5 tips to try lucid dreaming and take charge of your dreams and nightmares

• You're having a lucid dream when you realize you're dreaming and start changing your surroundings.
• Writing down recurring dreams and waking up after five hours may help you have a lucid dream.

When you sleep, your body turns off your prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain responsible for learning, thinking, and decision making.

That's why, in most of your dreams, you may feel like a bystander — you can't control what actually happens, only watch as the dream plays out.

Lucid dreaming, however, allows this part of your brain to enter a sort of hybrid sleep-wake state, where it becomes nearly as active as when you're awake. This makes it possible to recognize that you're dreaming — and even change the dreamscape around you.

Around 55% of people report having at least one lucid dream in their lifetime — though if you have narcolepsy, you may have lucid dreams even more often.

It can take some practice to enter a lucid state during your dreams, but these five tips can help you take your first step into the world of lucid dreaming.

1. Test your reality

Testing your reality throughout the day is the first step toward lucid dreaming at night.

Reality testing means looking for clues to confirm whether you're awake or asleep, says Dr. Alex Dimitriu, a board-certified psychiatrist and sleep expert and founder of Menlo Park Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine and BrainfoodMD.

You can reality test by checking in with your body and your surroundings. For instance, you might:

• Tap your finger on your cheek
• Will your hand to pass through a solid object
• Make sure you can read the text on a sign or book near you
• Rapidly blink your eyes to check if your environment changes

Regularly checking these things while awake may not lead to any surprising outcomes — but it can help you habitually test those same things in your dreams. If your hand suddenly passes through a cup or you can walk without feeling the floor beneath your feet, for example, you'll know you're dreaming.

Combining reality testing with the techniques listed below can increase your chances of lucid dreaming.

2. Develop a healthy sleep-wake cycle

The majority of your dreaming takes place during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, one of the four sleep stages.

Getting more REM sleep can improve your chances of lucid dreaming, and you can often boost REM sleep by improving your sleep habits as a whole.

A few tips to improve your sleep include:

• Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day
• Setting your room to a comfortable temperature, ideally between 60 °F and 67 °F
• Using blackout curtains or sleeping masks to keep the light out
• Wearing ear plugs if you need a quiet environment
• Trying a sound machine if white or brown noise helps you fall asleep faster

3. Start a dream journal

Between 60% and 75% of US adults repeatedly experience the same dreams — and 77% of all recurring dreams are negative.

Logging your dreams in a journal can give you a more heightened awareness of them, Dimitriu says, which may help you notice any recurring dreams.

Realizing you're in a dream you've had before may then trigger a lucid state or even wake you up from a nightmare.

Logging your dreams has another benefit, too: Realizing you keep dreaming about people chasing you or your teeth falling out could help you uncover possible causes of those nightmares — and learn how to banish them for good.

Quick tip: Try leaving a journal on your nightstand. As soon as you wake up, write down everything you remember from your dreams.

4. Try the MILD technique

The mnemonic induction of lucid dreams (MILD) technique involves repeating some version of the phrase, "I'll remember I'm dreaming the next time I fall asleep," when you wake up in the middle of the night.

The theory behind the MILD technique claims that repeating that phrase again and again, focusing intently on the words as you fall back asleep, may convince your subconscious to have a lucid dream.

The sooner you fall asleep after using this technique, the more likely you are to have a lucid dream.

5. Set an alarm for 5 hours

The senses initiated lucid dream (SSILD) technique may also help promote lucid dreaming.

According to the theory behind SSILD, devoting more mental attention to the sensations around you while awake can make it easier to slip into a lucid dream.

Start by setting an alarm to wake yourself up after five hours of sleep. The average sleep cycle is about 90 minutes, so your alarm should go off during stage three of your fourth cycle — right before you enter REM sleep.

When you wake up, take some time to exercise your senses of sight, sound, and touch before going back to sleep. Pay attention to the fabric of your sheets or the temperature of the room, for instance.

Once you fall back asleep, your brain may recognize that those sensations have changed, prompting you to wake up just enough to become lucid.

Practicing the SSILD technique can help you find the perfect "in-between" state, where you're not fully awake or asleep, Dimitriu says.

Potential benefits of lucid dreaming

Lucid dreaming allows you to explore different aspects of your consciousness for a fuller, experiential understanding of who you are, says Dr. Catherine Uram, an integrative medicine and dream analyst in private practice.

It could also offer one possible way to cope with PTSD symptoms, including fear and nightmares related to trauma.

Additional benefits include:

• Improving unpleasant dreams: If you can recognize you're not actually being chased through the woods, you can take yourself out of the woods, or make your pursuers disappear entirely.
• Gaining control over your emotions: Controlling your mood and emotions within your dreams can make it easier for you to do the same during the day.
• Helping ease anxiety: A better understanding of your subconscious can help you work through the "why" behind anxiety and uncover unknown stressors that may disrupt your sleep or trigger nightmares.
• Helping you practice and improve motor skills: Mentally practicing physical skills or movements during the day or while lucid dreaming may increase physical abilities like your range of motion — especially if you live with a physical disability.
• Increasing your confidence: Being able to control what you do and what happens around you could improve both mental and physical health. Dreaming you can do anything or be whoever you want — from flying across the ocean to becoming President of the United States — can give you the confidence to take steps that might otherwise seem impossible in your waking life.

Things to keep in mind

Forcing partial consciousness during REM sleep interrupts your natural sleep cycle, preventing your body from entering a fully rested state.

So, lucid dreaming can eventually alter your regular sleeping patterns, making it hard to get enough restful sleep each night — eight to 10 hours of sleep a night for teens and at least seven hours of sleep for adults.

It may help to take a break from attempting lucid dreaming if you start to feel tired or unfocused during the day — or if you begin to have a hard time telling the difference between reality and dreamland.

Important: If you live with a mental health condition that involves hallucinations or other symptoms of psychosis, you may want to talk with a mental health professional before trying lucid dreaming, since it could worsen hallucinations.

Before you try lucid dreaming, it's important to know how to wake yourself up.

Usually, this involves "telling" your brain that your environment isn't quite right. For instance, you might:

• Blink repeatedly
• Try to read a sign or other text — typically, you can't read in dreams, or what you do read doesn't make any sense, Dimitriu says.
• Roughly dig your feet into the ground
• Yell for help — in dreams you may find yourself unable to shout
• Pinch yourself

Insider's takeaway

Lucid dreaming can be a fun and unique experience — not only that, it may help you wake up from nightmares and make it easier to manage daytime anxiety and other unwanted emotions.

It may take some time and practice to enter a lucid state in your dreams, but techniques like reality testing, keeping a dream journal, and going to bed at the same time every night can give you a head start.

If you find that trying to lucid dream negatively affects your sleep, you may want to limit your attempts to one or two nights a week.