Thanks for the pictures - that's cleared it up. Last night my sleeping followed it almost to a tee - I went to bed at 10:20 pm and then had awakenings at 1:32, 4:58 (dream recall) and then awoke at 6:14 (also with dream recall). I've been experimenting with different time periods during wake (I go and re-read a few dreams from the journal and highlight dream signs, and come onto these forums or read up about the awareness techniques) - last night I tries just going straight back to bed and it didn't seem to help. Next time, I shall force myself to get up and go to the bathroom or have a sip of water in the kitchen to try to prompt the conscious into activity. At 4:58 for example, I really struggled just to force myself to write down the time at which I woke up and a couple of lines for later dream recall! It's progress though, as a couple of weeks ago I would have just dropped straight back to sleep

I'm almost certain that this DC is my dream guide, as looking back through other dreams from previously, I've noted the presence of a woman whose face was in the background and I couldn't make out, but I could notice their presence; this happened again last night when I saw a "picture" of her on the dream-internet. I made a rough sketch so I can try to Google it later on, but I can't help but feel that this is needle-in-a-haystack sort of searching! I'm relying on my subconscience, I suppose, to leap out if I go past the correct picture on Google images.

I tried repeating my mantra last night when falling back asleep after a brief awakening, but found that I quickly forgot to say it and fell asleep. Just need more practice and focus, I suppose! My recall has definitely improved - I'm now starting to remember multiple dreams at night and writing a couple of pages in my notebook each night (rather than a couple of lines when I started out). I've always been able to remember a couple of dreams every week (and have had some really vivid ones when I was a child/teenager that I still remember clearly now) - I feel like I just needed that extra push to really recall them.

My wife tells me that I quite often sleep-talk about seemingly random things and that I appear awake when I do so (upright and looking at her) - she can ask me a question and I'll respond in gibberish. I've done this when I was a child too - my Dad often told me that I slept-talked, and on one occasion when I was about 4-5, there was a lunar eclipse and I got out of bed to see if with my Dad. I was talking to him about the positions of the constellations (I loved space-stuff when I was a child!) and Dad took several photos of us with the lunar eclipse, but I had zero recall of it the next morning! Is this a case of REM atonia not quite kicking in fully on occasion, or is it something quite common in the LD community?