There is a TON of nonsense, pseudoscience, and people trying to take your money surrounding meditation, mindfulness, buddhism, stoic philosophy, relaxation practices, etc. But I do think there is something to be found here. Humans have been finding benefit in these things for thousands of years, something must be going on. So my efforts in this area have shifted over time from debunking it, to boiling away all the nonsense, distilling down to what really matters.
The latest fruit of that effort is what I call: Sustained Metacognition.
Sustained metacognition is what I’ve found is really the point of mindfulness practice. From this perspective a lot is called out for the nonsense that it is: chanting, counting, visualizations, levels of awareness, etc. These all distract from thinking about your thoughts (which I know is also a thought, but we need not go beyond two levels of recursion here).