Dreams and meditation

People often wonder if meditation has an effect on the way they dream, their type and their quality, and it would appear that meditation can indeed influence them. After meditating everyday for almost five years, it has had an effect on my dreams, but before I get into this, let’s look at what general research says on the subject: 

Regular meditation is said to enhance awareness, making it easier to remember dreams upon waking. Dreams are also said to be more vivid and lucid, filled with details as the mind is more present and aware. They’re also said to occur more frequently and there’s the case of meditation increasing the likelihood of lucid dreaming, where we become aware we're dreaming and can sometimes control the dream narrative. 

I’d say that this latter aspect is something I have briefly experienced recently, but the preceding stuff hasn’t been part of what I can recall. However, what I’ve observed in the last two months is a much calmer dream pattern, devoid of stress, whereas, since I’ve been retired, most of my dreams were highly stressful, complicated and, at times, frightening, not to mention that they’d wake me up all the time.

Now I sleep much better and wake up fresh and ready to go. I haven’t had specific changes in my life to justify that drastic change and the only reason I can find is a higher mindfulness and better meditation. It’s obvious that individual experiences do vary and while meditation can positively influence dream patterns, there is no guarantee it will do the same for everyone…