gruffy's Workbook

[gruffydd]

Yay! Joining a little late but really looking forward to working on my recall. When I have focussed on it in the past I have noticed clear improvement, so am optimistic. I am still practicing WBTB every night.

Dreams per Week: Right now, from around 5 to 8 (including fragments, but they are kind of rare).

Hours of Sleep per Night: I sleep for about 5 or 6 hours a night. Maybe 1 Saturday a month I will get to sleep as looong as I want.

Method of Awakening: The alarm on my mobile phones wakes me. I lie it on the matress next to my head.

Depth of Sleep: Normally quite a light sleeper.

Recall Goal: I would be really pleased if I could double the amount of dreams I am having right now, to 2 or even 3 a night.

[gruffydd]

I have taken to changing 2 things about my recall during after reading the Factors and Nightly Notes threads-

Increased number of nightly awakenings
I have gone from a single 5am WBTB session to now having 2. After I make notes from the first WBTB, I set my alarm to wake me after about another hours sleep.

Notes contain more detail and clearer writing
I have produced some truly illegible scrawls since I started writing down my dreams. And I mean awful. Changing this, I now sit up (well, a bit) and turn a light on before writing a decent amount. I am running the risk of being unable to get back to sleep by doing this, but as I see it, such is the nature of a workshop.

I wonder what the results of these changes will be (I have a few nights so far, and seems promising).

[Burned up]

Hi Gruffy

Luminous also said that falling back to sleep might be an issue in a discussion elsewhere.  But for me the risk is a price worth paying and rarely am I awake for more than a few minutes.  I hate unintelligible DJs.  I still write in the dark, but I use large letters and write as many words as I can to reduce the risk of failing to read the one solitary keyword I would otherwise have written.  Love to know how you get on with this.  Good luck!

[gruffydd]

Progress is going well. More WBTBs needs an earlier bedtime, which I am managing most nights.
I have also found that the act of writing down a lot of dream details seems, in itself, to draw even more detail out of the recesses of my memory. Bonus.

With regards to enhancing recall with meditation, I coincidentally started to try meditating last week before I read the workshop post. I never even considered the recall benefits it could have, so will be trying that soon!

[gruffydd]

Heading into the workshop I was in a bit of a recall lull, but wow, lately has been great. I think it peaked last night. In terms of the sheer amount of content I have recalled it was one of the best I have had. I believe that it is a direct result of this workshop:

• I have been stating my intentions before I sleep. Actually aloud too, which I never tried before. I feel a bit strange doing this, but I suppose that as my ears are also getting involved, more parts of my brain will be primed for remembering dreams!
• I tried some actual meditation involving me sitting in silence and regulating my breathing whilst searching for fragments. I also tried questioning my dreams and just generally thinking about them as I went about my normal morning tasks, and both seemed about equally as effective. Because of this I will be sticking with the questioning technique as I can do other things at the some time. Just devoting time to thinking about the dream and asking what happened next has resulted in me remembering a lot that I had forgotten since the night. Awesome.
• I write a more notes, and this is mostly good. It has introduced an unexpected issue however: I am writing so much down that the notes become a bit mashed together and intertwined. It can be hard to pick out which notes relate to which dreams. This is mainly because I am still using tiny yellow post-it notes. Perhaps I should think about upgrading to a proper notepad
• In line with a previous post I have upped the amount I get every night to around 8 hours. I believe the benefits of this stretch beyond dream recall, and I'd not have done it without the workshop.

With regards to my goal:
Last night I recalled 3 thoroughly enjoyable dreams. For a worknight, I consider this to be really good. It's normally around 2 a night, and this was my original aim! If I had just the one I'd be a little disappointed. Double awesome.
Great workshop, many thank yous to Lumi!