Back in high school, Brenda Giguere would ice skate with her friends every week at a local shopping center. But she quickly got bored going in circles, while watching her more adventurous friends switch from skating backward to forward.

Illustration by Stacy Innerst, Post-Gazette Today is the final installment of a five-part series on the mysteries and meanings of dreams. Today we explore whether you can you control your dreams. Those who believe it's possible have promoted the concept of "lucid dreaming" -- techniques to teach yourself how to know when you're dreaming, and to affect what happens in the dream. Click illustration for larger image. In Your Dreams Today: Lucid Dreams Lucid Dreams: A sample Resources for learning how to dream lucidly Dream Journal: Robert Brust Readers share more dreams The Dream Team Full index to series Yesterday: Intruders in the Night When dreams become a real-life nightmare Bloomfield woman never dreamed her problem was sleep eating Dream Journal: Jocelyn Hillen Dream Journal: Peter Baynes Readers share their dreams Tuesday: Nightmares Nightmares for many are very, very scary One solution to nightmares: imagine a better ending Night terrors are rare, but normal for children Helping children cope with nightmares Resources for chidren and adults Dream Journal: Jean-Jacques Sene Monday: Dream History After 50 years, the veil begins to lift on our dreams Dream Journal: Tara Deringor Dream society seeks middle ground behind hard science and symbolism Experts trying to awaken Pittsburgh interest in dream study Sunday: Dream Science The science of dreams Dreams: From falling to failing, it's the same old stories The 12 universal dreams Dreams and the arts: PG critics pick their dream theme team Insight from a decade-long journal of dreams A dream journal 'how-to'

"I got really fed up with myself about being such a chicken, but I seemed doomed to skate in circles forever," she recalled.

One night as she was falling asleep, she realized that she could probably practice those backward moves in her sleep. She had been conscious before when she dreamed, although she didn't know at the time what that type of dream was called.

"Before long I was dreaming I was skating, and I got very excited. I knew it was a dream, so I knew it couldn't hurt me at all. ... It was so realistic. I got the very convincing sensation of skating backward -- the movement of my legs, the cool air, the feeling of propelling myself this way. Suddenly, it made sense to me as a set of logical, fluid, sequential body movements."

And the next time she was out with her friends, she skated backward without hesitation.

Giguere, now 50 and a freelance makeup artist and wardrobe stylist in San Diego, later learned she'd experienced what's called a lucid dream.

Lucid dreaming occurs when the dreamer knows that she is dreaming. It's among the most controversial areas of dream research, partly because of misperceptions over how much individuals can influence dreams -- or more importantly, whether they should.

Yet proponents say lucidity is an important step in understanding dreams and creates a vital bridge between people's sleeping and waking states.

Beyond the practical application of rehearsing a speech or learning a skill, advocates say, lucid dreams can take the horror out of nightmares, inspire new ideas, promote self-healing of physical ailments and unravel mysteries of the psyche that can improve people's overall well-being.

"If they never did anything useful, lucid dreaming would still be worth having because of how endlessly fascinating and enjoyable they are," said Giguere, adding that she often searches in her dreams for new ideas for her media art projects.

"I'm always blown away by what my brain can create."

Lucid dreaming is hardly new. The technique has been practiced by Tibetan Buddhist priests for a millennium. Writings by the philosopher Aristotle also referred to lucid dreaming.

When the discovery of rapid eye movement, REM, sleep 50 years ago opened up new avenues of sleep research, it also allowed researchers to prove that lucidity actually exists.

The leading guru in this field is Stephen LaBerge, a psychophysiologist and research assistant at Stanford University who founded the independent Lucidity Institute in 1987. He believes the state of awareness one reaches during lucid dreaming is very much like that of being awake.

He's conducted experiments in which participants were instructed before going to sleep to give signals in eye or hand movements when they became lucid in their dreams. They would give these signals during REM sleep, which was confirmed with brain waves. Later experiments had participants performing certain exercises during lucid dreaming. Brain waves of the subjects performing the exercises while awake matched what they looked like during the time they provided signals during sleep.

With colleagues, he went on to develop electronic devices -- the NovaDreamer and SuperNova -- that give the dreamer a reminder during REM sleep to try to become lucid. The NovaDreamer (which sells for $493) is a sleep mask that emits a flashing light or sound cues when the user is dreaming -- detected by eye movement. This increases by threefold the dreamer's chances of becoming lucid, his studies showed.

Ed Wirth, a longtime resident of Lawrenceville who recently moved to Ocean Beach, Calif., has used a NovaDreamer. He said the lights become incorporated into his dreams, for example, as a flickering image of a TV screen on a wall.

A worker in shipping and receiving at an FAA repair station, Wirth, 52, has had lucid dreams since 1977. Of the 600 or 700 dreams a year that he recalls, five or six may be lucid. But their effect is powerful and overwhelming.

"They, in effect, have changed my life." he said. "They've highlighted in my mind the things out there that people aren't aware of. It makes me wonder what else is out there and what we can do with our lives. For me, it's an exploration."

He flies in his dreams. He walks through walls. "You can turn a threatening situation into a funny situation. It eliminates the whole nightmare."

Lucidity skeptics

Not all who have achieved lucidity share that enthusiasm.

		DREAM FACTS We spend a third of our lives sleeping. Everybody dreams. People dream an average of one to two hours every night, experiencing between four and seven dreams. About 75 percent of dreaming occurs during REM sleep, which produces the most vivid dreams; the remaining 25 percent occurs during other sleep phases. Negative dreams outnumber positive ones.

A 44-year-old Greenfield resident, who asked not to be identified, said she practiced lucid dreaming a few years ago.

