Can You Control a Lucid Dream?

Becoming lucid - knowing you’re dreaming - doesn’t automatically come with the ability to control what happens next. The two are related but distinct, and the degree of control people report varies a great deal, both between different dreamers and between different dreams for the same person.

Some lucid dreamers describe being able to fly, change scenery, or summon specific dream characters at will. Others describe remaining fully aware that they’re dreaming while the dream’s events carry on largely outside their influence. Neither experience is more “correctly” lucid than the other - control appears to be a separate skill, not an automatic feature of lucidity itself.

Techniques Associated with Increasing Lucidity

A number of techniques are commonly discussed as ways to increase the likelihood of becoming lucid, most developed or popularised through the research of Stephen LaBerge and others:

• Reality testing - regularly questioning, during waking hours, whether you might currently be dreaming, in the hope the habit carries over into a dream itself. A common version of this involves reading text or checking a clock twice in a row, since both are notoriously unreliable in dreams - see Why Do Phones, Clocks and Text Behave Strangely in Dreams?
• MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams) - a technique involving rehearsing the intention to recognise you’re dreaming while falling back asleep, typically after waking briefly during the night.
• Keeping a dream journal - closely tied to improving general dream recall, which several induction techniques rely on. See How to Keep a Dream Journal.

Research on these techniques’ effectiveness is real but still relatively limited compared with better-studied areas of sleep science, and results vary between studies and between individuals. None of them guarantee a lucid dream on a given night.

Managing Expectations

Lucid dreaming, and especially reliable control within it, is a skill that most people who achieve it report developing gradually rather than all at once. It’s reasonable to try these techniques out of curiosity without expecting immediate or dramatic results.