Does meditation reduce REM sleep?

[EarthToKepler]

I was looking thru 'The World Of Lucid Dreaming' website and I seen an article about meditation and it said meditation reduces REM sleep but improves dream recall(which I already know) Is this true?

[JustASimpleGuy]

If anything I'd imagine a consistent meditation practice simply raises awareness, both while awake and sleeping. So I don't know if it improves actual recall, but perhaps makes us more aware of the details while within the dream, thus setting up a precondition for enhanced recall? Just my guess without reading the article you mentioned. One thing I can say is without intention and practice it's not noticeable. I've been meditating daily for the better part of 16 months, and before I started working on dream recall this January I maybe recalled a couple of dreams a week, and even then they were very fuzzy and fragmented.

[NyxCC]

The only thing that makes sense to me is that meditation reduces the need to sleep, so if you practice an hour of good quality meditation, you may be able to feel as rested as from, say half an hour of sleep. The actual correspondence of how much meditation can compensate for sleep is up to debate and more studies. There are some articles relating to a study by Bruce O'Hara that cite this. Those who meditate regularly may need less sleep. When O’Hara studied the sleep habits and brain speed of yogis, he found that their 2 hours of daily meditation, plus as few as 4 hours of nighttime slumber, provided the equivalent of 7 hours of mental restoration, which, as we’ve seen, is the dream. I think this is the original study: Meditation acutely improves psychomotor vigilance, and may decrease sleep need