Self-hypnosis or SSILD – how can I improve focus?

When I woke up from a vivid dream last night, I wondered: what now? Anchor? MILD? Meditation? Thinking about @The Lucid Guides latest video ("ILD technique") I didn't want to focus too much on a technique, but rather on the right mindset. BUT.

While thinking about it, a memory suddenly popped into my head: in 2005, I was in medical rehab for a few months, and additional to physiotherapy, they offered classes like yoga, qigong and meditation, even self-hypnosis. I remembered that one of those classes taught us a meditation technique that worked so well for me that it felt like I lost touch with the waking world a few times. Wait a minute...

Thinking back to it, I realized that this meditation was actually very, very close to the SSILD technique! I suspect this memory popped up because I read @Marcelo Bragas post yesterday where he mentioned that the SSILD technique had worked for him, and I re-read the description of SSILD afterwards. So I tried the meditation last night as I remembered it from rehab, but couldn't get it to work as well as it did for me back then. I lost focus pretty quickly, and then just fell asleep without experiencing hypnagogia (which I experience rather often) or entering the dream world. I did have a very clear, vivid dream later in the night, though! How can I keep the focus on a sense without getting too aware or falling asleep too soon? I feel like I want to play around with this more. One problem I have is that when I try to focus on a sense, I can't stop myself from counting in my head, which is counter-productive! I think I'm counting because I remember that I was supposed to do a few quicky cycles, then a few slow cycles, just like in SSILD...