Thread: ADA: Right or Wrong for Lucidity?

Well presented.

I have practiced a form of Yoga ADA (present moment awareness) on and off for about 10 years (mostly off), but mainly as you put it, for paying attention and as a means to balance out my natural tendency to dream even while I am awake. It is difficult to say how much this has helped as far as lucid dreaming is concerned because I practiced it alongside my own version of Dream Yoga, which is essentially self awareness, and not general environmental awareness.

That said, I agree with just about everything you have said. I think it is probable that many people who have had success with ADA are actually including in it a lot of self awareness without calling it such; making it lean more in this or that direction.

I have found general awareness to be very useful for things like when I am out in public (being on guard),when speaking to others (internal awareness), etc. These things have their obvious benefits in other aspects of lucid dreaming, such as visualization, clarity, stability, and concentration for techniques, but without the discriminating mind they might not have much effect when it comes to gaining lucidity within the dream itself.

Personally, I have had much success with Dream Yoga, basically my version of this has replaced my "ADA" time with a constant will to know which reality I am in and to watch for anything unusual or dreamlike; so in that sense I am always looking for trouble, remembering who I am, where I am, what my dream signs are, and so forth. I do not do this for the entire day (and I have a difficult time believing that anyone but monks do), but it is for several hours in total some days, and only a few hours on other days. Sometimes a DC will convince me that I am crazy and everything is normal, but I find more often than not that really unusual things do not go unnoticed.

I look forward to this thread developing, we may all learn a great deal and save a lot of time and frustration because of it.

so how would one practice self awareness? would observing your thoughts and generally observing your self count? literally just be aware of every aspect of ones self?

thanks for bringing this up btw, as a novice just getting into this I'm sure I will learn a lot and possibly shave time off my learning curve.

I think ADA, if practiced in a way that could be useful for LD, can be very useful. The useful ADA I think involves reducing or eliminating doing things on autopilot while one's thoughts are elsewhere, which is very useful because if one's habit is to do stuff on autopilot in waking life then one is likely to do stuff on autopilot while dreaming as well, increasing one's questioning of reality, paying more attention in general, increasing one's meta awareness. I suspect though that one can indeed increase awareness in a useless way which would be if one got information overload from paying attention to too many details, but doing it as blindly paying attention without questioning. However, I would say that the fault there would be that someone is doing ADA wrong, not that ADA is wrong.

Great topic Sageous, one that I wanted to discuss a long time ago.

I'll be brief (at work) in this initial post, but let expose my main view on ADA:

ADA's success is not on the attention payed to sensory input. Now, everyone might disagree with me here, but nowhere paying attention to sensory input gives you a higher degree of awareness. How could it? The fact that you're aware of sensory input gives you, at most, a biggest degree of attention to details, but as we know it, attention to details doesn't necessarily mean lucidity: as alert as we might be in the dream, we seem to lack meta-consciousness to assess our state. You might say "but it goes along other things like reality checks, we simply just need to add them", but reality checks are a thing in their own. If the questioning and the reality checks are the ones responsible for lucidity, then it's not the technique that is effective.

I must say (I know this is anecdotal evidence, but the OP did ask for experiences) that the best thing I get out of ADA is dream recall. It really improves after several weeks of intense ADA. I don't know if I'm the only one, but I for sure would recommend a few exercises of ADA during the day for a person trying to recall more dreams. Anyway...

So what makes ADA work?

One word: mindfulness. Mindfulness refers to living the moment, to pause your mind from the constant monologues it's running, and to focus it in the present moment. Mindfulness has many attested effects on mental health: it reduces stress, it makes people more aware (and importantly self-aware!), and this self-awareness also relates to feelings, just like meditation does. You might even seen the expression "mindfulness meditation": it refers to the specific practice of focusing your mind in only one stimuli, and ignoring all the rest. I think I still have some article around that talks about these advantages in a tested way.

That being said, it seems to me that ADA is an incomplete technique. It does start off great: be more aware. But awareness without questioning, is the same as learning without thinking critically (which is actually a wide spread phenomenon in the majority of our education system!). I agree strongly with Sageous in this point: the mere attention to sensory input won't help you with lucidity: in fact, it may immerse you so deeply in the roots of the dream that you actually might forget the most important thing: to question that same reality you're paying to much attention to.

