If you wake up naturally, how does this affect your dream recall?

**CrescentFox** · 02-25-2009 02:31 PM

If I wake up to NO alarm clocks or external forces what so ever and just naturally wake up whenever I do, am I more likely to remember my dreams than if I were to wake up to an alarm clock?

**yuriythebest** · 02-25-2009 04:50 PM

in my experience alarm clocks are bad for dream recall since when it rings instead of lying still you have that instinct to instantly get up to turn it off- which is devastating for recall. My solution for this was to make it barely loud enough to wake me up and placed it right next to me in bed (even though it's big and has a electricity wire) and now since I'm not afraid that it'll disturb my parents so when it rings I can spend those crucial 5-15 seconds remembering my dreams. Also I find drinking tea before sleep and during the night (as opposed to water) also helps

**CrescentFox** · 02-25-2009 11:50 PM

Mine has to be loud in order to wake me up >.< Unless I can find one that automatically turns off within seconds, which is probably hard to find. I guess I'll just stick to naturally waking up since I know I get a comfortable amount of sleep doing so.

**Shift** · 02-26-2009 12:10 AM

I find it's better not to have an alarm clock. Those lazy times when I can sleep in and wake naturally, I wake up, ending a dream, and have great recall. When I have an alarm go off, there's usually this very confused panic period where I have to turn it off and completely forget the dream, and a lot of the details I probably would have had if I'd woken naturally. No idea what waking up and letting memory processing make its course versus interrupting that process changes, though.