Self-protection

Isn’t it just a different way of saying Self-defence? My interpretation is Self-defence is the physical tactics used to defend oneself or another from unlawful harm or the ‘hard skills’, whilst self-protection is self-awareness and personal safety, the ‘soft skills’.

Anyone can learn self-protection skills, it’s an understanding of your person, your own self- awareness, and how by taking certain steps you can manage your personal safety. It covers areas such as deterrence, body language, verbal distraction, de-escalation techniques, and the legal uses of force and pre-emptive strikes.

Self-protection isn’t just about learning responses to street attack, it covers all areas of our daily life and activities, whether at home, work, outside, and doesn’t always mean a physical attack. Learning self-protection tactics encourages us to explore and gain insights into different scenarios with violence, physical and verbal, which affects us all, regardless of gender.

What you will cover in our Self-Protection course

It’s an interactive course, I’ve always found the best way to develop an understanding and gain knowledge is to share ideas with other people. I presume that we’re all on the course to gain these benefits, so encourage everyone to share their experiences with the group.

Practical tips – personal safety that you can utilise immediately. For example, what to consider before planning a car journey in the dark evenings, we focus on self-awareness and avoidance. Violence - understanding what violence is, and the different forms we encounter, e.g. verbal and physical assaults. You’ll learn how to use stances to position yourself in any conflict situation. A physical response isn’t always appropriate, so we explore de-escalation and how we can use a verbal response to resolve the situation.

Practical element - how you response within physical confrontations without having to be a black belt in karate! We cover how the skeleton works. By understanding your own skeleton and how it works you can then apply that to others. During a face-to-face course the physical element would be practised with a partner, this is not always achievable for the online courses via zoom, however we still cover the same principles and drills.

The courses are limited in numbers allowing you time and opportunity to ask questions and participate in the group discussions. You’ll probably find that you’ll want to repeat the course as well, like many courses it’s useful to re-attend as our environments change. Also, we change personally, our needs, understanding and life experiences.