Seeking advice

Hi everyone, I'm so glad I found this. I know you might be tired a bit of giving advices to the new astral projection explorers, but I hope you can help me too. I would try to keep it short as possible, but if you have questions, I would surely answer them!

1. Past experiences. I can't recall any past OOBE. I'm not even sure about lucid dreaming. Most of the time when I wake up, I can't remember having dreams.

2. First time trying to astral project. I first tried to astral project almost 2 weeks ago without the success yet. I know it's normal to be successful that fast, and what I'm seeking here is to get some tips and to find out if I'm on the right path. Anyway, I'm tring to AP 2-3 times a day, normally in the morning, before sleep (always taking at least 1 hour nap a couple of hours before) and somewhere in the middle. My tries are at least 1 hour long, often falling asleep in the end.

3. Applied techniques. When I started, I tried a couple of techniques, with 'rope technique' being the least promising. I would always take time to relax first (I have some meditation experiences from before), and most of the time listen to binaural beats.

My normal try would look something like thi. First, I would lay down, take headphones and start listening to binaural beats. Then I would take a few minutes to get my body in comfortable position (remove body tenses because of body position, remove itches and tickling) and put it in the state from when on I would stop moving my body (more or less). Then I would try to relax my mind. It varies on what I find most useful upon trying: mindless meditation, focus on heart beating or breathing. Once I achieve that, I try to deepen that, with counting from 200 down being most usable. At this moment, I would most often notice I don't hear listening to binaural beats and would notice it only if I put my focus on it. At this moment, I would notice some degree of body paralisis (never being in complete paralisis, always being able to function back in <2 secounds) which I find very pleasing. After that, I would most often keep on/ start repeating counting from 200. If I'm lucky enough, I would feel falling to sleep. I never paid attention to the time, but I would guess this procedure would always take me >40 mins. From now on, I would try different techniques of separation.

4. Questions. First, I would like to get your opinion on technique described above. Secound, I have a question about falling asleep. So, sometimes I would notice the feeling of falling asleep (or indentify other triggers), and sometimes not. When I do not, I would describe everything like turning off the light in a room- instant and without warning. In other cases, when I do notice it, I would get confused, most of the times trying to get to my senses by counting downwards. When I do that in most cases, I would notice it a couple of times in a row, which in the end would lead to unpleasant body feeling of "I really need to move my body" and afterwards, the insomnia (for instance, it happened tonight. I gone to sleep at 12PM, and found myself unable to sleep at 3 AM- trying to AP whole time). In other cases, if not too late, I would just allow my mind to sleep along with the body. So any tips & what I'm doing wrong?

Also, I'm having problems with separation from the body. If I try to force it, it would lead toward body muscle tension and frustration. I also don't know how to know you know you're controling the soul and when it's just body. At the end I feel I always end with the mind focusing on the body, because it's the only feeling I know.

Thanks everyone who reads it in advance!