A self called natural lucid dreamer on ADA

I find this interesting thread elsewhere on a popular web forum

So the question was "What are some specific techniques for practicing ADA (all day awareness) in an effort to improve chances of lucid dreaming? "

The reply came from someone describing herself as natural lucid dreamer for 20 years. Slow reading recommended

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I play a little game when it comes to ADA. I think the first thing to keep in mind is the awareness that as you go about your day, you're likely going to forget to be aware. This is okay!

First thing I do is a sensory activation. I feel the air on my skin, smell, what can I hear, what can I see? Incorporate some reality checks into this. If there is something you can read; note the context, look away and expect it to be different when you look back. In a dream, it would likely be different, but while awake it's the same thing.

The point of this exercise is to establish what being awake feels like. It feels very different when dreaming. Like I don't feel anything against my skin at all.

The second step, once you've activated your senses is to think of what you would do, should you have discovered it was a dream. This step is optional, really. Some people have goals for their lucid dreams and some just want to explore. But, I found this to be helpful for me, as remembering my goals for lucidity to be quite difficult without it.

The third thing is the game: How long can I remain aware for? Keep those senses active. This step is important as... sometimes I can lose myself back into the dream. I don't think I become completely non-lucid, but I lose my control. Just keep yourself as aware for as long as possible and this habit will carry forward when you're actually dreaming.

The senses also help stabilize the dream. When you're dreaming and you activate your senses, feeling the dream around you... it gives you an opportunity to exert some control while you're grounding yourself. You have to fight the ambition to run off and experience the craziness dreams have to offer. I found that grounding helped with goals. But allowing your senses to feel the dream allowed the dream to last longer. If you feel the dream slipping, focus on something in your vision, don't panic and sometimes it'll reform around you.

If you find that you've slipped, don't fret. Just start over and do it again. I don't think it's meant to be literally all day for awareness, but I think practicing these techniques will increase your natural awareness.

For me, the point of the exercise isn't about how long... it's in fact focused on how it feels to be awake and how it feels to dream. Knowing that difference subconsciously is what makes natural lucid dreamers natural. They just know what dreams feel like.

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I've been delving into Mindfulness for a couple months now. It didn't start with dreaming in mind at all, but my dreams have been more intense and more readily recalled since I started. Now that I think about it, it's likely because of this work I've been doing. Have you been using this technique?

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Originally Posted by Nuova

I've been delving into Mindfulness for a couple months now. It didn't start with dreaming in mind at all, but my dreams have been more intense and more readily recalled since I started. Now that I think about it, it's likely because of this work I've been doing. Have you been using this technique?

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In short, yes. But be aware that mindfulness is not just a technique, but specially a way of being and relating to the world, a trait if you wish, and so it takes time to become habitual if one starts from normal mindlessness.
Mindfulness should make your dreams more vivid, and if perfected it leads to natural lucidity - but that "side effect" does not come before a deep, permanent shift.

Yes, I meant the technique that you posted though, not Mindfulness in general. I do see mindfulness as a way of thinking or experiencing the world. It does take practice though, as I'm so much an INTJ that I had a very tough time being present when I first started - my whole life really I wouldn't call what I was (and often still am) as mindlessness though, it's simply that my focus is on my ideas, past and future experiences of the world, and my analysis of it all. Being 100% present all the time is not the goal for me, only to be able to switch back and forth more easily.

Thanks for sharing this! I dabbled with ADA myself a few years ago but always thought I was doing something wrong. I hardly remembered to keep it up during the day and it never really manifested itself in my dreams. I think I might give it another go! Something about this process was (is) really appealing to me.

That's a pretty decent, if vaguely/oddly familiar, exercise, Vagaltone, and its self-oriented focus happily distances it from "traditional" ADA. But it does sort of force me to ask an off-topic question:

Why would a "natural" ever need a technique of any kind, much less think of one on her own and share it? You'd think naturals would be the worst people to learn techniques from, since they never needed any themselves... right?

I'm being a bit snarky, I know, but the whole "natural" myth sort of bugs me, especially when a self-proclaimed natural offers up a technique that she theoretically never needed in the first place... how would she even know it is effective?

Just sayin' ... feel free to ignore!

:sageous:

I see your point, Sageous :) Naturals can be mysterious at least lol
I don't know anything about the person but it is possible she might have decided to improve her natural abilities (?)

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Originally Posted by VagalTone

I don't know anything about the person but it is possible she might have decided to improve her natural abilities (?)

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Sure... that's certainly possible.

