Thread: Mindfulness - An Alternative Approach to ADA

Originally Posted by ThreeCat

I think people take issue with the presentation of King Yoshi's guide as an "ultimate God mode" to LDing (my words, not his), which it is not. Yes, it may result in more lucids, but it can fail just like any other technique, and has its own flaws--namely, that you can be well aware of what you're looking at, check out the contours, textures, shapes, etc. and still have no frickin clue that you're dreaming. King Yoshi does say to continue performing reality checks throughout the day, and I think these two together are better than just ADA, but even that can fail and result in semi-lucids.

So you're right--it's a good technique. I do NOT think it will result in what King Yoshi refers to as "the pinnacle of lucid dreaming," that is, with every dream being lucid. If that happens, there is something else going on besides ADA. And you're right--the technique is hard.

Makes sense, never reached that "pinnacle" myself, maybe i need more practice ,but even then I don't ADA(or any technique for that matter) alone can get you lucid all the time, thats why I combine different techniques.

Picked this up, found it to be helpful in decribing mindfullness and awareness.
http://www.mindfulexperience.org/res...definition.pdf

I come bearing more links!

Insight Meditation: Living Meditation, Living Insight, Dr Thynn Thynn

I found these quite insightful:

Living Meditation, Living Insight: Staying with the Moment
Staying with More Moments
Living Meditation, Living Insight: Meditation in Action


I think I identified with the following the most when it comes to dreams:

P: If things are very hectic I cannot even redirect my attention to another activity, but find I have to just live in the chaos.

Well, letting go of the mindfulness can be appropriate. But we must also talk about living in the chaos. How do you deal with the chaos?

P: Sometimes I become involved in the chaos and get carried away by it.

Yes, if your mindfulness is not strong enough you can easily be drawn into the chaos. The mindfulness I am talking about is the mindfulness of your own mind. If you are not aware of your thoughts and your feelings about the chaos, you can easily slip into interacting in the situation, reacting to the chaos. Before you know what's happening, you are already storming through the chaos, thus creating more chaos.

If you are mindful of your own feelings as you notice the chaos, you can choose how to act in the situation.

Instead of being only aware of the outside chaos, stop and look directly into yourself and see what is there.

D: But that's not easy.

Of course not. But you have to start somewhere. As long as you are not silent inside, you will always be on a roller coaster ride with the outside chaos.

To look into yourself directly is to come back to your own source and to reach an inner equilibrium and silence. It is only from this inner equilibrium that you can view the outer chaos objectively.

When this happens you can see the chaos as chaos, as only a circumstantial situation. You'll see the cause behind the chaos and you can act accordingly. In short, when you penetrate to the heart of the chaos, you will spontaneously resolve it in the best way for the circumstances. This is what is called penetrating insight wisdom, or pannya.

If you replace "chaos" with "dream" it makes a lot of sense from a LD point of view, I find currently my dreams are so hectic that I don't have even a moment to stop and wonder if I'm dreaming, I'm too busy within the chaos of a dream. I suppose this means my mindfulness is still not strong enough to deal with such situations, dream or no dream.

Originally Posted by Memm

If you replace "chaos" with "dream" it makes a lot of sense from a LD point of view, I find currently my dreams are so hectic that I don't have even a moment to stop and wonder if I'm dreaming, I'm too busy within the chaos of a dream. I suppose this means my mindfulness is still not strong enough to deal with such situations, dream or no dream.

The way you behave in dreams is based on waking life
If you perform Mindfulness even when your very busy then that habit will appear aswell in your dreams

I feel there's a problem with the word "habit" we tend to use everywhere because plenty of habits don't make their way into dreams.

Dreams themselves seem to be combined from "significant" events during the day / week or even something that strongly came to mind before you fell asleep. I once spent 20 minutes mentally rehearsing Tai Chi movements as I was falling asleep and one of my dreams that night involved me using Tai Chi moves. Or something that came to mind the other night during my WBTB was a thought about Dreamviews and my next dream involved me doing something on the forum mixed in with something I was contemplating the night before.

Whereas things I've been doing for years, let's say sitting on the computer, almost never happen in my dreams, I'd say that dream about Dreamviews I just mentioned was the only exception in I don't even know how long. You could call me doing everyday things on the computer a habit, brushing your teeth is a habit etc... but you don't get dreams out of them. When you get into the habit of something it seems to actually disappear from your dreams.

