and seemingly have little control over what happens

But what if you could know you were dreaming, and subsequently control the dream?

It turns out lucid dreaming is entirely possible

and with a little effort and practise, even you can do it

Now, some of you might be saying, "I don't even dream"

but the truth is everybody has about 3-7 dreams a night

the problem is we quickly forget them

The first strategy towards lucid dreaming is keeping a dream journal

Keeping the journal improves your ability to recall dreams, and helps facilitate lucidity

So every time you wake up, write down what you can remember,

even if it's nothing, just to form the habit

The next step is performing reality checks

In a dream, something as simple as reading a sentence,

counting your fingers, or checking the time

can often go astray

Try it right now: look at the time, look away, and then look back

Assuming you aren't currently dreaming,

the time probably stayed the same

However, in a dream, the time or the words you were reading

will often completely change

The key is to do these reality checks often when you're awake

This way they become second nature

and when you're dreaming you're likely to perform the same test

and realise that something's wrong

After this comes a technique known as Mnemonically Induced Lucid Dreams (MILD)

As you're falling asleep, begin to think of a recent dream,

and imagine yourself becoming lucid.

The idea is to reinforce the intention to realise you're dreaming in your dream

Keep repeating the phrase "I will have a lucid dream tonight"

The highest rates of success tend to come if you wake up in the middle of the night

get up for 30 minutes, and then go back to sleep with these intentions in mind

Finally, once you've had success with MILD,

an advanced technique known as Wake Induced Lucid Dreams (WILD) may be attempted.

The idea behind this is to keep your mind aware while your body falls asleep

The risk here is that you'll experience sleep paralysis.

A completely normal phenomenon that prevents your body from moving during sleep

except you'll be awake

which can be somewhat frightening

The extra caveat with WILD is that, during sleep paralysis

the brain can play tricks on you,

inducing strong feelings of fear and causing hallucinations of dark and scary figures approaching you

Scientific research into lucid dreaming

has provided an insight into the location of meta-consciousness in the brain,

provided opportunities for dream therapy and nightmare recession,

and even begged the question if sleep and wakefulness

are distinct events, or part of a continuum.

After all, dreaming of doing something

is almost equivalent to actually doing it

when looking at the functional system of neuronal activity in your brain

So, are you sure you're not dreaming?

Got a burning question you want answered?

Ask it in the comments or on Facebook and Twitter

And subscribe for more weekly science videos