Meditation schedule

**StonedApe** · 02-13-2011 12:15 AM

What's your morning routine? I'm trying to figure out what order to eat, meditate and dream journal in.

For a while I was dream journaling then eating then meditating, but now I'm thinking I'm going to scribble down some words to help me remember my dreams, meditate, eat, then dream journal if I have time. I've been running into problems where it;ll take me over an hour to write down all my dreams and I end up not having time to eat or do zazen before school.

**astralpixels** · 02-13-2011 08:10 PM

I usually keep track of my dreams on my phone's camcorder while I get ready in the morning and the simple act of doing so is usually enough to help me remember my dreams. Later in the day I write down the dreams in better detail and I rarely have to listen to the recording, but it's nice to have that as backup in case I forget something. This usually gives me enough time to meditate while my tea is brewing.

Have you considered sleeping a bit earlier in order to have more time in the mornings? I've no idea what your schedule is like, but sometimes making a sacrifice so you can meditate can be very rewarding.

5-10 minutes of meditation, is better than no time for meditation.

**Replicon** · 02-13-2011 10:41 PM

I don't think your routine needs to be super-complicated. It's more important to be consistent.

Maybe do any sort of "quieting of the mind" types of relaxed meditation in the evening before bed (slows you down a bunch, etc.) and any sort of "active" meditation that moves you around more and leaves you ready for the day and all charged up in the morning.

dream journaling... I'd say as close to when you had the dream as you can get it, really. Unless you're referring to the more formal process of taking your random notes and writing them down in detail. If that's what you mean, it should still be close enough, though if doing it in the evening on a computer, I'd say do it early so you are away from the computer asap before bed.

**StonedApe** · 02-14-2011 02:35 AM

I had been waking up and writing them out in detail, first thing I did in the morning. I enjoyed it and my recall's been getting extremely good, almost too good because I don't have time to write it all down.

I've been trying to get to bed earlier but I have a hard time doing it. I've set an alarm on my phone and when it goes off I go meditate and go to sleep, except when I'm really into something, which is too often the case. Probably a good idea for me to get off the computer earlier in the evening.