I wonder, though, if it's more that attaching a label of "natural" to their profile gives posters more credibility on forums, so people tend to proclaim themselves naturals, even though they had to learn to LD somewhere along the line. Also, that "mysteriousness" you mention likely arises whenever self-proclaimed naturals are asked to explain, say, why they need a technique to do something they've been able to do from birth without effort.

Hello Sageous,
First, sorry for the approximative english, i'm French :)
As a natural lucid dreamer I can't agree with you. A natural lucidity doesn't mean that you don't need anything ! It's a shortcut.
Also, I think there are a lot of different kinds of natural LDers : someone who has lucidly woken up from a nightmare a few times during childhood can proclame to be a lucid dreamer, as someone who has explored lucid dreaming for several years (without any knowing of the subject). But the two experiences are so different, the first one surely has some propensities, but they would be very reduced compared to the second one, who accumulated a lot of experiences.
That's how you have in one hand someone who have lucid dreams easily BUT need some techniques to have a decent frequency and quality, and on the other hand someone who can have lucid dreams with his hands in his pockets.

To go even deeper into the "not that simple", I will talk about my own experience. I had lucid dreams spontaneously since I was a child, first in nightmares that I woke up from, like a lot of natural lucid dreamers. But at 10 years old I began to experience lucidity in dreams that weren't scary, or "nightmarish", so I really began to harness this state, to make it last, to experiment things, to explore the possibilities and so on. I had a lot of LD's without seeking for them with any method.
When I discovered the word "lucid dream" (at 14), I learned about the different methods to induce it, that I didn't need as a natural, theorically. But it turned out that WBTB and MILD increased the occurrences of my lucid dreams. Also, even if it is not really a method, setting up lucid goals before going to sleep had an incidence on my ability to have a lucid dream, and to make it last. With this, I can surely tell people that setting up a lucid goal is important, and I hope they won't reply "what do you know about it, you're a natural, you don't even need it". True, I don't need it, but it still is very useful, and advisable ;-)
I also learned to WILD (my natural LDs were only DILD).
When I do nothing, I have lucid dreams. When I use some precise methods, I have more lucid dreams, ans mostly I have them in due time. They appear waaay less randomly ! That's part of how I know that I use a method right or wrong, and then I can help people with it.

I think natural lucid dreamers are very different people, with very different experiences (not all gifted lucid dreamers, some just had some natural LD's in the past, it doesn't mean that they can have LD's now by doing nothing), and you can't just say they don't need anything so they are not legitimate to give advices. It's putting all of them in the same box, whereas they sometimes have pretty much nothing in common.
I guide and support a lot of people on our french forum about lucid dreams, and I think having natural lucid dreams doesn't restrain me to have fondamental knowledge about different methods, and doesn't restrain the methods to have an effect on me, even if they are not indispensable for my lucid dreams to happen. The minor effects they have are enough to know if I do it right or not, and allows me to give advices to others ;-) As said before by VagalTone, the methods can improve a natural lucid dreamer abilities, and this "small" feedback is enough to make the natural LDers legitimate to give advices :)

But I understand what you mean when you talk about the "label" and how people can mislead it or exaggerate it. Some people doesn't make a difference between "having abilities and potential" and having natural lucid dreams.
Be sure that I don't consider people who pretend to be natural LDers in my reflexion, only the ones who really are.


(I hope what I wrote makes sense)

^^ Thank you for sharing, LuneBleue, and your English was excellent!

I wasn't going to respond, because I don't care anymore to argue about this stuff (I've tried in the past, I assure you), but your post seemed thoughtful enough that it deserved something on my part... so I hope you won't mind these thoughts:

* First, our perspectives of what a "natural" seem quite different. By your definition, I too am a natural, and yet I don't hold even the slightest notion of being a natural. For me a natural LD'er is someone who knows they are dreaming during every dream; there are no DILD's, no WILD's; there is just lucidity. This is because naturals would necessarily have experienced a change in their mental hard-wiring that has endowed them with the ability, the inevitability, to retain access to memory and waking-life cognition while they are asleep; in essence, naturals are "awake" throughout their sleep cycle, whether they like it or not... and that change would have occurred spontaneously, most likely from birth, and not as the result of training or practice (training and practice would equal "Unnatural" ability, I think). By that token, naturals would be extremely unnatural, since our natural state during sleep is to be, well, asleep, and not awake.

* I agree completely that a natural might be inclined to improve their God-given (or DNA-given, if you will) experience, or perhaps use their natural advantage to explore more advanced consciousness. Indeed, I would assume that, as in waking-life, a natural might be challenged to develop their self-awareness in their dreams; to not just know they are dreaming, but to be truly lucid... but would a natural need or even be aware of a technique as basic as the one in the OP? I'm not sure.

