>I never really understood the 'stopping' part, how is that even possible? At best you can simply refocus it to something you find peaceful, if that is the case how is meditation any different from say watching a movie that you love or playing drums.

With meditation, if you get good at it, you can get lost in a kind of haze that's way less focused than playing drums or watching a movie. Sort of like sleeping while awake.

So that's a lot like "stopping". Sure, neurons will fire, etc, so you're not stopping anything completely, but they also do that when you are sleeping, or when you're completely wasted on weed.