al our psychological means. This proves to be very frustrating forsomeone trying to find empirical meaning and truth about his or her dreams. There are countless books written about dreams with just as many differentinterpretations and meanings for specific dream references. For psychics, astrologists, orpsychologists who attempt to interpret dreams, there are numerous factors that must beconsidered when endeavoring to find meaning in a dream. Because of these numerous factors thatcontribute to the condition of dreaming, many different paths have been created for exploration.From Freud’s sexual symbolism to the current random recollection theories diversity in dreaminterpretation abounds. However, there is a way to dream and not be at the mercy of yoursubconscious mind. I was at an interview for chiropractor school I found out about a psychologist at Stanford University, by the name of Steven Laberge, has been studying dreams and the physiology of the human body during the dream state. His research may sound commonplace if it weren’t for the added fact that he is training people to control their dreams. His subjects are learning to become aware of their dream experience as it is happening. Once they are aware of their dream they can simply take complete command of their dream and can consciously cause anything to happen. To the semi-conscious mind the experienceis virtually identical to being awake. This concept is nothing new, in fact many of us willexperience at least one of these dreams in our lifetime. There are a variety of stimuli that he uses to induce this state of mind. One method isplaying a tape recording of the phrase "This is a dream" during the sleeper’s REM. He may alsouse conditioned tactile stimuli. Light, however, appears to be the best stimulus means ofproviding an external cue to the sleeper that they are dreaming. This is because environmentallight seems to be easily incor...