* I believe that pretty much all of us experience spontaneous lucidity sometime in life, especially in childhood; that experience falls more into accidental moments of misdirected awareness, usually caused by the trauma of a nightmare, or perhaps by sleeping longer than a normal sleep cycle and reaching a point where the boundary between wake and sleep is extremely hazy, or perhaps in childhood, when our "Here&Now" worldview is much more receptive to accepting the non-reality of dreams. But none of this experience lines up with an innate ability to become lucid in any dream or in all dreams; they are simply moments when waking-life consciousness wanders into our dreams... if they were representative of being a natural, then wouldn't we all be naturals?

* On a personal level, my experience very much parallels your own, if not even more so, because I was at this for decades before ever hearing about terms like "Lucid Dreaming," "DILD," or "WILD." For years I didn't know I was doing WILD's, but instead was simply exploring my dreams and consciousness in a deeper and deeper way until being self-aware and in touch with memory during dreams became a necessary tool, and not a goal in itself. All this took a lot of work, though, and -- with the exceptions of the occasional "accidents" of lucidity I mention above -- by no means imaginable did any of it happen spontaneously or naturally.

On top of all that, my long-term experience with lucidity has left me with a sort of residual lucidity, where I know I am dreaming, at least a little, in almost all of my dreams... and yet I still cannot imagine myself a natural.

* Here's another reason I have trouble with Naturals giving advice or teaching about lucidity: naturals tend to make lousy teachers, because they never had to experience learning for themselves. I think this may be true for all naturals, be they athletes, mathematicians, LD'ers, or whatever; naturals literally do not know how they become lucid, and never needed to do so (or to even care), so basic techniques like that in the OP wouldn't even occur to them, much less seem important enough to them to remember and share. This attitude is difficult to describe in such a short space, so I hope you understand and don't take offense. Sure, a natural could learn to become a teacher, but their advice on basic skills would always need to come from somewhere other than their own experience (or else all their advice would simply be something like "Just do it.")

* Finally, my real issue with "Naturals" lies not in whether they exist, or what defines them, but that it seems that a "Natural" meme is spreading across the forums. As with any advanced discipline, if there are any natural LD'ers at all -- people who are always aware they are dreaming, and have been that way since birth -- then they would be few and far between, and I would bet, like anything else, very few of those few would be inclined to share their experience online. And yet I seem to be encountering self-proclaimed naturals more and more every day, and many of them strangely seem to need techniques, experience dry spells, and have lots of non-lucid dreams -- just like the rest of us.

I think the term "Natural" has joined "SP" on that odd but venerated pedestal where definitions no longer matter, only claims and the odd prestige accompanying them, and its true definition is becoming lost in the noise of folks who want to be naturals (or want naturals to be commonplace) and are willing to describe being a natural in ever more agreeable or easily attainable terms. To me it's a shame to see a simple term -- one used in lots of other disciplines and skill sets -- be redefined to the point where its original and very simple meaning is lost... all so that more people get to impress or be impressed. [I've long since given up trying to discuss SP, BTW, and likely I'll do the same with Naturals, for obvious reasons. The crowd tends to win on this stuff, and I'm okay with being an outlier.]

I hope you understand, LuneBleue, that all this stuff is not meant as any kind of personal slight or insult toward you, and I am by no means being dismissive of your experience or skills. You have every right to assume you are a natural, especially on the terms you describe, and in light of the changing definition of "natural." I'm not telling you that you -- or your experience -- are wrong; if anything I'm the one who's wrong here, as I stubbornly cling to simple, if perhaps socially obsolete, definitions.

Thank you very much Sageous for this detailed ans clear reply !

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I hope you understand, LuneBleue, that all this stuff is not meant as any kind of personal slight or insult toward you, and I am by no means being dismissive of your experience or skills. You have every right to assume you are a natural, especially on the terms you describe, and in light of the changing definition of "natural." I'm not telling you that you -- or your experience -- are wrong; if anything I'm the one who's wrong here, as I stubbornly cling to perhaps obsolete, simple definitions.

