What’s the best way to get your body to feel better - do it yourself, or get someone else to do it for you? Should you bend and stretch your way into feeling and functioning better? Or should you let someone else take charge and trust your body to the hands of skilled practitioner, whether it’s a masseuse or a surgeon? The two models are vastly different. The first requires self education and involvement - think of all the lectures you’ve attended and articles you’ve read. The second is more akin to treating your body as a machine - just pop that hood, rev up the motor and say “ahhhh.” And both approaches are found in any major branch of the healing arts.

In bodywork, these two approaches can be classified as “active” or “passive,” depending on how much work they require of you, the client. The active, educational practitioners might have the motto, “Teach an adept to fish and she will feed herself forever.” The passive, hands-on types, I suspect, are motto-free, finding their lessons in the great, expressive silences of what lays beneath the skin. And while active seems, well, smarter - like learning to fix your own car - who doesn’t want to drop the car off for a hassle-free oil change?

I attempted to create a dichotomy - active versus passive bodywork - and to find a definitive answer to the question, “Which way is best?” I wish there were a simple answer, but the truth is, it seems to be a combination of both.

I picked one example from each side, examples that I’m personally familiar with - yoga, which is, at its heart, an educational demonstration of selected postures, and Rolfing, a formal series of deep massages that aim to restructure the musculoskeletal tissues. Naturally, I started with research, but the results were not fair: there’s a ton of stuff on yoga (you can find an earlier column about it at zz.com/BarryBurnettMD), but only a few reviewed studies of Rolfing. So then I did the next best thing - I talked to the experts.

I began by examining the passive approach. I spoke to Mimi Berger, who integrates Rolfing into the broader somatic therapies of Structural Transformation in Boulder. Our discussion began with a criticism of verbal communication itself, at least as a way of teaching patients. It puts people into their minds, Berger says, and that point of view dictates the experience they will have, instead of allowing it to unfold, as it often does in more passive forms of bodywork. She makes a case for non-verbal education: If done well, she says, more passive forms of bodywork - including Rolfing, massage and other modalities - can help the client understand his or her own body better.

Then I spoke to Norman Allard for insight into the advantages of more active forms of bodywork. Allard, a yoga and Feldenkrais instructor, made the journey from his original, more passive field of chiropractic medicine. He enjoys teaching postural, breath and movement awareness because

“it lasts, and I was frustrated by the temporary benefit of purely structural work.”

It is possible, he says, that one can learn about one’s body simply by being touched by a skilled practitioner, but he believes stronger benefits arise from “teaching through all the senses, imparting the ability to pay attention and be aware, to follow the thread of healing. I look at pain and dysfunction as small manifestations of a deeper problem.” Active bodywork can help one understand the root cause of the physical manifestations of pain.

So what’s the best? Learning to do, or being done to? There seems to be far more education than is immediately apparent in both the wordless realm of touch and in the silent truths that resonate behind the suggestions and the dogma of the instructional techniques.

And so the answer is, really, both. Yet only you know the direction of your next path in your healing journey. If you’re tangled up and full to bursting with talk and ideas, seek the ministrations of someone who can untwist you with his or her hands. Who knows? They might find the key you need right now. And if you’re tired of being pushed around and yearning to learn how to do it on your own, find a guide to lead you (and your body) to the next stage of well-being.