Also, don't forget one big principle of maintaining lucidity: keep a balance between attachment and detachment with the dream world. Too detached, and you might end waking up. Too attached, you might end up getting caught on the plot and loose lucidity. So giving this amount of relevance to sensory input seems to me a bit counter-productive.

This is why I state ADA is not a "wrong technique", it's only an incomplete one. Wording aside, you can actually see some core similarities with other advocates of awareness, like Sageous itself. But where the line is draw, is how exactly you face your reality: do you embrace it like you do in ADA, or do you close in yourself as the agent in it?

In the bigger picture, awareness is one of the hardest concepts regarding lucidity. And that's because, like Sageous said, every living thing has a degree of awareness. But it's clear that it's not that awareness that gives you lucidity: the answers lies more on the side of an awareness towards that same awareness: the meta-consciousness, evaluating your own awareness.

PS: no one mentions the word mindfulness in their posts, but just by reading the few above, you actually notice several people mentioning the concept. All-day mindfulness would be a more appropriate name I'd give to ADA (just kidding kingyoshi ^^).

Hmm, very interesting. I think you may be on to something huge with the whole self awareness thing. "Master" lucid dreamers, such as the ones on this site that literally have an LD every night can just KNOW that the universe they are in is just a dream, right from the get go.

I believe it is safe to assume that I back ADA 100% when it comes to achieving lucidity. Its not for promotional reasons or any other nonsense. I have practiced ADA for a long time and at this point, I practice pretty much nothing else aside from DJing. ADA has increased my natural level of awareness within the dream state and led to more and better quality lucid dreams. Not only this, but it has provided me with a massive level of control within the dream state. I don't only think ADA should be looked at as a quality technique, I believe to be the absolute best practice for lucid dreaming and I have tried everything. Again, I didn't create this, I just compiled it into a tutorial because I was repeatedly asked about it back in the day. I can't imagine how many new dreamers have pm'd me or posted in the ADA thread and came away with their first lucid experiences soon after.


Edit after rereading the posts in this thread: I

f you are in a dream and you are aware of your surroundings in the dream, that IS self-awareness. Everything in your dream is yourSELF. That is all you and your creation. Your in your own mind. If you guys are going BD and you think the dream state is actually another "realm" (for lack of a better word) or there are beings and all these other unproven aspects, then yeah, ADA might not be for you. This is not a BD technique (in the way I wrote it anyway). The tutorial/compilation was written by me in a manner that directly correlates to lucid dreaming. I left out any form of spirituality aspects that Buddhists Monks use dreaming for. There is no spiritual, yoga, or any sort of religious aspects to the way it is written. Its only for awareness and only used to increase the lucid experience and frequency. I lucid dream for entertainment. I'll the leave all the BD stuff to everyone else. I could explain in great detail how and why it works, but it is described in great detail in my tutorial. Its not like I just said the technique, I explained how and why it works.

I didn't call it mindfulness because that is more along the yoga, Buddhist, meditation type of term. I have no interest in any of those things. My ADA, is for lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming only. If someone wants to take it to the spiritual level, then cool. I can and will still help them practice the technique without any form of bias, but the spiritual side is not in my area of expertise.

Great responses, people; I'm hoping there'll be more!

Here are just a few quick responses; which I'll keep brief so as not to interfere with the cadence of the thread:

Meskhetyw: Great post, and I think you did a much better job describing ADA as a good tool for lucidity (by way of self-awareness), but not the tool; thank you! I'm reasonably familiar with dream yoga, though, and you have to wonder why the yogis don't use ADA (or do they?).

tofur: Since self-awareness is a subject unto itself, it might be best to not go off on such a tangent at this point (maybe later!). But I do talk about it a bit in the first session of my WILD class and in my Lucid Dreaming Fundamentals thread; if you're interested, you might have a look over there, and feel free to post any questions on the WILD Q & A thread or the Fundamentals thread. I hope you do!

JoannaB: I mostly agree, but you raise a question: can't ADA be susceptible to falling into "autopilot" mode, just as RC's are?

Zoth: That was brief? I'd never thought of ADA for dream recall, and honestly still have trouble doing so, though you are a very credible source, even when anecdotal!

Funny, though I've used the term "mindfulness," or direct synonyms anyway, in many of my posts and I think my WILD class, I managed to leave it out here. My bad, I think, because self-awareness and mindfulness go hand-in-hand. But do natural awareness, as tapped in ADA, and mindfulness share the same camaraderie? Of that I'm not so sure -- so, I think, practicing mindfulness (and right-mindfulness, for the spiritual types) is closer to developing self-awareness than ADA. If I'm wrong, be sure to tell me why...

