The way we teach and present the Technique, the emphasis is so much on non-doing, on inhibition. That is tremendously important, but if you are not careful, people start to look upon the Technique as something that is done to them, not something they can do or make use of. In fact, the Technique gets rather caricatured in this way, when people begin to think they can’t really do anything to help themselves, apart from lying down. They can’t lie down very often, at the most perhaps once a day, so the rest of the time, there is nothing they can do, no way they can help themselves. This is getting off on the wrong foot altogether. As F.M. used to emphasize all the time, the Technique is a matter of self help. It is a means of helping yourself.
The active participation that is required is not muscular activity, but is the active participation of thought and awareness.
Walter Carrington (“Thinking Aloud” – Advice to Teachers p43)