How you can learn to control your dreams… and change your life. Doctors now say ‘lucid dreaming’ techniques can treat phobias, insomnia and even depression – and reveal the cheap supplements that can help you do it

Throughout his late teens and early 20s, Matthew Humphreys was prone to low moods. He ignored them until, in his mid-20s, the negative thoughts and feelings of emptiness became more pronounced.

Matthew, who had a well-paid job and was in a happy, stable relationship, struggled to make sense of why he felt this way.

‘I was looking at everyone enjoying life and thought, why am I not like that?’ says Matthew, now 35, a graphic designer, who lives in Kent. ‘I felt rubbish, exhausted and had begun sleeping all weekend.’

This overriding fatigue led to him seeing his GP, who diagnosed depression. Matthew was prescribed an antidepressant and started cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a talking therapy designed to change how you feel and behave.

A year later with no improvement, he began searching for alternative treatments online – when he came across a video about lucid dreaming.

This is the phenomenon of becoming aware you’re dreaming while in a dream – and sometimes then being able to direct the action: the idea is that you can use this to tackle problems, psychological and physical.

It might sound like fantasy but lucid dreaming, described for centuries – including by Aristotle – was proven possible scientifically back in the 1970s.

Psychologist Keith Hearne at Hull University asked a lucid dreamer to move their eyes in a pre-arranged pattern when they were lucid dreaming: he was able to check these eye movements using electrodes alongside monitoring that they were, in fact, in deep dream sleep.

Indeed, around 55 per cent of us have at least one lucid dream, according to a review of studies published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition in 2016.

However, those who do so regularly into adulthood are rare (it’s more common in children). Those who can do it often use it purely for fun – to fly, for instance, or indulge wild whims.

Yet it’s also now being used to address people’s mental health issues such as phobias, nightmares, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

When 100 adults with severe PTSD received lucid dreaming training and individual plans for what to do once ‘lucid’, to intentionally face a fear, after one month they saw significant reductions in their symptoms and nightmare distress, according to a study published this year in the European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation.

Scientists are now investigating whether lucid dreaming can help us problem-solve and help athletes ‘practise’ a skill while asleep that then translates into waking life.

Some also believe lucid dreaming can promote physical healing, by helping reduce stress, enhancing the immune system and easing pain.

A small study in 2020, published in the journal Behavioral Sleep Medicine, even found that people with severe insomnia experienced significant improvement following two weeks of lucid dreaming training (to consciously change their distressing dreams and reduce anxiety).

Though evidence is limited, Professor Guy Leschziner, a neurologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, and author of The Nocturnal Brain: Nightmares, Neuroscience And The Secret World Of Sleep, believes lucid dreaming could be useful in the treatment of nightmare disorder, characterised by repeated or intense nightmares.

It is common in PTSD but also as a result of stress and can be a side-effect of medication.

‘Frequent nightmares can give rise to insomnia and poor quality sleep,’ he says. ‘The theory is that by giving people agency in their nightmares, via lucid dreaming, and the ability to control or change the dream narrative, this might be an effective treatment. People could change the nature of their nightmares to more pleasant dreams.’

We’re only just scratching the surface of what lucid dreaming can influence, says Martin Dresler, a neuropsychologist and lead of the Sleep & Memory Laboratory at Donders Institute in the Netherlands. ‘Many lucid dreamers report they use it for creativity; studies show that motor skills may also be trained during lucid dreaming,’ he says. ‘The most difficult part is typically to become lucid in the first place.’

But as Charlie Morley, author of Dreams of Awakening: Use Lucid Dreaming To Rewire Your Brain While You Sleep, explains: ‘Lucid dreaming is a learnable skill,’ pointing to steps such as keeping a dream diary.

This encourages dream recall and noticing recurrent dream themes – in turn, this apparently helps you recognise the themes the next time they occur in a dream and that way become ‘lucid’. ‘A lot of people initially wake up when they become lucid because it is exciting and there is a rush of adrenaline, which wakes us up naturally,’ says Charlie Morley. ‘After a while we can learn to take better control of this response and not wake up.’