King Yoshi: First, rest assured that I had no idea you had an ADA tutorial, and this is in no way an attack on your work or your opinion. Indeed, your input here is most valued!

I think you and I have very different views of what self-awareness is, as I believe it is not just awareness of your surroundings in a dream (or waking life); it is awareness of your presence in those surroundings and an awareness of the interaction of your presence with the surroundings, and they with you. That difference, I think, is significant. Also, dreamers are generally quite aware of their surroundings in any dream, whether lucid or not. If they weren't, then NLD's would effectively not exist because, since if non-lucid dreamers are unaware of their dreams' surroundings, those dreams would never be recalled (that sounded better in my head).

Also, for what it's worth, I am not a Buddhist and any similarity to my work and words is, trust me, purely coincidental! I also don't see any real religious bent to anything being said here.

I hope you'll share more, especially with regard to how ADA increases control, how it can be used as the only tool for inducing lucidity, and perhaps how, without self-awareness (as I've defined it above) in the dream, you are able to differentiate between actual LD's and NLD's about LD's.


That's all I dare say for now, guys, and feel free to ignore me if I got in the way of the conversation. Thanks again for posting, and I look forward to more...

Originally Posted by Sageous

King Yoshi: First, rest assured that I had no idea you had an ADA tutorial, and this is in no way an attack on your work or your opinion. Indeed, your input here is most valued!

I think you and I have very different views of what self-awareness is, as I believe it is not just awareness of your surroundings in a dream (or waking life); it is awareness of your presence in those surroundings and an awareness of the interaction of your presence with the surroundings, and they with you. That difference, I think, is significant. Also, dreamers are generally quite aware of their surroundings in any dream, whether lucid or not. If they weren't, then NLD's would effectively not exist because, since if non-lucid dreamers are unaware of their dreams' surroundings, those dreams would never be recalled (that sounded better in my head).

I hope you'll share more, especially with regard to how ADA increases control, how it can be used as the only tool for inducing lucidity, and perhaps how, without self-awareness (as I've defined it above) in the dream, you are able to differentiate between actual LD's and NLD's about LD's.


That's all I dare say for now, guys, and feel free to ignore me if I got in the way of the conversation. Thanks again for posting, and I look forward to more...

No worries. I just assumed you knew I had wrote the tutorial. I wrote the one that initially coined the acronym, ADA, and brought the idea of using it for lucid dreaming to DreamViews. Your talk of self-awareness is exactly how I describe performing ADA. Being aware of your surroundings and how their presence feels and effects the dreamer. Our views are the same. What ADA does, is train yourself to recognize that you are within a dream, simply because you ARE within a dream. The awareness you build in waking life helps you differentiate the natural feeling of being awake as opposed to being asleep. I become lucid in my dreams because I "feel" it is a dream. I just know its a dream because I have trained myself to recognize the difference between the two states without resorting to any sort of ques or direct methods. If you want to know how ADA was initially introduce here, give my tutorial a read . I have been gone for a long time, so I have no doubts that some have altered the views and see ADA a bit differently from what was initially intended.

ADA not only helps with achieving lucidity, but with recall, dream control, clarity, and nearly every aspect of lucid dreaming.

^^ Thanks for clarifying! It seems we are indeed on the same page. Or at least the same chapter, which is fine with me.

I will check out your tutorial, I think, because the ADA I'm referring to has been around a very long time, and if you introduced something different here, that is very cool... I do fear that the increasingly popular references to ADA are more closely linked to the DV wiki definition -- and traditional ADA -- than yours, though; maybe it's good you're back?

Lol, mindfulness and the basis of ADA (the background and its extensive usage in every day life for spiritual, yoga and other reasons) have indeed been around for a long time. Buddhist Monks are one known practitioner for using this basis to gain lucidity. ADA, the acronym, the title All Day Awareness, and the initial written technique used specifically for recreational lucid dreaming is all me .

The DV wiki definition came after and was created from my tutorial, btw.

I recently conducted a survey on my personal forum. We received 470+ anonymous replies. One of the questions is how people achieve lucidity. Interestingly, a large percentage (45% or more) of LDs turn out to be spontaneous, meaning they just happened, not because people spotted something odd or some recurring dream signs. The later case had fewer than 5%.