So I think the word "habit" comes along with the connotation of something done automatically, mindlessly or with minimum thought. Something you just got into the "habit" of doing, something you just happen to do every day, or every now and then.

So would mindfulness of chaotic situations as a habit go into your dreams? I'm not so sure.

habit ~ noun common

2. (psychology) an automatic pattern of behavior in reaction to a specific situation; may be inherited or acquired through frequent repetition

I think the key here is in reaction to a specific situation, but to react to a situation you need to be mindful in order to notice when it occurs, so essentially I'm thinking without mindfulness you don't see the situation and thus you don't use your habit of being mindful in that situation. Your habit is actually triggered by mindfulness!

In dreams we seem to be least mindful, so even if something happens in the dream to which we normally react to habitually, we just go with the flow of the dream, the habit doesn't get triggered.

From my experience of dreams the things that are in dreams tend to be:

• The things that our minds are currently contemplating; sometimes obvious like our last thought before we fell asleep, sometimes less so like the one movie scene from several days ago that has left a deeper than usual impression. Dream incubation is all about contemplating something before falling asleep so that it's on our minds during the night and enters one of our dreams. So perhaps if you actually actively pondered on one of your habits before sleep it would in fact enter one of your dreams, like if you thought about your hands then in a dream you might use your hands, if you think about how you hands look as you fall asleep you might end up studying your hands in a dream (this may trigger lucidity), MILD and many other techniques are basically based around this.
  
• Our emotional state; if we are upset or otherwise unstable in some way we tend to have nightmares, when sad we tend to perhaps more uplifting dreams of the things we wish for since sadness normally comes from something we don't seem to be getting, when excited or impressed we might have more impressive dreams of grandeur. It probably depends on the person but I think it probably boils down to similar types of things, depending on how you currently deal with certain emotions that will probably be how your dreams deal with them
  
• Our thought process; how we actually see, interact and decide what to do with in the world; this is a bit more subtle I suppose, the simplest way to describe it is if you see a maths problem inside your dream you will try to solve it the same way you would in the real world, you "work things out" the way you normally do, if you easily get frustrated when something doesn't go your way then if something doesn't go your way in a dream you will likely also be frustrated etc...

Personally I find the last dot point the most interesting, see back when I had heaps of DILDs there were probably two significant factors as far as actually being in a dream was concerned:

• My dreams were more realistic, I had a lot more dreams taking place in my actual house or some other places I've actually been to, I also had plenty of FAs. Nowadays my dreams are almost all fantastical, there's little in common with reality and I don't remember the last time I even had an FA.
  
• I was very much aware of all the dream "laws": electricity doesn't work in dreams, shadows go the wrong way, RCs fail, your hands look weird, you feel "light" etc... in fact I kept finding new things every dream like that my dreams are frequently darker (as in amount of light) compared to the light level of my day activities and so on.
  I was highly aware that dreams worked by slightly different rules and since my dreams had more realism in them it was easy to tell reality from dream reality. So I would be watching TV and I would realise I was dreaming because I was actively comparing reality to dreams, it wasn't a "habit" (like see a TV, do a reality check) it was a brand new way of seeing the world, it was a thought process.
  
  I can't seem to do this now that my dreams are works of fantasy, I have nothing in the dream to compare to reality since barely anything there is based on reality as I know it in everyday life, it's all based on fiction and how do you compare fiction to fiction? Oh there's a dragon, well of course there is, I've read so many books and seen TV shows with dragons, why wouldn't there be a dragon. Basically from what I can tell my new thought process (I'm okay with whatever comes up, since fiction is fiction and it's all fun) is not adequate for realising I'm in a dream. In fact I enjoy my fantasy dreams, which probably makes it even harder to realise I'm dreaming since I'm too busy having fun and there goes any mindfulness I might have had...

Maybe if I started criticising fiction works.... hmm my own post seems to be giving me new ideas now. =P

Time to try some things out.

I'm cool on Buddhism. Where Buddhism calls it "mindfulness", my generation called it "awareness", and, as an ageing hippie, I kept the faith and valued new awareness all my life. Lucid dreams are dreams like the waking world- physical awareness, smells, bodily sensitivity, choice of experience, Consciousness. It's not that regular dreams are not conscious, but that a lucid dream is MORE conscious, as if it were a physical event. I'm not sure how mindful I am in a normal dream. I assume that I am, within the laws of that experience. But in Lucid dreams, I am applying my mindfulness in the same way I apply it in waking consciousness. Because I am taking the waking self into the dream state, with all my beliefs and assumptions, I respond to events from my own beliefs and experiences.
I have had lucid dreams that did not include all the baggage I carry in physical life. I have experienced total consciousness without memory of my current life. But I still felt totally, physically aware, not afraid of the tendency of the environment to offer unexpected events, and without a sense of need to control my experience.
I've had Lucid dreams where I required control. But the ones where I let my control go seem to be the most interesting.

