Girl's and Women's Self-Defense: Our Approach
Self-defense is cultivating a precautionary awareness.
Self-defense is expecting the best, but preparing for the worst.
Self-defense is in being alert, (sometimes) overly cautious, and thinking about safety long, long before one might need to be "safe."
Self-defense is addressing issues, again, in advance, that cause harm to an individual, but that might not have anything to do with physical assault. This would include issues of self-esteem and self-worth, issues of the media's often skewed portrayal of beauty, of success, of "fitting in," and of "appropriate" female behavior, and issues of being assertive in a culture that might promote less than assertive behavior from "the weaker sex."
Self-defense is, in part, the physical security of ones office, car, home, and other surroundings.
And most certainly, self-defense is about knowing, for sure, and in advance, of potentially dangerous situations --and avoiding those situations to avoid the risk of assault (in any form) that might come with them.
On our mats we address physical assault. We teach girls and women the techniques of physical self-defense in less-that-perfect situations. Part of the training, a big part, is found in the repetitive physical practice of accessing knowledge under duress. One can learn WHAT to do in a self-defense situation, but being able to execute is another issue. Practice and training greatly increase the odds of acting on knowledge rather than freezing up due to fear and adrenaline.
We host seminars and clinics on a regular basis, to fill in gaps and reinforce training practices, which give us more time to address specific self-defense issues that we believe require more time and attention.
On the mat and in workshops, in the time we're not training, but cooling down or warming up, we discuss self-defense from as many vantage points as we have time for, but we don't teach on the mat alone; we also populate our on-line campus, our "digital dojo," with self-defense videos, reports, facts, and how-to's that make our self-defense training program, over all, second to none.
Basically, we create both a community of self-defense awareness --and an on-going self-defense focus meant to protect, prepare, and keep our students and their families out of harm's way, through education and preparation.
For us, self-defense awareness training, like taking in food, like entertainment, like family time, like time with friends, like quiet time, like reading, like so many worthwhile aspects of life, are best when done in just the right proportions, at just the right times. In the case of real self-defense training, we defend ourselves best WITH OUR HEADS. Knowledge and practice putting that knowledge to use, in advance, is the best kind of self-defense training.
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