Lucid Dreaming — Can You Actually Control Your Dreams?

So last month I decided to become a lucid dreaming girlie. You know, where you know you’re dreaming and can supposedly fly or summon Chris Hemsworth or whatever. I was eating strawberry pop-tarts and watching a TikTok about reality checks (like, looking at your hands twice a day to see if they’re weird, so you’ll do it in a dream and realize you’re asleep). It seemed easy enough. Ngl, I thought I’d be a natural. My dad literally interprets dreams for a living. How hard could it be?

I kept a dream journal on my phone. The first entry just says, “was late for a bus. bus was also a turtle.” Riveting stuff.

After a week of staring at my palms like a conspiracy theorist and trying the MILD technique (where you repeat “I will know I’m dreaming” as you fall asleep), I had my first “success.” I realized I was dreaming because the stray cat in my dream was wearing a tiny graduation cap. I got so excited I immediately tried to make a beach appear. I concentrated really hard. The world swirled… and I woke up. In my bed. With my pop-tart crumbs. Cool.

My dad watched this whole experiment with the quiet amusement of a man who’s seen a million fads. He finally said, “Why are you trying to control the messenger? The dream is the message. If you boss it around, what is left to hear?”

I rolled my eyes so hard. “Dad, it’s not about bossing it around. It’s about… creative exploration.” I used the psychology angle. I mentioned Stephen LaBerge’s Stanford research, the proven science behind it.

He just shrugged. “Science is good for the ‘how.’ Not always the ‘why.’ Your spirit is talking. You’re telling it to shut up and let you fly.”

We argued about this for like three days. I said his way was passive. He said mine was disrespectful. It got me thinking about the bazi side of it, which lowkey annoyed me because he’s usually right about this stuff.

In his system, your Day Master element totally affects this. He says people with a strong Metal element in their chart are the best at lucid dreaming—they have that natural detachment, that ability to observe the system from within. Water people? Good luck. They go with the flow so hard they just dissolve into the dream narrative. Trying to control it feels wrong to them.

I’m a Yin Fire person. My dad said that checks out. “Small flame, candlelight. You have the awareness, the flicker of ‘this isn’t right.’ But you’re easily blown out by the wind of the dream, or you get too excited and burn out quickly.” Which was basically exactly what happened with my graduation-cat incident. I was pissed at how accurate that was.

The weirdest part? After I gave up on the reality checks, the dream journal habit stuck. I kept writing down the weird turtle-buses and the stress dreams about forgetting my pants before a presentation. And without trying to force lucidity, I started having these moments of half-awareness. Not full control, but just… knowing I was in the dream while it happened. I’d feel scared in a nightmare and a tiny voice in the dream would go, “This is a fear your liver is processing, chill.” Thanks, brain-psychology-metaphysics mashup.

My friend Chloe tried it too after I told her. She has way more Metal in her chart and she was lucid within a week, changing dream outfits like a Sims character. Meanwhile I’m over here having philosophical chats with my subconscious.

So, can you actually control your dreams? Yeah, probably. Some people definitely can. The techniques work. But for me, the control part was a total flop. The valuable bit was the journal, the paying attention. My dad’s annoying voice in my head was right—trying to control the dream did shut the message up. It was like hanging up on a call because you wanted to hear your own voice on the recording.

The lucid dreaming community online is all about becoming the director of your inner movie. I think I’m just the film critic now. Or maybe the confused intern fetching coffee for the weird, symbolic actors. It’s less glamorous, but the scripts are more interesting.

I still try to fly sometimes when I realize I’m dreaming. Last time, I managed to float about three feet off the ground before the dream decided I needed to be in a grocery store looking for expired milk. Fine. Whatever. I’ll look for the stupid milk.