Imagine shaping your dreams so that you can fly, or visiting a friend who passed away, these are just some of the experiences that lucid dreamers have reported. If you are considering trying lucid dreaming or are just trying to change the direction of your dreams lately, these tips directly from dream experts to help you redirect your mind during the night time.

Set an Alarm

According to this study you are more likely to have a lucid dream if you’re woken up during the late stages of sleep and then drift back off again. This half waking state is fairly simple to achieve. The simplest way is to set two separate alarms, one later than the other. Leave at least half an hour between them to give yourself a decent chance to begin dreaming again. If 30 minutes proves to be to short of a time span for your brain to enter lucid dream states, try setting it for a two-hour gap instead so you go through a full sleep cycle between alarms.

Retrain your Brain

Teach your brain to question reality. Ask yourself often over the course of at least a week if you are dreaming even if you are sure you’re awake. “By asking yourself the question, ‘Am I dreaming?’ throughout your day, you will begin to ask the same question while in a dream,” Dylan Tuccillo, Jared Zeizel and Thomas Peisel, authors of A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming. Once you have trained your brain to habitually question your lucidity, this will transfer through into your dreams. If you find yourself unable to tell if you are dreaming or awake, try adding a simple test to the question like holding your nose and trying to take a breath through it. While awake this task would be impossible, however while asleep you would still feel the air fill your lungs.

Set Dream Intentions

In order to make a particular person, experience, or solution to a problem appear in your dream, you’ll want to focus your mind on that topic in the moments before you fall asleep. Even better if you can find a visual representation, of the topic you want to explore in your subconscious, to look at as you drift off. Even better if you can carry it with you during the day. “If you’re an artist, it might be a blank canvas. If you’re a scientist, the device you’re working on that’s half assembled or a mathematical proof you’ve been writing through versions of.” Deirdre Barrett, PhD, author of The Committee of Sleep and assistant clinical professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA, suggests. Once you’ve got a physical focal point, you’ll want to also focus your mind on whatever it is you’d like to dream about.