The inner life
Dream Control
Direct answer
Dream Control: Dream control is the lucid dreamer's ability to alter a dream on purpose, from flying and changing the scene to calling up people or facing a feared figure.
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At a glance
- Also called
- how to control dreams, controlling dreams, can you control your dreams
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Lucid Dreaming, Dream Stabilisation, Dream Yoga, Imagery Rehearsal
Dream control is the lucid dreamer's ability to alter a dream on purpose, from flying and changing the scene to calling up people or facing a feared figure.
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Can you control your dreams?
Knowing that one is dreaming and being able to steer the dream are separate things. Many lucid dreams involve little control, and surveys find that even practised dreamers succeed only part of the time. Control, when it comes, ranges from choosing one's own actions, through flying or passing through walls, to changing the setting or summoning a person.
Experienced dreamers report that expectation does the work. A direct order to the scene often fails; opening a door expecting a beach behind it succeeds more often. Several authors, LaBerge among them, advise steering oneself and one's responses in preference to forcing the dream, particularly with frightening figures.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Lucid dreaming.
What sets Dream Control apart
Dream control is graded, and the grades do not come together. Researchers separate control of one's own dream body, which is common, from control of the environment and of other dream characters, which is far less so. The governing factor reported across a century of accounts is belief: the dream tends to deliver what the dreamer expects, including failure. Dreamers also report that light switches, mirrors and written text behave erratically, and that doubt is the usual end of a flight.
- First manual: Hervey de Saint-Denys, Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger, 1867
- Most popular use: flying, in surveys of lucid dreamers
- Governing factor: expectation: the dream tends to follow what the dreamer anticipates
- Indirect methods: doors, turning round, spinning, reaching into a pocket
- Tholey's advice: face and question a hostile figure; do not flee or attack
Often mistaken for something else: Lucidity is knowledge of the state; control is influence over the content, and either can be present without much of the other.
The story behind Dream Control
The Marquis d'Hervey de Saint-Denys recorded experiments in directing his dreams in Les Rêves et les moyens de les diriger in 1867. Frederik van Eeden, who introduced the phrase lucid dream in 1913, described flying and deliberate tests. In the 1980s Paul Tholey in Frankfurt studied conversing with hostile dream figures, and LaBerge's laboratory had dreamers carry out agreed tasks. Surveys of lucid dreamers since 2012 list flying as the favourite use.
Why Dream Control matters
Dream Control corrects the common picture of lucid dreaming as total command, and sets out what dreamers can in fact do and how reliably.
How to read Dream Control
Lucid dreamers plan one simple task before sleep and attempt it once the dream is stable, noting afterwards what worked.
Dream Control in practice: an example
Unable to make a dream wall vanish, the dreamer turns round instead, expecting a garden behind her, and finds one.
Where readings of Dream Control go wrong
Control is partial and unreliable even for experts, and using it only to flee every unpleasant figure throws away much of what the practice is valued for.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- how to control dreams, controlling dreams, lucid dream control, can you control your dreams, dream control techniques
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
Can you control your dreams?
To a degree, when lucid. Dreamers can usually direct their own actions, often fly or change location, and sometimes reshape the scene. Complete, dependable control is rare.
Is lucid dreaming the same as dream control?
No. Lucidity means knowing that one is dreaming. Control is a further skill, and a dream can be fully lucid while the dreamer simply watches it unfold.
How do lucid dreamers change a dream?
Mostly by expectation and indirect means: walking through a door, turning round, or spinning while expecting a new place. Commands shouted at the dream are reported to work less well.
