This past Friday, I had the pleasure of teaching a self defence class for IntoYoga to about 50 kids at a daycamp. As they ranged in age from 5-11, I decided to focus most of the presentation on the mental side of self defence and the importance of making your escape instead of fighting.
Not that this advice is only for kids as everyone, trained or not, should first go out of their way to be nice and avoid trouble. : )
It was good to see that all of them seemed to know the difference between fighting and self-defence. I made sure to make a few points about bullying and emphasized the ideas of standing up as a group and telling a trusted adult, thus demonstrating that such behavior is unacceptable and also hopefully getting the bully some help in changing their ways. We also talked about how important it is to listen to our gut feelings and take their advice if we feel unsafe. Avoiding and escaping a potential danger is of course much better than having to find a way to deal with it when it is upon us.
Before we got into the Wing Tsun method of escaping a wrist-grab, I taught them all how to do a proper pushup, bodyweight squat and table-top. We talked about how having a strong body will help then to kick and punch harder, plus run away faster when making their escape.
As for the aforementioned wrist lock, there were a lot of red arms but everyone seemed to grasp the concept!
Hopefully I will have the opportunity to do this again soon!
I would like to again thank Sheri at IntoYoga for giving me this opportunuty.
See the handout from the class HERE.
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