A As a teenager, Brenda Giguere went ice skating with her friends every week, but they improved much faster than she did. She could only go round in circles and got fed up with watching her friends effortlessly switching from backward skating to forward. Lying in bed one night, she thought she would try to practice those backward moves in her sleep. 'Before long I was dreaming I was skating, and I got very excited. It was so realistic. I felt the sensation of skating backward - the movement of my legs, the cool air, the feeling of propelling myself this way. Suddenly it all made sense as a set of logical, fluid, sequential body movements.'
2B Brenda later found out she had experienced what is called a 'lucid dream'. Lucid dreaming is one of the most controversial areas of dream research, partly because of misperceptions over how much individuals can influence their dreams - or indeed, whether they should. Those in favor say that lucidity is an important step in understanding dreams and argue that lucid dreams can take the horror out of nightmares, inspire new ideas, promote self-healing of physical ailments and unravel mysteries of the psyche that can improve a person's well-being.
3C Lucid dreaming is a technique that has been practiced by Tibetan Buddhist priests for more than a millennium. Writings by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle also refer to the conscious exploration of dreams. And when the discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep 50 years ago opened up new avenues of sleep research, it also strengthened the argument for lucidity. Today, the leading guru in this field is Stephen LaBerge, who founded the Lucidity Institute in 1987.
4D LaBerge believes that the state of awareness reached during lucid dreaming is akin to that of being awake. With colleagues, he has developed electronic devices that give the dreamer a reminder during REM sleep to try to become lucid. The 'NovaDreamer' is a sleep mask that emits a flashing light or sound cues when the user is dreaming (detected by eye movement). LaBerge claims that this increases the dreamer's chances of becoming lucid threefold, as evidenced by research he has carried out. Ed Wirth, who has used the NovaDreamer, says the flashing light becomes incorporated into his dreams, like the flickering image of a TV screen. Of the 600 or so dreams a year that Wirth recalls, only five or six are lucid, but their effect is powerful and overwhelming. He flies in his dreams, and walks through walls: 'You can turn a threatening situation into a funny situation. It eliminates the whole nightmare. They, in effect, have changed my life. For me, it's an exploration.'
5E Not everyone shares this enthusiasm. Rosalind Cartwright, the grande dame of sleep medicine research, believes the whole concept has been overblown. Cartwright, director of the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, says: 'It's a wish to control things out of their usual function and time. It is trying to redesign the mind in a way I don't think is necessarily helpful. It gives people false hope.'
6F LaBerge admits he doesn't have all the answers yet, but feels lucky to be able to work in such a fascinating field. His goals are simple: to learn more about lucid dreaming and to make it more accessible to the public. At the moment, he's experimenting with chemical inducements to increase the release of acetylcholine, the main neurotransmitter in REM sleep, in order to encourage seasoned lucid dreamers to have more of them. He's also testing herbal supplements such as galantamine, which is extracted from daffodil bulbs, to promote a similar effect. But LaBerge laments that more isn't being done. Research funds are not exactly pouring in for lucid dreaming, and his business operates on a shoestring with a six-member staff, lots of volunteers and funding from grants, donations and sales.