I went to the self defense workshop this Saturday morning and was astonished to find out that I  was indeed lacking in awareness in self defense. Unarmed self defense requires practicing on how to defend against simple types of wrestling or attacking.

  Kyaw Thein, who is an activist and feminist all the way from Myanmar, teaches us how to make our self defense more efficient. During the workshop, Kyaw taught us several martial skills and physical techniques, aiming at efficiently and quickly escaping from an attacker. 

  Through the workshop, I realized gender does not really matter in self defense, what matters most is the size, skills and positions you are in. Because different situations require different skills, and our goal is rather to escape and be safe than to beat the attackers.

  In addition to destroying attackers, learning how to steer away from a threat seems to be more important to women. Especially when we are alone in a dark night, bear in mind that the primary and crucial thing to do is to quickly understand and comprehend the whole view of the position you are in with the help of your eyes and ears. Carefully search the surroundings and never put on your headphones when you’re alone. Therefore, awareness and prevention can cover most of the self defense needs. Try to avoid it before the attack goes physical, which will be much easier than trying to stop an aggressive opponent from hurting you.

For me, it is really a wonderful and useful workshop which alerted me to my bad habit when being alone in an unfamiliar place. Self-defense for women is crucial in giving us power to deter an assault that happened abruptly and also decreases the fear of being attacked when alone by setting the effective boundaries.