Introduction

Let me make a confession. I have never kept a physical dream journal until now. I have had no need, because of an easy-to-learn personal recall technique which I will share with y'all today.

The two main applications of this technique are:
  1. When you wake up at night, remember the dream without getting out of bed (or even moving) to write down the dream
  2. Creating a mental dream journal which takes a LOT less effort than writing down every single dream


Preperation

Remember the layout of a shopping centre you frequently visit. Imagine walking into one of the entrances. What are the first ten shops you see? Once you can answer this, you are ready to use mnemonics to record dreams.

Record dreams without moving

I'm sure this scenario is familiar to lucid dreamers: You wake up in the middle of the night. You are too tired to get up and write down your most recent dream, or you cannot sacrifice precious sleep time because you must wake up for school/work tomorrow. What do you do?

Use mnemonic based recall!

First, make sure you have mentally recalled as much of the dream as you can remember. After that, bring up the mental image of the shopping center. What's the store closest to the entrance? Conjure up one item that would be sold in that shop.

For example, if the shop closest to the entrance is a sushi bar, i imagine a sushi roll lying on the counter.

After you have chosen an item, somehow connect that item to the FIRST thing you remember from your dream. My favorite linking image is having somebody pick up the item and throw it "into the dream"

Example: Pretend the first thing I remember in the dream is talking to a DC. I imagine a sushi chef walking in, picking up the sushi roll and throwing it in the air. The sushi travels across the air and the scene changes. The sushi roll lands on the DC's head. Then I run the dream through from start to finish in my mind.

When you wake up in the morning, imagine the shopping center again. Picture yourself going to the first shop you see. You will find that you easily will recall the item associated with that shop, and thus the dream scene associated with the item. Once you remember the first scene, the whole dream usually floods into your memory, or you can chronologically re-piece the dream.

The next time you recall a dream, repeat the steps, but use a different shop. A shopping center would usually contain over 50 different stores, so one location can store over 50 dreams.

This technique has a 100% success rate for me, given that I don't fall asleep while performing the visualizations.

You don't have to write your dreams down!

The best thing about this technique is that it makes writing down dreams unnecessary. The mental shopping center acts as a dream diary. To recall dreams take a "Mental walk" through the shopping center, recalling the dream associated with each shop. To make a new "diary entry", simply associate a dream with another location.

Thanks for reading. Using mnemonics is a difficult to explain technique, but very easy to learn.