Why does simply writing down my dreams in the morning increase my lucidity chances so much?

[Yuusha]

I have noticed a very interesting "trend" in my case - whenever I go to bed at a reasonable time and then wake up a few hours before I want to get up, I almost always get some form of False Awakening, and usually become lucid, if I write down my dreams in as much detail as possible before falling asleep again. However, if I don't do this, then I will simply have an ordinary dream and not become lucid. Why does my writing down my dreams have this much of an effect on whether or not I become lucid when I fall back to sleep? I always stay in bed while writing down the dreams, if that matters.

[ThreeCat]

The act of writing activates your brain. I'm no expert, but writing (and reading, I believe) are controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, which also houses your analytical abilities. If this part of the brain was "more awake" while we slept, LDing would probably be a lot easier. As for having a false awakening, a few things could be causing this: 1.) You are more "awake" now, and therefore have some subconscious (or even conscious, if you need to wake up soon) expectation of awakening. Therefore your dreaming brain, being the helpful lump of tissue it is, makes you think this has already happened, so that you can incur stress while you sleep. 2.) Writing your dreams has created an expectation on your part that you will have a false awakening due to writing down your dreams, and so you fall asleep expecting this to happen. 3.) Due to any WILD techniques you are practicing (or meditation), your focus is not allowing some random dream scene to form, and so you default in your own bed. Sounds like it is working for you, Yuusha. Keep it up

[Yuusha]

writing (and reading, I believe) are controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain, which also houses your analytical abilities. If this part of the brain was "more awake" while we slept, LDing would probably be a lot easier. Does this mean that right-handed people have a better potential to become analytical and therefore lucid in their dreams? Because I am left-handed myself, and I heard something about that about a year ago and have occasionally been practicing my right hand for that reason (I have always wanted to do that anyway, so why not? ). It seems reasonable that right-handed persons would have a more active left hemisphere and have better analytical skills because of that.

[FryingMan]

Nah, us lefties know we're the far superior breed. Plenty of analytical (and artistic!) lefties out there. Writing your dreams down really puts your mind into "dream" mode, you're deeply thinking about them and really using the memory access function. It also wakes you up more. Closer to being awake (and thus being more self-aware), using access to memory , those are the fundamentals of lucid dreaming, so it's no surprise that you get lucid frequently after that. I had such a morning today in fact: long epic non-lucid, I recalled it for a long time, voice journaled it, returned to sleep, and subsequently got lucid and had some FAs in there as well.

[LucidSage]

I think what ThreeCat said is pretty accurate and is a big component of it. As for the rest of it, here is my theory: Lucidity in dreams, is simply a certain (high) level of awareness. It is a point on a continuum of awareness. Memory (and access to memory) are tied to awareness. When you intend to write down your dreams (prospective memory) and when you actually write them down, you are putting the focus of your conscious awareness on dream content. You actively increase the awareness of your dreams by putting your attention to it at the closest moment you can, which is right after waking up. Doing this on a regular basis increases dream recall the more you practice putting conscious attention into something that is usually an unconscious process for most (one that has a loose connection with memory for the most part), and in so increases your dream awareness. This is why you remember more of a dream and more dreams the more you do this regularly. At some point dream awareness increases to a level that crosses the lucidity threshold. This happens both on a small scale, like writing down your dreams and going back to sleep and becoming lucid, as well as on the large scale when those who write down their dreams only in the morning, and over time start lucid dreaming (even without other methods, simply by writing down their dreams).