How to influence a dreams content before sleep? Research shows there are ways to train yourself to take control of your dreams.

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Updated 20/05/2020 and before Updated 03.12.2018


If your dreams are particularly boring, or if you just want to have a little more fun at night, scientists say you may be able to control what you dream about.

Even better is that it’s possible to take control of your dream and do whatever you want!

There’s only one obstacle – you have to practice.

If you have no self-discipline, forget about it. However, if you can easily make a plan and stick to it, these research-based techniques (suggested by many psychologists and sleep experts) could be just what you need to change your dream life.

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Problem solving

It’s possible to use your dreams to find solutions to your problems. Start by thinking about the problem before sleeping – if this generates an image, hold it in your mind so it’s the last thing you see before falling asleep.

You can also place objects on your nightstand that represent the problem. For example, an artist experiencing a creative block could place a blank canvas next to the bed. In order to remember your dream, stay in the same position you wake up in. The distraction of moving can cause you to forget half of what you dreamed about.

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Choosing your dream


If you want to dream about a particular subject or person, or if you used to have dreams of flying and want them back, use the same technique described for problem solving. Looking at a photo of the person or idea you want to dream of could be enough to trigger it.

New technique increases chance of lucid dreaming Cosmos Magazine

Lucid dreaming

This is the difficult part. The other techniques have a much higher success rate and don’t require as much practice or discipline.

Lucid dreams aren’t easy to come by, but studies show that following these steps can help you achieve them:

Color Lucid Dream by sheikhrouf23 on DeviantArt

1. Start keeping a dream journal


Place a pen and notebook next to where you sleep. When you wake up after dreaming, remain still until you’ve remembered everything you can. Then, write down as many details as possible.

Keeping a Dream Journal Lucid Guide

Over the coming weeks, you’ll be able to see patterns that will help you with some of the other steps in the process.

2. Give yourself “reality checks”

If you stop to ask yourself if you’re dreaming, you’ll likely know the answer. But getting into the habit of asking yourself during the day increases your chances of asking yourself while you’re dreaming – and the only way to have a lucid dream is to realize that you aren’t awake.

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Throughout the day, keep asking yourself if you’re dreaming. Do it as you read text or flip on a light switch. It may seem silly, but if you were asleep, those tasks wouldn’t work in the same way. If you flip a light switch and the sky turns purple, and you’re able to ask yourself “Am I dreaming?”, you’ll know that you’re inside a dream and you can begin to control it.


3. Redistribute your sleep

Scientists believe that late morning dreams are the longest and most intense, and many agree that redistributing your sleep is the most reliable method for inducing lucid dreaming.

I had a dream … between Heaven and Hell. Now, I want some answers.' image OB Rag

This is how it works: set an alarm to wake you up four hours earlier than normal. Get up and go about your business for two hours while imagining that you can control your dreams. Then get back in bed and sleep for another two hours.

Those delayed final two hours of sleep are the most rich with REM activity, and they’re your best chance at achieving lucidity.


4. Identify your personal dream signs


Here’s where your dream journal comes back into play.

Go through your dream entries and highlight anything that appears more than once. Identifying the objects, animals, or people that recur is another way to tell yourself that you’re dreaming.

Infinty model of healing

For example, if you always dream about your deceased grandmother, keep saying to yourself “The next time I see Grandma, I’ll be dreaming.” With any luck, the next time you dream about her, you’ll realize you aren’t awake.

Many of these techniques seem either simple or extraordinarily difficult to put into practice, but sleep experiments have shown that about half the people who consistently use them are able to see results.

What do you think? Can you make it happen? Let us know in the comments or send us your best dream stories!



Other articles on the same theme:

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• Tunnel of light "between life and death has found scientific explanation

• After millennia, Harvard researchers appear to have finally discovered the origin of forming consciousness

Story source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Didyouknowfacts. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length

Why we have nightmares? What produces these depraved nocturnal deliriums, and what purpose they serve?

