What it means to have lucid dreams, and how they can affect our waking lives.

By Maya Davila

Imagine a reality where you can bend everything to your will. A world that awaits you once you close your eyes…a paradise. There’s a time-warped world brewing in our minds, collecting each memory, sensation, and feeling that we’ve ever experienced.

Think back to the last time you had a dream. Did you feel weightless? Out of control? Maybe you’ve realized you were in a deep slumber, and the world around you was simply a dream. Or perhaps you took control of your actions, manipulating your surroundings to your liking.

Sound familiar? Then you’ve experienced lucid dreaming. 

Lucid dreaming is the art of becoming conscious within a dream. You have the ability to control what’s going on around you. You can fly or travel the world. You can own anything and everything your heart has ever desired. Anything you can think of can become reality within that dream.

Sensations in a lucid dream feel just as they do when you’re awake, and what the brain sees or experiences in a lucid dream can even carry over into your everyday life. Once you’re aware that you’re asleep, your dreams can become extremely vivid, sometimes even more so than in real life. 

If you’re familiar with Christopher Nolan’s Inception or have had lucid dreams yourself, you may already be familiar with this phenomenon. As Leonardo DeCaprio’s character, Dom Cobb, explains, “Well, dreams, they feel real while we’re in them, right? It’s only when we wake up that we realize that something was actually strange.” 

Although Inception increased public interest in lucid dreaming following its success, the film depicted it in an exaggerated and unrealistic manner, contradicting scientific knowledge of the act. It was construed as something dangerous and unstable, something capable of inflicting more harm than good upon the dreamer. While this contrasts most people’s experiences; nonetheless, lucid dreaming can be harmful in some cases.

“For me, lucid dreaming is almost always negative,” says Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) student, Lulu Allen, 21. “This is because I’ve only been able to experience lucid dreams through my experiences of sleep paralysis. I was genuinely traumatized each time I would undergo this state.”

For individuals like Allen, lucid dreaming can have a very unpleasant affiliation. Although it doesn’t occur every night, events in her everyday life that heighten her stress and anxiety levels tend to intensify her lucid dreaming experiences.

“Very often I’ll feel stuck or even frustrated in a lucid dream. Especially when things aren’t going my way, no matter how hard I’m trying to change them,” relents Allen. “I’ll become very upset and my dream will begin to feel hauntingly monotonous. A lot of dreams that end up this way will involve a fear of mine.” 

Lucid dreams aren’t always enjoyable, and what may start out as a world where you can bend anything to your will, can quickly spiral out of control…especially when outside factors, like mental health, come into play.

But don’t worry, becoming trapped in a nightmare-like dream really only happens under certain circumstances — it’s pretty rare. It’s far more likely that you’ll become lucid within a bad dream than to have a lucid dream turn bad. Luckily, becoming lucid will help you realize it’s only a dream, and when you wake up, the nightmare ends.

Someone with more experience in lucid dreaming, though, can instantly take control of their situation and alter the dream in any way they desire to make it more pleasing. The impact of being able to manipulate your dreams can even carry over to when you’re awake and affect your everyday life.

Take it from Carolann Altobelli, 21, a Fashion Design student at FIT. Lucid dreams have crossed over into her reality, often leaving her questioning her dreams’ intentions.

“If my lucid dream was very interesting or disturbing, they tend to stay in the back of my mind for the day,” she corroborates. “I think certain people are in your dream sometimes to send you a message. I also believe our dreams do have meanings behind them, and it's important to record the ones that we can't seem to stop thinking about.”

In-depth breakthroughs with ourselves through our dreams are also possible. Communication between an awake and a sleeping state is crucial to better understanding the way we interact with the world, how we communicate with others, how we perform in our jobs, or even how we do in school. 

While we sleep, our mind reorganizes itself; it tries to settle our thoughts through dreaming. Our subconscious mind has a system to recognize which issues are most troubling to our lives, and what we believe are their best solutions. Lucid dreams are a reflection of our deepest feelings and thoughts, allowing us to challenge life’s problems head-on without any real-world consequences. 

While most people seem to stumble upon lucid dreaming, there are ways to induce it. So, how can you lucid dream?

If you’ve found yourself accidentally experiencing lucid dreaming or are eager to get acquainted with the right methods, triggering lucid dreams can come fairly easily to anyone; however, dreaming is different for everyone and what works for some may not work for everyone. 

The Power of Suggestion 

Some individuals can successfully induce lucid dreaming by merely convincing themselves they’ll have one. Before falling asleep, just be sure that your thoughts are focused entirely on doing so.

Assess Your Reality 

Practice “reality checking” throughout your day. Start to notice small details in your everyday routine. By checking your environment, this practice will help you confirm whether you’re sleeping or awake. In a dream, your surroundings may look familiar, but inconsistencies and distortions become more apparent the longer you’re asleep. Performing reality checks while awake can help improve your ability to test your “reality” while dreaming.

Try the MILD and WBTB Methods

The MILD method stands for “Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming.” It’s a memory technique that helps you remember you’re dreaming once you're asleep. Start by trying to wake yourself up after five hours. Next, try setting a mental reminder and telling yourself, “I will become lucid when I sleep. Next time I am presented with a dream, I will remember that I am dreaming.” 

The WBTB method stands for “wake back to bed.” This technique also involves waking after five hours of sleep. To be effective though, you’ll need to stay awake for at least 30 minutes and up to two hours before attempting to sleep again.

Although a lucid dream state is different from actually being awake, our brains often blur the line between sleep and reality. This is due to a mind and body process known as neuroplasticity, meaning our brain can rewire itself in response to stimuli. It allows us to use our dreams to our advantage, and what we “see” or “experience” in a lucid dream can carry into the real world, improving how we function. 

After all, seeing is believing, right? 

“I sometimes have dreams about my future career. I'll wake up and take notes right away of designs I conceptualized in my sleep,” affirms Altobelli. “When I induce a lucid dream, I like to create a storyline in which I’m already an established designer so that my subconscious mind can show me things.”

In a lucid dream, your brain actually thinks the world around you is real. Whatever tasks you perform, the neuroplastic changes are more pronounced if you achieve them both in a sleeping and awake state. When our conscious mind is receptive to paying attention to our lucid dreaming, the possibilities to improve ourselves are endless.

Many of us wish to deliberately induce lucid dreaming. It’s tempting—without using any physical substance—to enter a state of altered consciousness in which one can perform feats not possible in real life by exerting control over the dream scenario. In this way, lucid dreams are considered by many as an ideal state, promoting well-being and psychological growth. For many creative individuals, lucid dreaming seems like an incredibly beneficial experience, and the possibilities of a negative outcome are overshadowed by the untapped potential of future dreams.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that in the United States the average lifespan of a person is approximately 80 years, and according to the Sleep Foundation, we spend roughly a third of our lives asleep — that’s a full 26 years that just passes us by. It’s not to say that those years are wasted; after all, sleep is essential. 

But what if we could harness those two or three hours that we’re actively dreaming? What can we achieve if we could take back that time by teaching ourselves to have lucid dreams? Your answers could just lie in your dreams.