A lot of people in my life who love to meditate teel me that meditation indeed offers a unique perspective on the connection between the mind, body and breath.
What the original commenter said is correct, meditation helps you see how thoughts arise in the moment, and with practice you can get to a point where there is very little noise and instead you have a broader view of ideas and your life in general.
It is also calming, for your entire system. Learning to monitor and control your breathing consciously is a serious mental workout. If you have never sat down to practice it, you might surprise yourself as to how much is going on in your own mind and how the wheels and cogs just keep turning.
A caveat: my previous employer (a rent-seeking publishing company) used this sort of thing as a trap. Here, have Headspace for free. Here, take this training on how psychological safety and mental health are important in the workplace. Oh, your manager is psychologically abusing his team? That's against our core values - report that to HR right away. Surprise, HR cares but they are impotent; here's the shadow ER rep to hand you your walking papers.
In my experience, complete introvert, it helped me enormously with anxiety. But it did take some work, such as working through emotions that I had bottled up. If you stick to your practice then you will work through it.
Imagine I told you to go to the gym 3x a week or wake up daily at 4:30am. How would you react?
It’s a shame since I might even enjoy mediating. Maybe I try it one day.
I have to reframe someone telling me "you should do X healthy thing" as "you should look into X healthy thing and see if it interests you/if there's really a good reason to do it", and then if I do my own research/reasoning, sometimes I can get my brain on board.
Basically, I have to trick myself into thinking it's my own idea. Very silly, but hey, it's how I started eating more vegetables and drinking more water, at least.
Meditation, or some sort of reflection, may reveal to you that wrapped up in "allergic to evangelism" is an illusion that you received the intended message in the intended way. Or rather, that your reaction isn't necessarily in line with the reality of the intent of what was said. And that your reactions may be limiting you in your growth. You may even figure out ways to gamify your own improvement.
That said, realization is the easy part!! lol, who am I to talk, let alone preach
Then they go on to blanket it with Oops! I forgot I don't do this! I am so mindful of myself! I am free of judgement!
It's important to remember that all else is _not_ equal though. The totality of a human being can't be measured by any one form of aptitude, but most people would be better versions of themselves if they read more, exercised more, had better diet, were more introspective, engaged in some 'spiritual' practice that reinforced humility and charity, etc.
Someone who meditates is probably better than me on that particular axes. I don't seem to have an aptitude or patience for it, at least not yet. Maybe that means I need it all the more. Maybe some day...
I'd say "screw that, I'm not cutting back!"
Why let them - or rather, allow your imagination of them - have power over your future choices?
Meditation and yoga are two practices that I've never managed to make myself try earnestly because of the aesthetics, evangelism, and just a hesitance towards anything that has an air of 'spirituality' that a lot of western practitioners tend to employ.
I don't have a problem doing 'mobility work' and stretching and various exercises to make myself less injury prone, but yoga somehow is just beyond the pale. Our preconceptions are almost even weirder when we're consciously aware that they're probably silly, but abide by them anyway.
In my case, I was advised by my cardiologist because of high blood pressure. He said in my case he sees significant correlation with stress so anything that helps me to lower my stress levels will also help me to lower the dose of medication. It works very well for me, but I have no idea if it worked for anyone else. Moreover, I also do it while walking outside, with even better results (like 15-20mm Hg difference before/after).