Recall Work vs. Lucidity Work

Just wondering if anyone else had a similar experience when first starting work on LDs.

The first several weeks I pretty much focused on recall. Affirmations, DJing, WBTB. The results were pretty much immediate. I went from recalling a couple dreams a week to anywhere from 1 to 3 a night and a couple nights with 4 or 5. So I started mixing in RCs during the day, lucidity affirmations, experimented with ADA, SAT, RRCs, etc. Not sure if I focused too much on lucidity to the neglect of recall, or I simply overloaded my capacity, but recall suffered.

So I backed off on lucidity and again focused on recall, and it improved again a bit beyond the first several weeks and one night with 7 recalled dreams. So after a week I went back to mixing in daytime lucidity work, and once again recall suffered. Oops! This past weekend was bad because I felt a cold coming on strong and on Sunday slept a good 16 hours with zero recall.

I felt much better yesterday and did little work of any sort. Just some light recall affirmations during the day, no pre-bedtime routine and went to bed with a simple mantra of 'Relax and remember'. Anyway last night was my best night for recall. 8 dreams including 5 during the last REM cycle.

So I'm undecided if the split attention was a negative or perhaps working too intensely and my subconscious simply revolted? Perhaps it makes more sense for me to work recall in a more relaxed fashion to the point it's deeply ingrained and then move on to lucidity work?

Aw man, 8 dreams in a night sounds great! I also find that I am the most successful in my dreaming practice when I can just relax, have fun, and enjoy myself.

I hesitate to say this because I don't really have much experience in starting to work on recall, spending time to remember my dreams every morning is just something that I've done since I was really little. But I suspect that working on recall and LD induction simultaneously wouldn't matter too much as long as you could handle it all without getting too stressed. I think that the best thing to do is usually to find what works the best for you and allows you to continue to enjoy dreaming and not get stressed/burned out. Daytime lucidity work and recall work can definitely consume quite a good-sized chunk of one's day and energy! I can certainly understand why that might be a bit taxing. :content:

I'm really glad to hear that you're having so much success with improving your recall, that's fantastic! :goodjob2:
I'm excited to see you continue to improve, I think that you're going to be an excellent lucid dreamer.

I think I was being too formulaic in my daytime awareness work. I was putting too much forced effort into it. I've given it some thought and after careful consideration of all the awareness guides and info here and what I've previously been doing with meditation and daily mindfulness, I kind of did a buffet selection and merged the various techniques into something that feels more natural for me and cues me to do the work based on normal rhythms and observations I can easily be aware of throughout the day.