Anthony here for DNews and you guys have been asking a LOT about Lucid Dreaming lately.

I've been able to do it fairly consistently since I was about 13, so I thought sure- I

can talk about that.

A lucid dream is one where you know you're dreaming. You can also potentially control

it- you can turn a nightmare into a good dream, fly, go places you've never been, do some

sexy things- a lot of my teenage ones were about sexy things.

So how does it work and how can you do it?

The how of it is complicated. We're not even entirely sure why we dream, which is what

makes lucid dreaming so valuable to scientists.

Studying the brain of someone who can dream about exactly what they're told to can help

create a sort of control group so researchers can see just what's happening in different

brains during similar dreams, and maybe finally figure out just why it happens.

We do know this - dreaming is sort of a whole brain activity. The pons system of your brain

stem initiates it, your limbic system adds emotions, and your prefrontal cortex puts

it all together. But the parts of your brain associated with self-awareness are are turned

off.

In a study run by the Max Planck Institutes of Psychiatry, they found that people who

can have lucid dreams can switch those parts of their brain on- be self-aware AND dreaming

at the same time.

So, if you want to make yourself a flying robot sex god in your dreams, how do you do

it? Step one: keep a dream journal.

Whenever you wake up, write down as much about your dreams as you remember- you'll start

to recognize certain patterns in them. That'll make you more likely to notice them when you're

dreaming.

You should also start reality testing. Throughout the day, stop and ask yourself: "Am I dreaming?"

Then test things around you to make sure you aren't. Flip a lightswitch. Look at your watch

a couple times. If you're dreaming, the switch won't do anything and your watch will be keeping

really, really strange time.

Once you're lucid, it's hard to stay lucid and sleeping. Your body either wants to wake

up or keep dreaming as usual. People who are new to it tend to wake up right after they

notice they're dreaming. If you feel like you're waking up, you're supposed to look

at the ground and spin around in your dream. The technique was discovered by Stephen LaBerge,

a psychiatrist who studies lucid dreams- his theory is that familiar motion like that engages

your senses and makes your brain focus on the dream.

So there you go. Go forth, you dream explorers, and report your results back to me. Unless

it's sexy stuff. That sort of dream is just for you, okay? If there's anything else that

you want us to make a video about, definitely leave it down below. And remember to subscribe

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