Thread: Dream Recall Technique On Waking

The standard approach to recalling dreams on waking is this: you wake up, play dead, keep your eyes shut and remain still until you remember a dream. When you go to sleep, you make an affirmation such as, "I'll wake up after my dreams and remember them."

I have been wondering if this causes a problem: by staying still with your eyes shut you are setting up the ideal conditions to fall back asleep again before you recall a dream properly. Maybe you even fall asleep again without even having any memory of having been awake?

I have experimented with an approach that involves me doing some simple activity on waking. So far I have experimented with this and used the affirmation: "I will wake up after my dreams and do a (nose pinch) reality check." The idea being that you are more likely to stay awake; dream recall will be affected adversely (due to the movement) but here you focus on quantity over quality.

I'm wondering if there could be other actions I can do on waking that shouldn't affect recall as much as physically doing an RC. For example, could you move your eyes from left to right without damaging recall? Could you choose to breathe in a different manner? An affirmation with this approach could go along the lines of: "I'll wake up after every dream and look to the left and the right". Then once you've done that action you play dead and wait for dream recall.