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Module 1 Preparing to Lucid Dream

  LISTEN  

Dream Recall
00:00 / 09:06

  NOTES  

How to Remember Your Dreams

Write dreams down immediately

Ideally, record your dreams in a journal as soon as you wake up.

Materials

Keep a pen, paper, and light conveniently at your bedside, or use text or voice recording app on your cell phone or other device.

Plan how you will remember

As you go to bed, remind yourself that you will have several REM periods in which you will dream over the night. Resolve to wake up from, remember, and write down these dreams.

Don't move!  

When you awaken, lie still and trace back your steps. Avoid thinking about starting your day and focus only on what you dreaming a moment ago. Ask yourself, “What was I just dreaming?”

Write something no matter what 

Write down anything that you remember, and remember to record details such as thoughts, emotions, reactions, or dialogues. Write something down even if all you remember was just a fragment or fleeting image. If you remember nothing, write down the emotion you are feeling or mood you are in as you woke up.

Jog your memory

If you are having trouble remembering something, use recognition memory tactics. For instance:​

General categories:

Go through general categories of common perceptual experiences people dream about, such as actions (e.g. walking, talking), places, colors, emotions). Ask yourself if anything from these categories was present in your dream.  Or, go through the alphabet to see if anything in your dream started with an “A,” “B”, "C" and so on. 

Recurring features of dreams:

Think of the past experiences you have dreamt about ,and ask yourself if any of these were present in your dream.

Title or sketch the dream 

Give your dream a title that captures the essence of the dream.  If it will help your recall, include sketches or illustrations of the dream.

Try an Alarm

If you are having trouble with dream recall despite these suggestions, set an alarm to wake you when you are likely to be having a REM period.

Time-Stamp Awakenings

We all have brief arousals from sleep, which are the perfect opportunities to remember and write down dreams--that is--if you can wake yourself up enough to recall them before immediately rolling over back to sleep!  A trick to wake up your brain enough during these awakenings is to set and carry out the intention to write down the time every time you awaken during the night.  As you write down the time, detailed memories of dreams commonly come flooding forth.

Bullet point or summarize

If you are low on time or motivation to write down your dreams in detail, just bullet point or summarize the key events, people, places, or themes from the dream. 

Focus on early morning dream recall

It may be more efficient to focus your dream recall efforts in the last half of the night when you are dreaming more frequently and in longer duration.

Balance

Cultivate balance in all facets of life in order to have enough resources available to devote to remembering dreams and adopting habits to improve mindfulness of sleep and dreaming.

DREAM RECALL

If you can remember dreams, you can learn to lucid dream.  

 

For some of my best dream recall tips, follow along with the teaching notes as you listen to the audio.

This is a snippet from my signature course in Mindful Lucid Dreaming.   Sign up for the Self-Study Course or live Integration Workshop here.

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