a notebook and pen by the bed, with a dim light if you need one, and nothing else that will pull the mind into the day on waking. Go to bed early enough to sleep fully, since the longest dreams come last. As you settle, tell yourself plainly that you will remember your dreams, and mean it.

Waking slowly

On waking, do not move. Dreams fade fastest when the body stirs and the mind turns to the day. Keep the eyes closed, stay in the position you woke in, and ask what was just happening. If only a fragment comes, hold it and follow it backward: what came before that? Often the whole dream unrolls from one image. If you have already moved, lying back in the position you woke in can sometimes bring a dream back.

Several dreams in one morning

A full night holds several dreams, and the morning usually returns the last one first. J. W. Dunne, a patient keeper of dream records, gave a good way of gathering more. Fix the attention on the one incident that has come and on its details, and a larger piece of that dream returns, often bringing with it a fragment of an earlier dream. Jot each fragment down in a word or two before writing any of them out, so that none is lost, and then expand them one by one.

Writing it down

Write before doing anything else. Note the date, then key words for each scene, then the story as fully as time allows, in plain words. Record feelings as well as events, and especially anything odd: a person who should not be there, a place that is not quite right, a thing that behaves strangely. Fragments count, and a single image is a start. A title for each dream makes the journal easier to read back.

The four kinds of dream sign

Reading the journal back is where the training turns from recall to recognition. LaBerge calls the oddities that give a dream away dream signs, and sorts them into four kinds. The first is inner awareness: an odd thought, an unaccountable feeling, a strange sensation in the body, a perception that cannot be right. The second is action: the dreamer, another figure or a thing doing something unlikely or impossible, such as the dreamer flying, a stranger behaving bizarrely or a machine working by itself.

The third is form: the shape of the dreamer, another person or an object being wrong, changing or impossible, a face that keeps shifting, a body not one's own, a house with too many floors. The fourth is context: the place or the situation being strange, out of its time, or plainly impossible, such as being back at a school one left long ago or meeting someone who has died. Most dreams carry several signs, and each dreamer has favourites.

Finding your own

Every week or so, go back through the entries slowly and mark each dream sign with its kind. Within a few weeks patterns appear: one person dreams again and again of a childhood house, another of being late, another of a dead parent alive. A simple tally at the back of the journal, each sign with the number of times it has appeared, makes the favourites plain. Choose the two or three that recur most and make them your target signs. These are the cues the rest of the training uses.

Turning a sign into a cue

A dream sign becomes useful when it is tied to a question. For each target sign, form a plain resolve that names it: when I next meet this, I will stop and ask if this is a dream. Then, by day, whenever you meet anything like it, an old school, a lost relative in a photograph, an odd feeling, actually ask, and check. The day's practice prepares the night's recognition, and the reality checks are its tools.

When recall is low

Recall rises and falls. Short nights, alarms, alcohol in the evening and some medicines all reduce it, and a prescribed medicine is never stopped for the sake of dreams. A regular waking time helps, and so does waking naturally. On a blank morning, write that nothing came, and add whatever you were thinking as you woke, since that thought often leads back into a dream. And if the journal ever turns from a pleasure into a duty, put it aside for a while; recall will wait.