Originally Posted by Memm

I feel there's a problem with the word "habit" we tend to use everywhere because plenty of habits don't make their way into dreams.

Dreams themselves seem to be combined from "significant" events during the day / week or even something that strongly came to mind before you fell asleep. I once spent 20 minutes mentally rehearsing Tai Chi movements as I was falling asleep and one of my dreams that night involved me using Tai Chi moves. Or something that came to mind the other night during my WBTB was a thought about Dreamviews and my next dream involved me doing something on the forum mixed in with something I was contemplating the night before.

Whereas things I've been doing for years, let's say sitting on the computer, almost never happen in my dreams, I'd say that dream about Dreamviews I just mentioned was the only exception in I don't even know how long. You could call me doing everyday things on the computer a habit, brushing your teeth is a habit etc... but you don't get dreams out of them. When you get into the habit of something it seems to actually disappear from your dreams.

So I think the word "habit" comes along with the connotation of something done automatically, mindlessly or with minimum thought. Something you just got into the "habit" of doing, something you just happen to do every day, or every now and then.

So would mindfulness of chaotic situations as a habit go into your dreams? I'm not so sure.



I think the key here is in reaction to a specific situation, but to react to a situation you need to be mindful in order to notice when it occurs, so essentially I'm thinking without mindfulness you don't see the situation and thus you don't use your habit of being mindful in that situation. Your habit is actually triggered by mindfulness!

In dreams we seem to be least mindful, so even if something happens in the dream to which we normally react to habitually, we just go with the flow of the dream, the habit doesn't get triggered.

From my experience of dreams the things that are in dreams tend to be:

• The things that our minds are currently contemplating; sometimes obvious like our last thought before we fell asleep, sometimes less so like the one movie scene from several days ago that has left a deeper than usual impression. Dream incubation is all about contemplating something before falling asleep so that it's on our minds during the night and enters one of our dreams. So perhaps if you actually actively pondered on one of your habits before sleep it would in fact enter one of your dreams, like if you thought about your hands then in a dream you might use your hands, if you think about how you hands look as you fall asleep you might end up studying your hands in a dream (this may trigger lucidity), MILD and many other techniques are basically based around this.
  
• Our emotional state; if we are upset or otherwise unstable in some way we tend to have nightmares, when sad we tend to perhaps more uplifting dreams of the things we wish for since sadness normally comes from something we don't seem to be getting, when excited or impressed we might have more impressive dreams of grandeur. It probably depends on the person but I think it probably boils down to similar types of things, depending on how you currently deal with certain emotions that will probably be how your dreams deal with them
  
• Our thought process; how we actually see, interact and decide what to do with in the world; this is a bit more subtle I suppose, the simplest way to describe it is if you see a maths problem inside your dream you will try to solve it the same way you would in the real world, you "work things out" the way you normally do, if you easily get frustrated when something doesn't go your way then if something doesn't go your way in a dream you will likely also be frustrated etc...

Personally I find the last dot point the most interesting, see back when I had heaps of DILDs there were probably two significant factors as far as actually being in a dream was concerned:

• My dreams were more realistic, I had a lot more dreams taking place in my actual house or some other places I've actually been to, I also had plenty of FAs. Nowadays my dreams are almost all fantastical, there's little in common with reality and I don't remember the last time I even had an FA.
  
• I was very much aware of all the dream "laws": electricity doesn't work in dreams, shadows go the wrong way, RCs fail, your hands look weird, you feel "light" etc... in fact I kept finding new things every dream like that my dreams are frequently darker (as in amount of light) compared to the light level of my day activities and so on.
  I was highly aware that dreams worked by slightly different rules and since my dreams had more realism in them it was easy to tell reality from dream reality. So I would be watching TV and I would realise I was dreaming because I was actively comparing reality to dreams, it wasn't a "habit" (like see a TV, do a reality check) it was a brand new way of seeing the world, it was a thought process.
  
