How to Control Your Dreams

A Harvard psychologist and dream expert explains how it is possible to influence what you are dreaming about whether you want to fly, stop a nightmare, or have lucid dreams. In an interview recently given to Scientific American, Psychology professor Deirdre Barrett said: “That we can control our own dreams is quite true and really much more so than people seem to know or realize. The details of how to do it are very different depending on whether you’re trying to induce lucid dreams, whether you’re trying to dream about particular content or whether you’re trying to dream a solution to a particular personal or objective problem. Another really common application has been influencing nightmares, especially recurring post-traumatic nightmares—either to stop them or turn them into some sort of mastery dream.”