He also suggests writing a dream plan for what you want to do when you lucid dream and making a conscious effort to remember your dreams.

Matthew decided to teach himself how to lucid dream, to ask his subconscious why he was depressed. Within a few weeks, he started having fleeting moments of lucidity – knowing because he realised his hand didn’t look right in a dream. ‘I woke up straight away in excitement,’ he says.

In his next lucid dream he shouted up at the sky: ‘Why am I depressed?’ Immediately, he recalls, he was shown a path on a gloomy beach leading to his grandmother, who’d died with Alzheimer’s when he was ten. He had hated visiting her because the care home smelt and she didn’t recognise him.

In the dream, he realised he carried guilt from not going or wanting to see her in her final days – and, in his lucid state, he approached and hugged her.

‘The guilt immediately lifted,’ he says. ‘She looked well again. I stepped back and woke up.’

Over the next few weeks, Matthew says his depression lifted: ‘I haven’t felt depressed since.’

Heather Sequeira, a consultant psychologist in London, sees lucid dreaming as similar to imagery re-scripting, where a therapist guides a patient to rewrite a distressing memory by creating a new narrative of it.

She describes the example of an Army veteran client with PTSD, who had nightmares of being chased, cornered and attacked, waking up sweating and petrified, several times a week for years.

He taught himself lucid dreaming, then together they practised a new response when he faced the figure chasing him, saying: ‘You can’t harm me.’ The nightmares stopped within days and he felt calmer, says Heather Sequeira.

‘Lucid dreaming helps people regain a sense of agency and rehearse a different response to distressing dreams which impact their waking lives,’ she explains.

‘It comes down to neuroplasticity [the brain’s ability to change] and relearning old threat responses – although research is in the very early days.’

No one knows why exactly we lucid dream, although brain scans suggest it affects the prefrontal cortex. As Martin Dresler explains: ‘During wakefulness, frontal brain regions are involved in thinking about one’s own mental activities – however, they are typically deactivated in dreaming. During lucid dreaming, brain scans show they appear to become reactivated again. We still don’t know in detail what’s happening, as larger, more robust neuroscientific studies on the topic are difficult.’

However, evidence for lucid dreaming is mounting. A small study in the International Journal of Dream Research in 2021 involving six participants concluded it ‘may be an effective treatment for mental health issues, including clinical depression’.

In other research, lucid dreamers asked to ‘perform’ squats while dreaming experienced an increase in heart rate and breathing rate – a hint at the potential for training while you sleep.

Inevitably, the success from small studies and anecdotal reports has led to the development of devices, such as sleep masks or headbands, to help wearers lucid dream, using light, sound or electrical stimulation.

However, all the experts Good Health spoke to were reluctant to recommend any commercial devices given these are in early stages of development.

Could another route to lucidity be taking some supplements?

Higher levels of vitamin B6 have been shown to impact dreams, making them more vivid – though not directly linked to lucid dreaming. Similarly, magnesium is thought to influence chemical messengers in the brain related to sleep and dreaming.

However, Dr Tom Pennybacker, a consultant psychiatrist at The Chelsea Psychology Clinic, advises that while there may be some evidence for supplements making dreams more vivid, results are unpredictable.

‘Anyone considering supplements should check with a health professional first, as higher doses can have risks,’ he adds.

He also believes lucid dreaming is no substitute for evidence-based therapies. ‘There’s no evidence that lucid dreaming consistently addresses the underlying causes of depression but it is intriguing,’ he says.

‘Some people find it a useful way to reflect on emotions or rehearse coping strategies – like a controlled space to confront fears or replay scenarios, which is somewhat similar to exposure therapy already used for treating phobias,’ says Dr Pennybacker.

He stresses it will not be suitable for some, advising anyone with a mental health issue to only attempt lucid dreaming healing alongside professional support.

Matthew remains depression free and continues to lucid dream. He’s begun asking himself other questions, including what will make him happiest.

The answer, drawn across a starry sky, was becoming a father (something he is working on).