  I can't seem to do this now that my dreams are works of fantasy, I have nothing in the dream to compare to reality since barely anything there is based on reality as I know it in everyday life, it's all based on fiction and how do you compare fiction to fiction? Oh there's a dragon, well of course there is, I've read so many books and seen TV shows with dragons, why wouldn't there be a dragon. Basically from what I can tell my new thought process (I'm okay with whatever comes up, since fiction is fiction and it's all fun) is not adequate for realising I'm in a dream. In fact I enjoy my fantasy dreams, which probably makes it even harder to realise I'm dreaming since I'm too busy having fun and there goes any mindfulness I might have had...

Maybe if I started criticising fiction works.... hmm my own post seems to be giving me new ideas now. =P

Time to try some things out.

I agree with you to a certain extent (concerning what habits tend to show up in dreams). In WL, I have worked on releasing OCD behviors from my life. They were frequent and quite habitual, and yet they never showed up in my dreams. On the other hand, however, I have made it a habit to be critical towards waking life and truly question whether or not I am dreaming. I have found that this habit does carry over into the dream world.

I think it may all go back to expectation. For some reason, I may never have expected my OCD to enter my dreams, and so it didn't. My mind viewed it as unimportant and ridiculous, even though it was addicted to the behaviors. On the other hand, my mind views dream work as highly important and beneficial, and so the topic of lucid dreaming almost always comes up during the night, as well as conversations with other dream characters on how to have more lucid dreams. These dreams are almost entirely non-lucid.

But consistency is good. Keep it up and I'm sure you'll see some good habits showing up in dreams. Just keep looking for them.

Thanks for sharing, I found this very useful I've tried ADA sometimes and it feels too overwhelming. I guess you can get used to it, but it must take a long time. If you're working or studying it can be very difficult to be aware at all times.

Also, the meditation guide you shared is the best I've read so far. I'll adapt my meditation routine to it.

Two more phenomena lacking in dreams:

Sense of posture
(IRL I try to keep my back straight and my head up)

Sense of balance
(In dreams I perform sort of acrobatic actions and never fear to lose my balance)

So apparently longterm meditation counteracts the deterioration of REM sleep associated with aging and brings on quicker REM onset and increases REM density! Evaluation Sleep Architecture.pdf

I read something that showed that REM sleep (measured as total time in REM) does not decline much at all even onto late old age (80s and beyond) as long as there are no conditions like dementia.

But I've seriously started mindfulness meditation now, 10 minutes a day working my way up gradually to 30 over a couple of weeks. So yeah, I'll take any benefits that I can!

Very interesting study! Although it should be noted that the guys who showed the "not deterioration of REM" practiced Vipasana meditation for 6-8 hours daily

Originally Posted by dreambh

Very interesting study! Although it should be noted that the guys who showed the "not deterioration of REM" practiced Vipasana meditation for 6-8 hours daily

What, dreamb? Are you not dedicated to the practice?

Originally Posted by dreambh

Very interesting study! Although it should be noted that the guys who showed the "not deterioration of REM" practiced Vipasana meditation for 6-8 hours daily

Everyone knows it's the first 15 minutes that really matters, the rest is just icing on the cake

Ron Crouch (the alohadharma guy) says 30 minutes daily with weekly longer sits and the occasional retreat is sufficient to progress along the path to enlightenment, so I think 15mins daily is enough for our needs

The teacher running the mindfulness course I'm attending at uni said that 30mins of yoga nidra is equivalent to 3hrs of REM sleep, and changes sleep architecture.

Originally Posted by Ctharlhie

The teacher running the mindfulness course I'm attending at uni said that 30mins of yoga nidra is equivalent to 3hrs of REM sleep, and changes sleep architecture.

I know meditation / yoga can do a lot of amazing things but 30 minutes = 3 hours of REM sleep? That seems fishy to me on many different levels, proof requested.

Ctharlhie

That monk is asked "Is mindfulness (alone) Enough" to achieve Nivarna? The monk basically says Yes

Wikipedia says:

Nirvana*(Sanskrit, also*nirvāṇa; Pali:*nibbananibbāna ) is identified as the goal of the*Buddhist path.

In Sanskrit/Pali, the term*nirvananibanna literally means "blowing out" or "extinguishing".

Within the Buddhist tradition, this term is defined as the event or process of the extinction of the fires*of attachment (ragadvesha) and ignorance (moha*or*avidya).

