Good question!  Try to remember a recent dream.  For example, let’s say you are driving a car in Paris, which then turns into a motorcycle, and a minute later, becomes a bicycle.  But since you are trying to get to grandmother’s house, you simply accept these changes as normal and natural.  You lack critical awareness, and just follow the course of the dream.

But in a lucid dream, you normally have a moment where you notice, ‘Hey, this is too strange!’ and then become lucid.  For example, you might be driving in Paris to your grandmother’s house, and suddenly think, ‘Wait a second, my grandmother lives in Miami.  How did I get to Paris?’ or ‘Wasn’t I driving a car?’  At that moment, you may accurately conclude, ‘I’m dreaming!  This is a lucid dream.’

So in lucid dreams, they normally begin with a moment of critical awareness, where you realize that something seems “too dreamy”.  Then once you become lucid, you can make decisions about what you want to do (instead of just following the course of the dream).  You can fly!  Talk to dream figures!

You can compare the ‘dream world’ to the ‘waking world’.  What do things feel like in a lucid dream?  How does a banana taste in a lucid dream?

You can explore.  You can experiment.  You can do a lot of amazing things in a lucid dream (if you know how).

Yes!  Many people consider Keith Hearne in England, as the first researcher to provide scientific evidence for lucid dreaming.  In the mid 1970’s, he met a lucid dreamer, Alan Worsley, who claimed to become lucidly aware in his dream.  As a graduate student, Hearne wondered how you could provide scientific evidence for that claim – then he had a brilliant idea:

What if you brought a lucid dreamer into the sleep lab, put rapid eye movement (REM) pads on him to record eye movement, and told him to move his eyes left to right eight times when he became lucid?  Since most REM patterns seem like random nonsense, a dreaming person who moves both eyes left to right eight times would definitely provide evidence for being ‘aware of dreaming’ and able to make conscious decisions while in the dream state.

On the morning of April 12, 1975, Alan Worsley became lucid and moved his eyes left to right eight times in his lucid dream, while other measures showed that he remained in the sleep state.  The first evidence for lucid dreaming was there on the REM readout! 

The researcher, Keith Hearne, later said, “It was like getting signals from another world.  Philosophically, scientifically, it was simply mind blowing.”  A couple years later, Stephen LaBerge, separately completed a similar experiment, and published it in 1980.  LaBerge became one of the early leaders in the scientific investigation of lucid dreaming.

Various scientific surveys show that about 50% of the general population claims to have become consciously aware of dreaming while in the dream state at least once.  And surveys of college age psychology students show that approximately 70% claim to have had a lucid dream.

Researchers say that ‘frequent lucid dreamers’ are people who have one lucid dream a month.  When you consider that most of us have five or more dreams a night (or 150+ each month), then having one lucid dream each month seems possible for a dedicated person.

A 2012 Journal of Sleep Research study by German researcher, Ursula Voss, looked into this question by surveying 694 German students, age 6 to 19.  In that group, 51% reported a lucid dream (and each lucid dream was carefully analyzed to make sure that it met the definition).  Even children as young as six years old had lucid dreams, and the researchers noted, “these students had no training and lucid dreaming occurred spontaneously.”

Surveys like this suggest that lucid dreaming occurs naturally in the population, and that lucid dreaming should therefore be considered normal.

For many people, lucid dreaming takes some time, practice and dedication. 

It helps to develop your dream recall, so you get in the routine of recalling your dreams upon waking.  Your first thought upon waking should be, “What was I just dreaming?”  By getting into that practice, your dream recall should improve quickly!

Then you need to learn good induction techniques to help you become lucid.  That’s where we can help.  On this website, you can find some links to experienced lucid dreamers who have used powerful techniques to help others become lucid. 

Good luck on your lucid adventure!