"I was able to program myself to wake up in my dreams often. I had this little signal to myself to know that I was dreaming. I would throw a ball up in the air, and if I could 'command' it to stay floating in the air, I knew I was in a lucid dream.

"I got to the point, though, that I didn't like the feeling of being conscious while dreaming. I always woke up with bad headaches; plus, I began seeing it as manipulating the natural flow of dreams.

"I just abandoned it."

Rosalind Cartwright, the grande dame of sleep medicine research, echoed the dreamer's concerns. She said the whole concept has been "overblown" and sees something unnatural about lucid dreaming. "It's a wish to control things out of their usual function and time.

"I'm not a fan of lucid dreaming," said Cartwright, who directs the Sleep Disorders Service and Research Center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. "It is trying to redesign the mind in a way I don't think is necessarily helpful. It gives people false hope."

While Gayle Delaney of San Francisco, the founding president of the Association for the Study of Dreams, believes that lucid dreaming can be thrilling and useful, she is skeptical of how effective it can be in dealing with bad dreams.

"I think lucid dreaming has been overplayed by many as [something that] solves your problems. It helps you understand your problems."

Most of the time, she said, bad dreams offer the dreamer the most direct and accurate information about feelings, attitudes and situations that are getting him into trouble. Learning to understand the dreams, rather that rewriting the ending to make them happy, will help the dreamer to overcome the problems that are causing the nightmare.

But lucidity in nightmares can transform habitual fear into conscious courage, LaBerge insisted. If confronted by demons in a bad dream, for example, you know you're dreaming and can tell the demon to stop or go away, or ask why it's there. Most of these dreams become positive, rewarding experiences. People feel euphoric and empowered, he said.

He also said it's rare to experience a headache from lucid dreaming; it's more likely caused by intense REM sleep.

Not total control

The biggest misperception about lucidity is that it's a way to control the content of a dream, an idea perpetuated by such product gimmicks as the Dream Maker, a CD put out by a British company earlier this year.

		INTRIGUED? We'd like to hear about your dreams. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette welcomes interested dreamers to e-mail samples that will be published in the newspaper or on the PG Web site. If you haven't been keeping track of your dreams, get started now. Send any dreams you feel comfortable in sharing by Dec. 19 to dreams@post-gazette.com. Type in "dreams" in the subject line. Please include your name, age and home town or neighborhood, and daytime telephone number. Obviously, we can't publish them all, but we'll do our best to pull together as wide a selection as possible.

The CD claims to help listeners create and control their dreams, a technique immodestly billed as "the most amazing psychological discovery of all time!" A person falls asleep listening to the dry monotone of a narrator who will help conjure up images of a romantic rendezvous with Catherine Zeta-Jones or Tom Cruise, or of performing a fantastic stunt like bungee jumping.

"It struck me as kind of nonsense," LaBerge said.

Becoming lucid, he emphasizes, is likely to increase the extent to which you can deliberately influence the course of events, but it's not synonymous with dream control.

"By focusing your awareness, you can alter the dream, but you don't alter every aspect of the dream," said Robert Waggoner, co-editor of the Lucid Dream Exchange, an independent quarterly publication.

The businessman from Ames, Iowa, who has been lucid dreaming since 1975, said if a dreamer stops in a lucid dream and simply observes, things continue to happen. Cars move, people walk. All of this happens without the lucid dreamer "willing" it or "controlling it."

"If you were a lucid dreamer of some skill, you could request Tom Cruise to be on the other side of the door. There's a 99 percent chance he would be there ..."

But you may have little control over what Tom Cruise then does in the dream.

Patricia Keelin, of Napa, Calif., a close associate of LaBerge's, explained it this way: "When you know you're dreaming, you know you have many more options for choice than you think you do. .... This is your creation. You can do whatever you want."

She has used lucid dreaming to rehearse making a presentation before a crowd ("When I gave my very first workshop, it felt like my second") and to wipe out the fear she had of an abuser from her childhood who showed up in her dreams.

Earlier this year, she also used it for healing. After she experienced some unusually heavy menstrual bleeding, doctors explored the possibility of a hysterectomy, an option Keelin didn't want to consider.

She concentrated on trying to have a lucid dream to address her health.

In the dream, "I inserted hands into my uterus. There was no blood, no pain. Nothing but a sense of touch. I kept the feeling of serenity that everything was going to be fine. I touched the walls of the uterus. I had that inner-sense of peace and healing."

Her next period came without fanfare. "Who knows what kind of effect that had on a physical level? There's no measurement scientifically," she said. "I know I felt calmer and more in control of my body, empowered and elated."

LaBerge's goals are simple: to learn more about lucid dreaming and to make it more accessible to the public.

He's experimenting with chemical inducements to increase the release of acetylcholine, the main neurotransmitter in REM sleep. He's been testing minimum doses of an Alzheimer's drug on seasoned lucid dreamers and has found that nine out of 10 participants had one or more lucid dreams on an active night.

He's also exploring herbal supplements, such as galantamine extracted from daffodil bulbs, to promote a similar effect.

But he laments that more isn't being done. Research funds are not exactly pouring in for lucid dreaming, and his business operates on a shoestring with a six-member staff, lots of volunteers and funding from grants, donations and sales.

"Our research is extremely limited on what can be done," he said.

"But I get enough letters from people that this experience changes their lives for the better," he said, noting that his Internet site has received millions of visitors and he's sold 300,000 copies of his groundbreaking book, "Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming" (1990, Random House), which he wrote with Howard Rheingold.

"I feel lucky to have this fascinating field to work in."