Change Your Dreams. Change Your Life.

Mr. Delistraty is working on a book about Spiritualism.

As a teenager, when I was asleep, I flew across the Grand Canyon (which I’ve never visited in waking life), practiced basketball free throws (which studies show can be improved through lucid dreams) and had dinner with Michelangelo (he was painting with one hand while we ate). The possibilities felt endless. This was, I figured, how all people dreamed.

Most of us experience our dreams — we’re chased through our childhood school, our teeth fall out. The dream happens to us; we’re not deciding how it unfolds. Then there’s the much rarer lucid dreaming, in which the dreamer is aware that she is dreaming and can influence what happens. In a lucid dream, the dreamer can often determine how things play out.

Only about half of people will have even one lucid dream........

© The New York Times