History of Woman Self Defence
Since the early 90’ties we at the I.S.D.S. are, beside regular lessons, specialized in teaching Self Defence.
True the years we gave self defence courses to all kind of groups of people. Self defence courses for scholar girls, for security, for police officers, for nurses, for elderly, for men and women.
Self defence for women became shortly a regular course because of the need of it. True the years we encountered many woman with lots of different traumas and life experiences such as stalking, sexually transgressive behavior, domestic violence, rape, etc. Also the social environment, laws, changed constantly to which we had to adapt.
By creating “reality based situations” we offer several self defence techniques based on “human” principles to improve the possibilities to evade and/or escape aggressive attacks; but also to give insight of the possibilities of actions accepted by the current Belgian law.
On our web page we created a separate area where we share our woman self defence courses throughout the years. We do call it “No Nonsense Self Defence” because of the simplicity and directness of the used techniques. This section also contains photos, videos, articles and reviews. The page is only accessible with a given password, as we aim to protect the privacy of the participating woman.
New Collaboration
Early this year 2020 we started a new collaboration with a young lady Magali, who is responsible for (re)directing and solving personal problems of female participants. Her organization “Moving Magic” (www.movingmagic.be) covers all kind of difficulties people can experience in real life.
After a few talks we realized together we aim the same purpose: creating a safe environment by facing their insecurities and guiding them to discover their own way to a safer life. Our input in this program is to teach woman to (defend themselves) be able to react and get out safely from a dangerous or threatening life situation.
We offer several levels of difficulties, depending of the interest of the participants. We always start with a Level 1 course of 10 hrs., consisting out of 2 x2 hrs. of theory and simplified techniques, 1 x 2 hrs. of rehearsals and light tests (= real based situations), finishing with 2 x 2 hrs. of rehearsals and light to hard testing’s. People are attacked when they are distracted by blindfold, spinning and random attacking’s to simulate real life situations. Other levels are focusing on weaponry, ground situations, inclosing situations, multiple attackers, home invasion, etc.
Future of Woman Self Defence
The need of woman self defence accentuates by the day. We live in a society where woman become more independent and they also want to be able to defend themselves in different threatening life situations. Our experience from recent courses is that the majority of our participants are carrying a certain baggage of bad experiences. Every time we wonder how strong they can still stand and search for their own solutions. Each woman has different trauma and so different need of problem solving. Therefore every woman is approached and advised individually, adapted to their own abilities in physical, mental and emotional level.
Today we also see that our youth are developing into young beautiful woman at an early age and becoming vulnerable as potential victims of unwanted approaches. We are happy to have a collaboration with Moving Magic as this is a welcome channel for woman of all ages to find help discovering themselves and their abilities.
We are looking forward to guide the todays and future generations.
Sifu/Guro P.
