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Peloton fans probably know Aditi Shah as one of the fitness platform’s experts on all things meditation. But Shah wasn’t always so keen on the concept of meditation—in fact, it took years for her to connect to it on her own terms.
“I was taught meditation at a young age,” says Shah. “But it was a specific kind of meditation that I wasn’t able to do; it was more of a ‘clear-your-brain’ kind of meditation. I don’t know that I really got it; I was climbing trees barefoot and couldn’t sit still and I didn’t like a slow meditation practice. And breathing was not resonating with me at the time.”
Years later, after graduating from college, Shah found herself searching for some grounding and guidance. “As everybody is after college,” she says, laughing. Yoga quickly became a regular part of her everyday life. But she was hesitant to revisit meditation.
“It was interesting to me, but also a little scary because of my previous experience,” she says. “It made me feel like I was a failure at it, like ‘Oh, I can’t do this.’”
But as Shah continued to explore meditation, she realized that it wasn’t necessarily about shutting off her internal monologue and that there were many other approaches and philosophies around meditation that did work for her. Whether it was about tuning into the quality of her breath or practicing self-compassion when her mind did wander, Shah gradually forged a new relationship to meditation. Over time, as she developed her own personal relationship with the practice, she realized just how many pervasive myths about meditation were preventing people from experiencing its benefits.
“You don’t have to clear your brain or quiet your mind or get rid of your thoughts — that’s not the aim of every meditation practice,” Shah says. “Sometimes people think you can’t meditate with a busy mind— but many of us have busy minds and everybody thinks! That’s what our minds do. That was helpful for me to understand.”
Today, Shah has an entirely different perspective on meditation. She’s adamant that there’s more to the practice than many people think, and she’s passionate about busting myths and misconceptions. Following are three of the most common—and pernicious—myths that she observes.
3 Meditation Myths That Aditi Shah Wants to Demystify
1. Meditation is a Form of Escapism
Shah says the type of meditation she’s most drawn to is vipassana, otherwise known as insight or mindfulness meditation. The term “vipassana” originates from Buddhist and Hindu traditions and refers to “seeing things as they really are.” It involves devoting deep attention to physical sensations, breath, and concepts of impermanence and release from attachment (among many other things).
Shah studied vipassana for two years and attended several silent retreats, which helped her understand that meditation is anything but escapism.
“It’s quite the opposite,” she says. “Meditation is about inviting in the reality of what’s happening. Even if you are tuning out some external noise, it’s not that you’re drifting into a fantasy; you’re actually trying to really look inward and do so truthfully. It’s like you’re holding a mirror up to what’s happening.”
“Yes, there are caveats to it, like you’re being nonjudgmental and you’re being compassionate,” Shah continues. “But we all have this inner world, and sometimes we don’t even know what that landscape looks like. So you’re not trying to escape it. You’re actually trying to get a better idea of that picture.”
2. Meditation Takes a Lot of Time
During her two-year vipassana course, Shah and her classmates were required to practice meditation each day. “As busy as my life is, there are people with busier lives and honestly, bigger responsibilities, like children or working at a hospital,” she says. “And they made time to meditate, on the train some days, or sitting in their car before leaving for work.”
What Shah discovered and what many practitioners have found to be true is that there’s no such thing as the perfect time, place, or situation in which to meditate. The reality is that meditation and mindfulness can take place any time, anywhere, whether for one breath or many.
“I really believe everyone has the time to meditate,” says Shah.
3. Some People are Just Bad at Meditation
One of the reasons Shah stayed away from meditation until her early twenties was that she repeatedly told herself that she just couldn’t get the hang of it. But through studying and connecting with other practitioners, she realized she was far from alone in that limiting belief.
“There is no such thing as a bad meditator,” Shah says. “That’s something that takes practice to believe. But if you keep practicing, you figure out that actually, everyone is kind of the same. It’s pretty hard to focus for many of us.”
Shah isn’t sure if there’s a specific type of meditation for every person out there. But she believes the practice can serve a variety of purposes, including bolstering the brain’s resilience and providing a structured space for exploring existential questions or connecting with spirituality.
“So many different Eastern worldviews have different definitions of meditation,” she says. “If you look at Patanjali’s yoga Sutras, it actually defines meditation as just a one-pointed concentration and doesn’t say what that point of concentration has to be. So you could be practicing meditation while practicing yoga—because they are related in that sense— without necessarily sitting down and doing the kind of meditation that I’m teaching. Some people think that meditation is just a body scan or relaxation and it’s not. There are so many different types.”
Ultimately, what Shah does know is that before she saw a shift in her practice, she had to commit to curiosity and consistency.
Photo by Wini Lao
About Our Contributor
Michelle Konstantinovsky is a San Francisco-based independent journalist, writer, editor, and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism alum. She’s written extensively on health, body image, entertainment, lifestyle, design, and tech for outlets including Vogue, Vanity Fair, Scientific American, Glamour, Shape, Self, WIRED, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, Teen Vogue, and many more. She has also served as the health and wellness editor at Fitbit, senior health writer at One Medical, and contributing editor at California Home + Design. She completed 200 hours of yoga teacher training in 2018 and is still trying to understand the physics of hand balancing. Follow her at @michellekmedia.
