My recall analyze, problems.. thoughts?

Sorry it's a kind of long post! But I'm trying to be specific and if anyone can manage to read through it and give me some thoughts i would be super grateful!

Okey i have some trouble increasing my dream recall. I have started to write down my dreams and now I'm at the fourth night of doing so. This far i have 4 vivid dreams and 2 kind of fragment of other dreams that i remember, single scenes but nothing more.

What i do right now is trying to overall be more aware during daytime and question my surroundings whenever i remember, stopping looking around, doing RC. Just to get into the habit. When i go to sleep i repeat a mantra to myself while visualizing my hand as i fall asleep. I set my alarmclock to ring after 6 hours, and 1,5 hours later.

The first nights i have not been able to force myself awake and to write something down after the first 6 hours and mostly been able to recall 1 dream each night as i wake up after 7,5 hours.
Tonight i changed my mantra a little to focus it on waking up and remember what i dreamed. I also slept with my bedside lamp on, directed it on my DJ that now has big black letters on it saying DREAM and placed my alarmclock under the DJ all to increase the hope that i might be able to write something in the middle of the night.
And i did, i woke up after i had dreamed and got myself to successfully type down enough keywords that i felt i would remember the dream. I also noticed that i had only slept for about 5 hours so i had woken up without my alarmclock! It felt good because it felt like the change in mantra had effect.

The problem comes after that, after typing down the dream. Going a quicky to the toilet i had a very hard time falling asleep again. I tried to focus on what i had been dreaming, just let the mind play and take the thoughts where they want to go. You know the feeling, you are awake but still kind of dreamy so your thoughts kind of do as they want. Suddenly as i watched my thoughts play i felt like i wanted to RC in them, something that happened in the scenario made me think that now is when i should RC but i was still awake so i knew if i did a RC i would just do it laying in my bed awake. The thought itself made my thinking clearer so the scenario faded and i did a RC for the heck of it. No result, once again i let my thoughts drift. After that i got this superweird tingling feeling in my body, it was like my entire body started to vibrate, but really really small vibrations. My first thought was that it might be the paralyze from WILDing. It made me kind of confused/excited and even though i tried staying calm and just let it wash over me it kind of faded. After that i felt more awake again and started repeating my mantra and visualize my hand again. After awhile the weird tingling feeling came again as my mind had drifted slightly, and then disappeared again.

After awhile i finally fell asleep again and when i finally woke up after the final(7,5 hours after falling asleep) alarm i first thought i had forgotten my dream as i often think but as soon as i think of it it comes back. So i lay still going through it in my head but, probably because i had such sleep problems when i woke up first, i fell asleep again. Slept for an hour or so and then when i woke up it was all gone, tried and tried to remember it. It felt like it was around the corner but after awhile i had to give up. As i was eating breakfast a single element of the dream came back, but i couldn't use it to recall anything more.

Sorry kind of long post but i thought it's important to be specific, i just don't know, it's hard for me to recall more then 1 dream each night, sometimes as said i get like 1 dream+a fragment of a dream but so far never anything more then that. And tonights episode that made me remember a dream in the middle of the night stopped me from being able to remember anything in the morning.

Any thoughts on my situation, tips on what i should do or focus on? Anything at all is greatly appreciated, the more outside opinions i can get the better. :) thanks

Relax :) You are determined and are ready to work to get lucid dreams, but in your case dream recall. That's good although lucid dreaming is easy, when you have a calm view on it, but still a goal of course.
Recall in the beggining comes and goes, but try to not see this like something you have to work for, let the recall and lucidity come by itself, although you are still doing the exercise to make sure that they do. I am doing a project in which I let people look at their hands with no other intention more than that they was suppose to get into that habit. Then I added some exercise, every second day.
I noticed that the people in this project who had never heard of this forum or lucid dreaming started to gradually remember more and more of their dreams, and some even got lucid for the first time.
There are a lot of pressure and you have high goals and so on, but just be focused on what you want to happend and don't try too hard and it will work out by itself.

For example, when I first started out with lucid dreaming, I got a lucid dream just after watching the Matrix. Then I had a dryspell for 2 months and I really tried to get things to work this month, will at types of techniques. But it was not until I gave up and stopped that I just got a spontanious lucid dream again.

I write too much.. But my point is that you don't have to worry instead be happy of what you already have accomplished. To remember one dream is fine, some people say that they don't even dream at all, but they only say that because they don't remember them. But you do :) So be proud of that! And also, Don't try to remember as many dreams as possible that is just a waste of time, unless it's your goal. The important thing is to be aware and it seem like you already pracctise that, so if you remember a dream as VIVID then you have been aware enough in the REM stage and that is improvement.
The people in the project said that they had vivid dreams, and some days later they had a lucid dream. So try to become lucid, but don't try too hard.

Believe in yourself.

What he said!

Thanks choi! I know about the project^^you sent me the steps for it remember ;) But yeah it's true what you said, i guess it's somewhat normal to get overly excited in the beginning and "try to hard" because your motivation is on the top. I will try to not get ahead of myself and over analyze stuff and just let it happen. I think it's good that you write much! It helps to get a new perspective on it.
And actually without reading your post i went to bed yesterday with my focus not as much on it as i have been before, stuff happened in my homecountry that distracted me slightly. I still did the exercises ofcourse but not like forcing it as much as I've done before and when i woke up first i remembered 3 dreams and when i woke up later another one so i was really happy about it. :)
thanks for your reply!

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Originally Posted by Julebrygd

Thanks choi! I know about the project^^you sent me the steps for it remember ;) But yeah it's true what you said, i guess it's somewhat normal to get overly excited in the beginning and "try to hard" because your motivation is on the top. I will try to not get ahead of myself and over analyze stuff and just let it happen. I think it's good that you write much! It helps to get a new perspective on it.
And actually without reading your post i went to bed yesterday with my focus not as much on it as i have been before, stuff happened in my homecountry that distracted me slightly. I still did the exercises ofcourse but not like forcing it as much as I've done before and when i woke up first i remembered 3 dreams and when i woke up later another one so i was really happy about it. :)
thanks for your reply!

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Your welcome and congratulations :) It was actually non other than Tim Post from Lucidipedia that I learned this perspective on lucid dreaming from.
I had tried out every technique there was on the internet haha, but it was not until I trusted MYSELF that I saw progress and I started to be aware enough to remember my dreams and start to lucid dream more frequentley.

Here is the link: Advanced lucid dreaming: part 6 - YouTube