In the Buddhist view, when these*fires*are extinguished, one is released from the cycle of rebirth (samsara) and suffering (dukkha) comes to an end.

☆☆☆

Monk Radio: Is Mindfulness Enough: Monk Radio: Is Mindfulness Enough - YouTube

☆☆☆(4:18) uploaded 8/8/14, 4 days ago. (805 views)

I was in a very severely panicked state of mind in a dream when I was walking through my parent's home becoming more and more convinced that it had been burglarized while I was away (I didn't turn on the alarm as I recalled).

All of a sudden I just stopped -- and realized that I was in a state of panic that was controlling me, and that this was not helping anything. I took a breath, let the panic leave me, and continued on with the dream.
Didn't get lucid though :/. I've been practicing the "Stop!" method in "Wherever You Go, There You Are" where you just stop whatever you're doing and notice your breath.

I think this is really hopeful! I will work on incorporating a notion of "dream" along with these "stop" moments (actually I usually do an RC at the same time). Yay!

Originally Posted by Memm

I know meditation / yoga can do a lot of amazing things but 30 minutes = 3 hours of REM sleep? That seems fishy to me on many different levels, proof requested.

I've heard it discussed as being equivalent to two hours of DEEP sleep, which makes sense, as the object of yoga nidra is to navigate deep sleep. I have never heard that it equates to REM sleep.

Originally Posted by FryingMan

I was in a very severely panicked state of mind in a dream when I was walking through my parent's home becoming more and more convinced that it had been burglarized while I was away (I didn't turn on the alarm as I recalled).

All of a sudden I just stopped -- and realized that I was in a state of panic that was controlling me, and that this was not helping anything. I took a breath, let the panic leave me, and continued on with the dream.
Didn't get lucid though :/. I've been practicing the "Stop!" method in "Wherever You Go, There You Are" where you just stop whatever you're doing and notice your breath.

I think this is really hopeful! I will work on incorporating a notion of "dream" along with these "stop" moments (actually I usually do an RC at the same time). Yay!

FryingMan, this is really good. You can tell your practice is starting to sink in. I also think you were probably very close to lucidity. Congrats, man!

just came by to say this thread is very useful!

I really got into meditation and buddhism in general and all the links u guys put up are very good!!

WOW! it is the best ADA tutorial i have even seen since i was a human!

previously i practiced ADA with paying attention to all sensory feelings which was nearly impossible as i would get head ache. although they gave me vivid dreams but i couldn't continue it as it gave me too much stress!!!

maybe what you and hakuf has done is better in long period of time...i mean noticing only one element which is absent in dreams in our waking life.

now i practice DILD (and HI interaction too) and it would be better to combine your method with that to speed up the process of constant LDing.

so i need more clarification in this regard and i will thank you so much if you answer them!

1- is it enough to only pay attention to sense of presence of clothes? because for example, other things like gravity is not very distinguishable for me . but sense of presence of clothes is more tangible and it continuously exist despite of other stimuli like sound or breathing which are not linearly present (also noticing breathing is hard for me because when i notice it, even in meditation, i change the rhythm of my breath and that's annoying).

2- how many minutes per hour i should pay attention to the presence of clothing? (is 30 minutes per hour enough? of course these 30 minutes are not continuously and i will do it when i remember).

3- i know it takes many month to be able to have LD in this manner (which worth trying because once you master it, you can have LD on a regular basis) but how many month it took you to have LD on a regular basis according to your ADA method and how many LD do you have in a week by this approach? and how many minutes per hour you can notice your target? and what is your target of attention?

sorry for asking so much questions but if you know me, i am kind of person who needs many clarifications to be able to do something right. otherwise i do them wrong. LOL....

I like this approach too and my take on it is be mindful of how I am relating to experience and particularly the sensations, feelings and emotions that arise. In essence it's no different than mindfulness of breath, just not a formal sitting.

So I don't try to soak in every possible bit of sensory information bombarding me. Just the pertinent sensory information incidental to what I am doing in the moment. And if I'm doing nothing except sitting on the couch watching TV, that's when I'll pay particular attention to breath, heartbeat, clothes, gravity, pressure from glasses on my ears and bridge of nose, etc...

Now I'm the opposite on gravity vs clothes. To me clothes can be a very subtle sensation against the skin unless I'm moving, whereas I always feel the pressure of mass being attracted to mass on any part of me resting on a surface.