The above result led us to question the relationship between awareness and lucid dreams. We naturally believe it is awareness which triggers lucid dreams, to the point no one ever questions it. And many techniques are invented based on that belief. Now I'm not saying awareness is not a factor that causes LDs, but I think people should at least treat it with reservation. What if lucid dreams have nothing to do with awareness? If that's a possibility then we may all be barking at the wrong trees.

Back to ADA. It promises to increase one's awareness to a point that when dreaming one can recognize the surroundings being a dream. For this to make sense we need to make a few assumptions:

1. DILDs are caused by a high level awareness and one's ability to identify oddities, dream signs, or other incoherence in a dream.

2. The habit of staying highly aware can indeed be carried into dreams. More generically speaking, it's the assumption that any day-time habits can be carried into dreams.

3. Assuming ADA works, then we should be able to assume it works in such fashion:

- It should produce DILDs consistently, without other aid, such as WBTB, auto suggestion, and so on.
- It should work whenever there is a dream, even during NREM.

King Yoshi:

Hmm. I'd swear I'd been bumping into the practice of ADA, and the specific term, for decades now; I guess I was mistaken. Regardless, I hope that you will allow this thread to move on, based on the idea that the premise set by the OP is ADA as it seems to be understood now -- just observing everything around you -- with the assumption that we are discussing a concept and not a King Yoshi product.

If you can't allow that, and continue to claim ownership of a practice (as I described in the OP) that has been around for centuries, well, then, I guess this thread simply cannot proceed. Too bad, too; it felt like we were on to something.

That would explain, I suppose, why this subject is never brought up -- it would have been nice if a moderator had chimed in that I was stepping on someone's proprietary product; Since I was asked by other members to start this thread, I suddenly feel like the butt of a practical joke.

Lol, I don't claim to own any products. Slow down chief. Mindfulness and awareness have been around since the dawn of time. Its like sports. No one created "sports," but someone named and outlined a specific one called football. Just like no one created mindfulness and awareness, but someone (yours truly) outlined and named a specific form, ADA (All Day Awareness). I, literally, created the term and acronym as I was writing the tutorial . You can google it if you wish and try to find it used prior to the creation, but its not going to be found. I'm not going on a power trip here, I wrote the tutorial to help others achieve lucidity and that only. I had no intention of it becoming as popular as it has, but I'm grateful and I do take some pride in that. Its got a lot of views and its a catchy acronym I suppose. I guess that contributed to it being spread. I didn't realize how widely used it had become until I made my way back a few months ago. And, technically, as its posted on these forums, it is the property of DreamViews now anyway. When you see ADA used on this site, its 99% of the time used in reference to that tutorial or the DV Wiki term. The DV Wiki term actually came after and from that tutorial. I only claim to have created the title, acronym and the compilation. Like I stated in the tutorial, "I didn't create this practice," so you can relax on that front. Not sure why you are getting so worked up about it anyway. I was on staff and the Dream Guide Leader back when that tutorial was created. The mods all know me and i'm sure they didn't see you as stepping on any toes. I didn't even see it that way at all. Of course, I'm going to defend the practice.

As for the thread continuing, the users on this sight are talking about ADA, while you are referring to awareness and mindfulness. While similar and both from the same type origins, they are different things. ADA was created specifically for lucid dreaming and lucid dreaming only. While awareness and mindfulness are practices from the beginning of time.

^^ Why does everyone always think I'm getting "worked up?" I think I need to change my writing style. In truth I have no emotional ties to this term or its use, and am happy to go back to defining and defending self-awareness in its own right. Elsewhere.

That said, I don't think further input on my part will be helpful, because I've clearly misunderstood ADA as it is used on these forums, and also because I have no interest in commenting on the efficacy of someone else's technique (just as I would never comment on CosmicIron's SSILD technique). That was not my point, but apparently it will be the only direction this thread can go in. Which sucks.

Again, too bad; it's a good subject that may be very misunderstood on these forums.

And again, be assured that I am not "worked up," "angry," "excited," or any other sort of thing. At worst I'm disappointed, and at best relieved that I no longer have to deal with a thread which I really didn't want to start in the first place.

