I've talked to some oneironauts (people who practice and study dreams seriously) who say that as soon as they know they're dreaming, they have complete and total control over their dream. They can immediately fly like Superman, conjure objects out of thin air, hold conversations with people from history, and shape entire worlds merely by imagining them.

I'm not one of those people.

To make something happen in a lucid dream, to truly control it, for me is a process requiring just as much practice as remembering I am dreaming. I couldn't just say, "I want to be a bird," and expect to sprout wings and fly. I'd try to fly, and I'd get a few feet into the air and stall while my arms felt like I was pushing them through peanut butter. Sometimes I'd get caught in power lines. Sometimes I'd only think I was a bird, until someone else in my dream pointed out that I wasn't fooling anyone with the shoddy disguise.

My difficulties in dream control seemed to be connected somehow to suspension of disbelief. I could do most "normal" things in a lucid dream, including waking myself up (and with a little effort, staying asleep if I didn't want to wake up), but the moment I tried to do something "supernatural," something odd would happen. And so I had to learn to trick my own mind into believing I could control my dreams, one trick at a time.

Flying in Dreams

I was relieved to discover that a lot of oneironauts have trouble with flying in dreams. For a lot of people, flapping their arms just doesn't work. However, flying "Superman style" (think "Up, Up and Away!") is almost universally recognized among dreamers to be effective. Different people use all sorts of methods that I found more or less helpful: imagining themselves levitating with the power of their mind, or pretending they're strapped to a hanglider, or even just leaping great distances instead of flying. It sometimes helps me out to visualize the scenery whizzing past me as I'm flying. The key is to have a good visualization that you are comfortable with, and that makes sense to you. I used to play a computer game where my in-game avatar had a pair of animated angel's wings that would flap constantly while my character hovered or flew through the air. I played that game so much that eventually I started dreaming that I had my own pair of wings, and it wasn't hard to visualize their flapping motion, sound, and feeling because I'd seen it so much in the game. Now I can do it in my dreams whenever I choose!