Lucid dreaming is defined as “a dream state in which one is conscious enough to recognize that one is in the dream state and which stays in one’s memory.” Basically, you know that you’re dreaming and, because of this, are able to exert some control over what happens in your dreams.

While a regular dream itself can feel more real than life, lucid dreaming seems to kick up this reality even more, especially in my own experience. You feel and experience everything as if they happened while you were awake. You are able to do the impossible.

There are many techniques people use to try to lucid dream. Some people advise you to keep a dream journal so you can recognize patterns of events and then build that into your subconscious mind while you are awake and conscious so that you are able to recognize you are dreaming and gain lucidity.

There are videos you can listen to as you fall asleep, and even lucid dream pills that you can take that are supposed to affect your neurotransmitters.

Some people are able to naturally lucid dream without trying anything. This has been my own experience but I have noticed mine as unique to anything I’ve read about other people’s accounts of lucid dreaming.

It seems to be the norm that people who lucid dream have been lucid dreaming since they were little and I never did until I got to college. I tend to lucid dream every time I take a nap- never when I am sleeping at night.

I also know when it’s going to happen every time I go to take a nap because as I am falling asleep, I get that common feeling of falling while I am lying in my bed.

Then I’ll fall asleep and a short while later I will “wake up.” I’ll get up and start walking around wherever I went to sleep and if everything looks different, I know I am lucid dreaming.

Sometimes I get so excited about it that I actually will wake up from my dream completely, and sometimes I accidentally lucid dream myself in terrible situations so I wake up out of fear.

You know when you’re trying not to think about something, but then you are thinking about NOT thinking about it and so you can’t get it out of your head? This has resulted in me lucid dreaming of myself drowning, falling off of a cliff, and getting jumped.

The thing about this heightened reality is that it feels so real. Some people are able to anchor themselves back to reality to remember that you’re not actually feeling pain, but this is something I have not mastered yet.

I’ve heard many accounts of people training themselves to lucid dream and think it is one of the coolest things that our subconscious minds allow us to do.

Once I went on tour with Drake but on the moon. Another time I went underground and hung out with all the people buried in a graveyard that came to life once I got down there with them.

Literally, anything is possible.