There are two forms of therapies; what could be called "active" and "passive". A passive therapy is what someone else does to us. An active therapy is what we participate in or do for ourselves. Active therapies are always stronger than passive ones. Passive therapies may be necessary in acute conditions but they cannot of themselves bring about real change. 

Our culture itself is excessively passive. We are largely spectators observing others perform. We let others live our lives and we in turn watch them on the sidelines or in front of the screen. Our lives have very little direct experience or creative involvement, which according to Yoga is the only really liberating or fulfilling factor in life. We let other people tell us what to do, how to think, who we are, where to go, what to buy. We let others fix our food, entertain us, tell us how to make love, tell us what God is and so on. In the same way we let the medical establishment run our health. We follow the idea of health which others give us, not what we experience for ourselves or discover to be true and effective in our own lives. If we become the victims of this process there is no one to blame but ourselves. Just as no one can breathe for us, no one can make us healthy or happy. Ayurveda holds that there is no real healer, no magical doctor or magical pill. The magic is in us, in arousing our own life-force and connecting with our own soul, the  source of life. 

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