Lucid Dreaming: Can You Really Control Your Dreams?

Have you ever flown through the clouds or swum with unicorn dolphins? Done somersaults in zero gravity? I have! Maybe not in real life, but I’ve been lucky enough to have some amazing dreams that felt so real I could have been in the movie Inception.

How cool would it be if you could create these dreams yourself? Or at least realize you’re dreaming in the middle of one so you can do whatever you please? Well, some people can. They practice lucid dreaming, where the dreamer becomes aware that they’re dreaming and may even gain some control over the dream content.

Lucid dreaming is where the dreamer becomes aware that they’re dreaming and may even gain some control over the dream content.

Lucid dreaming has been part of spiritual practice around the world for centuries. Tibetan monks have called it “dream yoga,” where dreamers train themselves to recognize they’re in a dream and learn to control dream content. Islamic scriptures have described lucid dreaming as a special mental state for reaching the mystical. A 4th-century Christian theologian believed lucid dreaming to be a preview of the afterlife.

These days, scientists and spiritualists alike practice this ancient art. One of the pioneers of modern research on lucid dreaming is Stephen La Berge, a scientist who kept a detailed dream diary for three years and, during that time, developed a lucid dreaming technique. He published his experiences as a case study in 1980, at which point he was reporting multiple lucid dreams per night.

How did he do it? Is it even a real thing? If so, is it a good idea to practice lucid dreaming? In this two-part series, we’ll take a trip through the neuroscience of lucid dreaming, learn how to decide if it’s a good idea for you, and explore practical how-to tips for cultivating your own lucid dreams. In part one, we start with the question:

Is lucid dreaming even a real thing?

Is lucid dreaming a real brain phenomenon?

Neuroscientists have been honing in on a method to prove that lucid dreaming is a real brain state that you can measure. Just this year, an international team of researchers published a set of bombshell studies in the journal Current Biology with the most compelling...

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