Lucid Dream

In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer knows, while still inside the dream, that they are dreaming. The capacity to have and sustain a lucid dream is a trainable cognitive skill, and during one the dreamer may gain some degree of deliberate control over the dream characters, narrative or setting, although exercising that control is not what defines the state. A lucid dream is distinct from a prelucid dream, an ordinary vivid dream, or the related boundary states of lucid hypnagogia and lucid hypnopompia. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and author Frederik van Eeden in a 1913 article, though descriptions of dreamers realizing they are dreaming predate it, and the psychologist Stephen LaBerge, founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University, is widely regarded as the leading pioneer of modern lucid dreaming research.