Updated 03.12.2018

What produces these depraved nocturnal deliriums, and what purpose they serve, are questions that neuroscientists, shamans, and technicolor dreamcoat-wearers have attempted to answer since the dawn of man. And while the meanings of our nightmares may remain engulfed in shadowy mystery, we are at least beginning to understand why our hidden demons sometimes choose to visit us while we sleep.

What is a nightmare?

University of Colorado School of Medicine associate clinical professor James Pagel told IFLScience that “there’s actually a bunch of different types of frightening dreams occurring at all stages of sleep,” not all of which are classed as nightmares. Night terrors, for instance, tend to strike midway through the sleep cycle, during the deep sleep phase, and have no clear form or plot, but simply cause people to wake up with an intense and unexplainable feeling of fear.

Lakeshore Public Radio

Nightmares, on the other hand, are experienced during the rapid eye movement (REM) phase, which occurs at the end of the sleep cycle. According to Pagel, nightmares are simply “dreams with a frightening story,” and are extremely common, affecting almost everybody at some point in their lives – especially during childhood and adolescence.

According to one study, between 5 and 8 percent of adults have recurring nightmares, while between 20 and 39 percent of children under the age of 12 regularly find themselves plunged into the haunted house inside their minds after lights-out. In the majority of cases this is not a serious problem, as Pagel says that scary dreams are to be expected from time to time, particularly if we have experienced something a little unsettling during the day, like watching a horror movie.

Lakeshore Public Radio

Things can get a little problematic, however, if a person develops nightmare disorder, whereby frequent nightmares stop them from sleeping properly and start to cause them distress during waking hours.

Why do we have nightmares?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been identified as a major cause of nightmare disorder, as people who have been through major traumatic experiences are often plagued by fear and anxiety even while they sleep. A recent study found that 80 percent of those who suffer from the condition report regular nightmares, while another discovered that 53 percent of Vietnam War veterans often have scary dreams, compared to just 3 percent of the general population.

UBC Wiki

Medications that disrupt the hormones and neurotransmitters that regulate REM sleep can also lead to terrifying dreams, while people with psychological disorders tend to be particularly nightmare prone as well.


How these conditions turn the slumbering brain into a ghoul-infested realm of terror is not yet fully understood, although abnormalities in neural activity have been observed in people with nightmare disorder. For example, a brain region called the amygdala, which controls fear and learning, has been found to be overactive in PTSD patients who complain of regular nightmares, while some of the brain’s emotion centers, such as the paralimbic system, also often tend to be highly active in those who experience frequent nightmares.

As scary as nightmares may seem, they can't hurt you and can actually help you understand your own mind. Kiselev Andrey Valerevich/Shutterstock

Can nightmares hurt you?

“I think nightmares are wonderful,” says Pagel enthusiastically. “Dreams are basically a cognitive feedback system on how your brain is functioning, and nightmares, more so than other dreams, give you feedback on what’s going on inside your head.” Rather than harming us, therefore, nightmares actually help us to understand our own psyche, and for this reason can actually be extremely beneficial, especially in terms of unlocking our inner creativity.

Because of this, Pagel says that “people with frequent nightmares tend to have more creative personalities, and almost all creative types report nightmares more than others do.”

However, he does warn that having too many disturbing nightmares can also play a part in causing, or at least aggravating, PTSD, which in turn massively increases the risk of a person committing suicide.


On top of this, some people may also suffer from REM behavior disorder, whereby they physically act out their dreams while they sleep. Strangely, this condition is most common among middle-aged men, and arises when a brain area called the pons – which is responsible for paralyzing our muscles while we sleep – doesn’t function properly, causing us to get up and move around. Though you don’t have to be having a nightmare for this to be dangerous, it’s not hard to imagine how dreams about running away from monsters or fighting for one’s life could place sleepers and those around them in serious peril.

Other articles on the same theme:

• After millennia, Harvard researchers appear to have finally discovered the origin of forming consciousness

• How to influence a dreams content before sleep? Research shows there are ways to train yourself to take control of your dreams

• The discovery that changes everything about the human brain

• Tunnel of light "between life and death has found scientific explanation

Story source: 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Ilf Science . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.