"If you can't allow that, and continue to claim ownership of a practice (as I described in the OP) that has been around for centuries, well, then, I guess this thread simply cannot proceed. Too bad, too"

Lol, what do you expect? This clearly shows disgust and the fact you thought I was trying to take credit for something you felt was ridiculous to take credit for. That is called getting worked up. I didn't say angry, mad, or excited. You are going up against the wrong person here. My involvement on this site is purely for the benefit of others. You are relatively new here, so I suppose you just don't know much about me. Claiming ownership of something that isn't mine, is not in my style and has no benefit to me. Like I said, its all DreamViews property now anyway. ADA works and works very, very well. If you want to more details even after reading the tutorial, I'd be happy to explain as deeply as you wish. Just ask me any questions you may have and I'll get right to it.

Okay. Maybe it was disgust. And, given that there will be an explanatory note from you regardless of what I say, no doubt starting with a condescending "LOL," I think you're making my point for me while eliminating any chance of useful conversation on this thread, and only making participation here that much less pleasant.

This thread was a mistake, and I offer my deepest thanks to those who (knowingly?) asked me to start it. I really don't have time for this.

Enjoy, King Yoshi.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Okay. Maybe it was disgust. And, given that there will be an explanatory note from you regardless of what I say, no doubt starting with a condescending "LOL," I think you're making my point for me while eliminating any chance of useful conversation on this thread, and only making participation here that much less pleasant.

This thread was a mistake, and I offer my deepest thanks to those who (knowingly?) asked me to start it. I really don't have time for this.

Enjoy, King Yoshi.

Of course, the "lol" was condescending. It is extremely justified after your off-base "disgust." Don't take it out on me because you accidentally created a thread not knowing all the background information. I'm sorry that you are upset, but what do you want me to say? lol.

^^ Nice.

Apparently the disgust was justified.

All apologies to the earlier, less pompous participants of this thread; it was good while it lasted, and I am truly sorry for my own hand in helping trash it. All I can say is I tried.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ Nice.

Apparently the disgust was justified.

All apologies to the earlier, less pompous participants of this thread; it was good while it lasted, and I am truly sorry for my own hand in helping trash it. All I can say is I tried.

Pompous, lol. You made a thread saying that my lucid dreaming technique was not good for lucid dreaming. Sorry, bud. This thread was doomed from the beginning.

^^ AND I tried, more than once, to back away from "your" technique (I thought you said it was DV's, BTW?) and talk about that on which it is based. This thread may have been doomed, but it was your childish arrogance that buried it. Thanks.

So much for trying. I'm out.

I'm neither childish, nor arrogant. The name calling is not coming from my end if you haven't noticed, . The title of your thread still has "ADA" in it. I'm not going to have ADA be discredited because you made a thread without knowing fully what you were creating. It IS DV's thread and I am very loyal to DV. ADA has worked wonders for lucid dreamers and its going to continue to do so. Stop trying to make this about you and me. This is about helping people get lucid. So, a thread that is off-base and could possibly give a lucid hopeful the wrong idea, should not be here. Its as simple as that. You have all these ideas of pompous arrogance and ownership of techniques on your brain, while I'm just looking out for the best interest of DV and this community. Maybe you should look into a mirror before you start dropping these labels on me, lol.

Boys, calm down please, I would like to continue to be able to respect both of you.

Yes, I believe ADA is a great tool for lucidity. Yes, I think it can be and often has been misunderstood. Yes, just like reality checks, if misunderstood, it can be self defeating by falling into auto-pilot mode, which is ironic given how it is about leaving auto-pilot mode. I personally do not care whether it is called ADA or Shmuples, but since a lot of people on this site know it as ADA now, and noone knows it as Schmuples, could we please continue to call it ADA. I am glad you coined the term, KingYoshi, and popularized this important technique on DV. I am glad you started this thread to clarify misunderstandings about ADA, Sageous. Peace?

Definitely peace on my end. I respect Sageous for his vast knowledge on lucid dreaming and the contributions he makes to this community. I have even showed newbies some of his posts/threads prior to this. This thread, however, is off base and shouldn't have been created without even understanding what ADA actually is. On top of that, it was set-up as a debate type thread and I did nothing more than debate. I see no fault of any sort on my end, but I didn't lose any respect for Sageous. He just made a mistake...it happens. No worries.

so what I'm getting from this is that the trick is to involve your self in the awareness work, and not just focus on your surroundings but instead combine the two and be aware of how one is interacting with the world, and that both yoshi and sageous are on the same page there... seems only cosmic iron is questioning the importance of awareness to lucid dreaming altogether which is a little out there for me and will likely stay there without some further input and explanation