national Women's
Martial Arts Federation

2. Content of Programs

Regardless of length, programs should include the key components of self-defense training--varying in depth of content covered. Each program would include something about the framework, boundary setting, and concrete tools with more material covered, the longer the program. All self-defense tools and skills, in all aspects of the range, include physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and social/ cultural components. a. Framework for understanding violence and self-defense, includes:

a. Culture of Violence

• Gender socialization and gender stratification and their role in violence
• The interconnections among sexism, racism, and classism and their role in violence
• Understanding of power relationships, including the teacher-student relationship, and how to minimize abusive power relationships and create a safe environment
• Acknowledgment of the cultural tendency toward victim-blaming. Make it clear that accountability for violence lies with the person who commits it and that everyone has the right to make choices about whether or not to fight back.
• Realistic assessment of risks and options, drawing upon current statistics
• Similarities and differences between stranger, acquaintance, and relationship violence
• Similarities and differences between violence and self-defense, including awareness of our own potential for violence
• Similarities and differences between martial arts and women's self-defense
• Necessity for collective action and building alliances with the anti-violence community
• Opportunities for participants to reflect upon their own experience with violence and self-defense
• Understanding that violence creates trauma and that participants in a self-defense course may have been victims or perpetrators of violence. Instructors need to create physical and emotional safety to support self-defense as a healing process and to provide experience with non-violent environments.

b. Boundary setting skills, includes:

• "Seeing" danger
• Being open to positive outcomes
• Recognizing and establishing safe distance
• Projecting confidence
• Reading body language
• Power of the voice and ability to vary volume and still be effective
• Setting and maintaining boundaries
• Consistency between body language, voice, and content
• Assertiveness (and its distinction from both aggression and passiveness)
• De-escalation
• Confrontation
• Controlling one's own emotions (e.g. breathing, "Take 10," or other methods)
• Speaking up against violence even if you are not the target
• Teachers modeling effective boundary setting/assertive skills--setting clear expectations, giving supportive and effective feedback
• Opportunities to practice boundary setting skills in the group, with partners, or with an instructor

c. Concrete tools, includes:

• Provide a context for the tools (e.g. you've set boundaries which have been ignored or have been grabbed in a threatening way)
• Using one's breath
• Learning to recognize intense feelings and how to use them.
• Emphasis on the purpose: getting to safety (i.e. not beating someone up)
• Acknowledge escape, "hit and run," and choosing to survive as viable options
• Clarify that physical tools are tools of last resort

Frame use of physical tools within the ethic that "The greatest compassion (towards self and others) yields the least harm."

• Tools are simple, easy to learn by any woman, their execution allows "room for error" (i.e. doesn't require precise execution to be effective)
• When framing the tools, differentiate from "sport."
• Body language, dodging/evading methods, releases from grabs
• Deal with defenses against grabs, against weapons, and defenses from the ground
• Opportunities for practicing physical skills, conveying a respect for many known methods for teaching physical techniques, for instance, in the air, with pads, with partners using control, and with padded attackers.
• Make clear distinctions between strikes that cause serious damage, strikes that distract without lasting harm, holds that contain without hurting, holds/ locks that injure, sweeps that off-balance, sweeps leading to takedowns, etc. etc. OR relaxation exercises, deep breathing techniques, verbal roleplays, or roleplays that use strikes, stance, etc.