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No offense taken, I understand that considering your english-speaking definition, I wouldn't be considered as a natural lucid dreamer and it doesn't bother me at all. All that matters for me is to have lucid dreams because they are so freaking passionating :)

In French we clearly don't have the same "official" definition. For us a natural lucid dreamer is just someone who has LD's without doing anything (without trying to induce them). It doesn't involve that every dream is a lucid one at all, there is no minimal frequency, just the fact that the person has more or less regularly (not induced) lucid dreams.
For example, for us someone who had 2 lucid dreams "by accident" during childhood is not really considered as a natural lucid dreamer because it was not regular.
But someone who had a lot of them, and for a long time (like 1 per week for several years) is considered as a natural lucid dreamer, because they have lucid dreams naturally. You would absolutely be considered a natural LDer in our area :tongue:

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Here's another reason I have trouble with Naturals giving advice or teaching about lucidity: naturals tend to make lousy teachers, because they never had to experience learning for themselves. I think this may be true for all naturals, be they athletes, mathematicians, LD'ers, or whatever; naturals literally do not know how they become lucid, and never needed to do so (or to even care), so basic techniques like that in the OP wouldn't even occur to them, much less seem important enough to them to remember and share. This attitude is difficult to describe in such a short space, so I hope you understand and don't take offense. Sure, a natural could learn to become a teacher, but their advice on basic skills would always need to come from somewhere other than their own experience (or else all their advice would simply be something like "Just do it.")

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Now that I know about your definition, I completely understand this and agree with it.

Thank you again Sageous !! By the way, I am sending you right now a more detailed answer in a private message because I have some questions, I hope it won't bother you.

Well, I think there's nothing left to add to this discussion, and what I'm about to write isn't related to the overall point of this thread or what has been discussed in it, but I just wanted to chime in and say the following:

By the definitions you've all given, don't you feel it could come out as if natural lucid dreamers are all just a bunch of lucky individuals? Do they just happen to be in the right moment at the right time to acquire such lucid proficiency? I have a hard time agreeing with this because I believe natural lucid dreamers do learn to lucid dream just as much as everyone else does, the only difference is (and a big difference by the way) they understand the whole thing better than the rest of us. So, maybe they just "get it" faster, easier, which is why they might come off as if bestowed with a wonderful gift.

You can look at different professions around the globe, and I am sure all of the naturally talented people did something. They worked enough to get to where they are now, wherever that may be, and whether they're aware of it or not. I can see it in sports when people interview the top players, the ones who play at the highest level. Many times I hear the interviewee and the rest of the world praising them as people with god giving talents. What they do may make it seem as if it is that way, yet you listen to their stories and find out they're people who started out as you and me, and did something to become the men and women they are now. If you pay attention to them when they speak, for a little bit you get inside their minds and get a glimpse of how it all works out in there. They show how to pass the ball, how to shoot the ball, how to kick it, whatever. They show it to you, they explain it to you, and you can see how it's all different to what you had imagined it would be. They might grip the ball this way, they might throw it some other way, they might ease you in on what's going on in the play and it appears as if they're doing magic, but there's some truth and logic behind all of it. And we're talking about the individuals that are the best at what they do, whether naturally talented or not.

Personally, I can see it every day when I look at my younger brother. I see how easily and effortlessly he understands what he's studying, how easy it is for him to apply it, and how difficult it looks from my end. Sometimes I turn to him for advice and it amazes me the explanations he gives, using analogies and reasoning I hadn't thought about before. I agree though, that many naturally talented people often have trouble explaining the "hows" and "whys" in terms many of us can understand, but even when they don't, I can see there's something going on inside their heads, something that just makes it all click and helps them understand. We just have a lot more trouble finding the ways that make it click inside our own.

What I'm getting at with this is that, maybe, just maybe, "naturals" have devised their own personal methods (aware or unaware of this) to crack the puzzle that is the lucid dreaming enigma, just like everyone else here. I just don't buy the idea of them doing absolutely nothing at all to reach the state in which they're at. To me, it would be tagging it all to pure luck, like they didn't work hard enough like the rest. Even if they may believe so, to me they are just as unaware as many others. And I can see how that may be. In our difficulty to understand the world of lucid dreaming, as "unnaturals," we think about and devise all these interesting theories to interpret what it is we're doing so as to recognize if we're making any progress. With what I've seen, I believe some naturals also know what they're doing, and for the rest that don't, that doesn't mean they don't fall in with what has been proposed as the way(s) to achieve lucidity. Naturals could have as well developed (consciously or not) a "lucid mindset" that allows them to be more self-aware in their dreams. The same could apply when speaking about memory and its link to lucidity. They might have reached the same conclusions we did throughout all these years, though in a shorter amount of time. And I find that truly fascinating.

So, yeah, this may be totally unrelated with the rest of posts up there hahah, but I have wanted to say this whenever naturals are brought up for discussion. I can't be the only one who sees it that way, but, anyway... feel free to ignore all of this if you want. :)