Some people have as much fun in their dreams as they do in real life.While sleeping, they might change the direction of their dream’s storyline, fly to remote places, explore untrodden territory, or encounter strange creatures. They’re like film directors, guiding the artistic vision of their subconscious.

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Such creative license is thanks to a state of mind called lucid dreaming. A lucid dreamer knows that what she’s seeing and feeling is a dream, not reality—and with that awareness comes the ability (in some lucid dreamers) to make decisions about the dream’s course of events. This sensation is difficult to reproduce in people who aren’t naturally lucid dreamers—in other words, for anyone who’s never had this experience, it’s a hard skill to acquire. But clinical psychologist Ursula Voss and her colleagues at Frankfurt University in Germany claim to have found a way.