The last nights I've been trying to improve my dream recall by going through what happened the whole day. As I'm trying to go through the whole story in my mind, my thoughts just stop and suddenly I'm thinking about other stuff..

And then, I will enter some kind of, I suppose some kind of middle gate to a dream?

I reach a point where it feels like I am about to enter the dream. My eyes starts throbbing, and my hearts starts beating faster. I can feel that I am getting more excited, because I believe that I'm about to enter a dream consciously, but then..

I find after some time in this stage, I will slowly loose this feeling and end up being completely aware. I've never seen any signs of a starting dream like sounds or somewhat images of what I'm about to enter, so I'm not sure what to believe this feeling is.

So my questions are:

What is happening? Is this a result of the entering of a SP? or am I about to enter a dream?

If this really is a stage in the process of entering a dream, please explain to me several ways I can succeed this stage without ending up loosing the feeling to the point I am completely aware.

-Thanks for reading!