You are correct (see the Wikipedia article). Meditation was - and is - not a practice that beginners on the spiritual path would engage with in traditional Yoga or Buddhist practices. The problem is that these practices were taken out of their context (stationary secluded environments like ashrams or secretive groups of wandering mendicants) and commercialized by the West in general and by snake-oil vending gurus in the East.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashtanga_(eight_limbs_of_yoga)