Did I do the right thing?

I woke up this morning from a non-lucid dream (for real). and I could only remember fragments.

I was torn between getting the fragments written down in my dream journal and not bothering with that and forcing myself to go back into the dream.

I decided to get up for 15 minutes and write down what I could remember in a kind of frenzy (wanting to get back to bed to rejoin it MILD style). In fact I was not that bothered in grasping for it really and anything lucid would have been welcome. In the event I had no more dreams that morning :(

I feel like kicking myself for not going back to sleep straight away after wakening but I also half feel that I did well to get the details down and I did notice that the act of doing that did pull a few more out from my memory (but not all the detail that I had wanted)

So... my question... did I make the best decision? I kinda feel in two minds about it. If I had gone back to sleep straight away maybe all the info would gave come back and I would have had total recall (great movie) + a more lucid experience?

Another hurdle is that I'm having trouble getting to sleep. I only discovered LD this week and thinking about it has kinda taken over my mind and is interfering somewhat with my ability to get to sleep (despite my meditation experience). I think I need to have some serious excercise today to tire me out.

Do we count the starting point for the sleep cycles from the point we first fall asleep or from the time we get into bed?

Did you wake up by an alarm or just normally? If it was a normal wake -up it will be hard to fall back asleep after you have been writing for a while. And also if you had a bright light on while you were writing, you could use a dimmer light so you don't wake up too much. Maybe find a red light or make a red flashlight.

I think you did the right thing but if you are torn between the two, don't write out a full story, just some keywords to jog your memory later when you can write it all out, so you can be back asleep right away.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by USA

Did you wake up by an alarm or just normally? If it was a normal wake -up it will be hard to fall back asleep after you have been writing for a while. And also if you had a bright light on while you were writing, you could use a dimmer light so you don't wake up too much. Maybe find a red light or make a red flashlight.

I think you did the right thing but if you are torn between the two, don't write out a full story, just some keywords to jog your memory later when you can write it all out, so you can be back asleep right away.

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I woke up normally from the dream. If I set the alarm I quite often wake up only a few seconds before it goes off. Bizarre

That is weird.. Yeah well if you wake up by an alarm afew hours before you normally wake up, it should be easier to fall back asleep.

It depends on how proficient you are at Lucid Dreaming. If you are trying to build dream recall and still don't remember a couple dreams daily, you are better off writing down details of your dream whenever possible.
If you can stand to throw away a dream or two, you can take a chance on it.
Assuming you had opened your eyes, your chances of falling back into it were greatly diminished anyway.

Your experiences are very similar to mine, MrHiggs. I've been working on Lucid Dreaming for 3 months now, and am successful about once a week (had my 16th one last night). Ever since I started I would say my sleeping/dreaming has been impacted somewhat. I used to fall asleep pretty much immediately, and slept peacefully all night, and now it seems like half the nights I don't sleep as well as I'd like, and the other nights I "make up" for it and sleep peacefully (but without dreaming much).

That said, I LOVE LDs and don't mind this minor sacrifice. I have found that the nights I don't sleep very well are usually the ones I'm most successful with LD, so it's the price I pay.

Because "not sleeping well" is better for me for LD's, I prefer to take time to recall my dreams rather than try to slip back to sleep immediately. If I go back to sleep I forget the dream and just sleep anyway, without Lucidity, so its a total loss in my mind. Now I must say, I do not get up and journal. That seems to even further impact my ability to back to sleep. I wake up enough to recall in my mind for maybe 5-15 minutes what the dream was about, and then pick some key words like "At the Lake" or "Picking up Old Lady" so that in the morning I recall the phrase and then I can remember the dream without losing any details. I don't need to journal immediately. I've actually done this and recalled 5 dreams in one night and journaled them the next day (Usually I recall just 1 or 2 nightly).

I suspect I am one of the oldest guys on the forum, and the older you get the harder it is to sleep, but I'm pleased with the successes I've had, and although I "feel" like I haven't slept well at night, with a coffee or two in the morning I'm wide awake until bedtime, so I must be getting enough even if I "feel" like it was a restless night.