As for timing, I do it whenever I'm cognizant I'm not doing it. I've taken to wearing a small bungee cord around my wrist as a reminder. I was going to get one of those cheap silicone bracelets, like the LiveStrong ones, but I had some small bungees in the kitchen draw and I actually like them because they are much looser and move and jiggle around a lot without being able to slipover my hand. It's really a great reminder, and when it gets too comfortable on one wrist I switch it to the other.

Hi yaya, I'm a less experienced LDer than you so I don't know how much I could help, but I have some thoughts.

Originally Posted by yaya

previously i practiced ADA with paying attention to all sensory feelings which was nearly impossible as i would get head ache. although they gave me vivid dreams but i couldn't continue it as it gave me too much stress!!!

Yeah my brain kinda feels funny when I practice awareness... but I just think of it as my brain undergoing big changes for the better. For me it actually feels better than being consumed by random thoughts and worries; the main reason I'm not practicing awareness whenever I can is simply because old ways of thinking die hard, I guess... :/

Originally Posted by yaya

1- is it enough to only pay attention to sense of presence of clothes? because for example, other things like gravity is not very distinguishable for me . but sense of presence of clothes is more tangible and it continuously exist despite of other stimuli like sound or breathing which are not linearly present (also noticing breathing is hard for me because when i notice it, even in meditation, i change the rhythm of my breath and that's annoying).

I think it's better if you pay attention to more than 1 stimulus... If I'm not mistaken, the point of ADA practice (or awareness practice in general) with regards to lucid dreaming is to connect your mind into the present moment instead of random thoughts, so eventually that connection will 'spill' into your dreams and be able to identify them as such. If you're paying attention to many stimuli, that may get you better chances of spotting something odd when you do it in a dream.

Originally Posted by yaya

2- how many minutes per hour i should pay attention to the presence of clothing? (is 30 minutes per hour enough? of course these 30 minutes are not continuously and i will do it when i remember).

Just keep it up for as long as you can. From what I've heard, constant practice will make it easier to hold awareness for longer periods of time, and eventually it will become second nature.

Originally Posted by yaya

3- i know it takes many month to be able to have LD in this manner (which worth trying because once you master it, you can have LD on a regular basis) but how many month it took you to have LD on a regular basis according to your ADA method and how many LD do you have in a week by this approach? and how many minutes per hour you can notice your target? and what is your target of attention?

If you're practicing it daily, it could give you quick results. Around half of my lucid dreams occured on nights after I've gotten a lot of awareness practice done during the day. But I don't know how long it would take to practice awareness before you could LD, say, almost every night.
It might help to appreciate the benefits of awareness in waking life as well, to make your ADA sessions longer. For example, as I mentioned above, I feel less stressed when I practice any sort of awareness, and I notice a lot of interesting stuff than when I am just being distracted by random thoughts.

Hope this helps even a little bit!

thank you all for your helps!

JustASimpleGuy, how many weeks or month you are doing that method and how many LD do you get by that? thanks!


Synapse, you are right about the reason of head ache or overwhelming feelings at first days of trying ADA as our brain is under heavy changes and thanks for your clear answer about your results about ADA.

i think the ADA according to king yoshi (who i respect him too much) is a way to only keep our thoughts focused and not to think about random thoughts and also to train our mind like a muscle to make it more aware in dreams (as in dream yoga, we should pay attention to many stimuli just to make our mind to be strong enough to able to not be dormant in our dreams).

in other word, the more we are present in our daily life, the more we are present in our dreams. so i don't think paying attention to environment itself is useful for clear reasons which have been discussed a lot in this forum and ADA should be with self-awareness.

but something new or bold about Ctharlhie ADA is that it is not only all day awareness, but it is all day reality check. that's why it catched my eyes. i mean for example, he said feeling the tactile sense of the feet on the ground is an element of absence in our dreams so by every step and feeling of walking on the ground, we actually do a reality check (no feeling of tactile sense= dream and feeling of tactile sense= we are awake).
but in other ADA versions, for example, we simply watch the room. well, in our dreams, we also may see the room and its details. so it wouldn't help us directly but to make us more present or make our brain stronger and more aware as in some practice of dream yoga.

so i think Ctharlhie ADA is better for newbies like me as it has the element of constant RC in every moment of the practice and even paying attention to one stimuli would work well as it worked for hakuf (i hope i spell his name right. LOL).

just a thought...maybe i am wrong!