Women’s Self Defense

Self Defense for Women: Awareness, Avoidance, Ability

It is difficult to get an accurate understanding of how common sexual assaults against women are from statistics, largely because unfortunately, a lot of these assaults are often not reported. The consequences for a victim of sexual assault are obviously not only limited to physical trauma such as injury or risk of STD/HIV, but also to psychological trauma as well such as post-traumatic stress disorder. One thing that we do know from statistical studies, such as one done in 1993, is that that women most the most likely to be raped or harmed were those who did not fight back. When it comes to fighting back, you should use every means possible to survive, and surviving essentially boils down to three perquisite categories:
Awareness, Avoidance, Ability.

Awareness

All that self defense is really about, essentially, is awareness. When you strip away the details of self defense systems, martial arts techniques, etc., all you have as a core element is awareness — of your surroundings, yourself, your state of mind, awareness of your body. Being aware doesn’t necessarily have to lead to hypervigilance or paranoia, but an ongoing state of an appropriate level of alert in whatever given environmental situation you find yourself in. For example, are you in a strange city, or dangerous neighborhood? Are you among strangers? In cases where you find yourself in foreign or new surroundings, it might be best to keep as clear a frame of mind as possible, esp when going out for a night on the town, for example. If you are in a strange building, new workplace, shopping center, it is a good practice to be aware of where the exits are, where the most people are, as does thinking about the safest place to park your vehicle. In some cases, lights, noise and people can save your life!

Developing awareness is like developing any other skillset. It will come down to trusting your instincts and “inner voice” as well. You may find it useful to run some scenarios through in your mind of yourself being assaulted, and how to respond to each phase of the attack, much in the same way one would practice fire safety drills with their family. Your number one priority is survival, and the best starting point for this is escape.

Avoidance

When you really think about it, awareness put into practice leads one to be able to naturally avoid potentially dangerous situations. Avoidance is one logical extension of the idea of awareness. Avoiding danger of any sort is your main moral imperative! Always be aware of where you are pla

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