Self Defense for Women...questions

[TheDevilAside]

[unknown]

women are welcome in the jiu jitsu classes at my dojo but few take part. mainly because of the grappling and the stuff.....makes them a bit uncomfortable

[Beka]

Yeah, I can understand the discomfort with grappling.... We had to do some open-handed sorta-sparring (no full hits, just an attempt to tap the other person's belly with open, soft hands--not knife hands) for a warm-up the other day, and well, my chest area takes up a lot of space, so, a few hands may have bumped a boob or two. It was fine because I know and trust my classmates (they're not creeps, they're just trying to do the drill), but if I was new and only trying to get through a few lessons for SD purposes, I reckon I wouldn't be as comfortable with it.

 

MA are *very* intimate. You have to *really* trust your activity partners to not hurt you, but to not be too soft on you. You have to trust (as a woman, in particular) that they aren't touching you for sexual purposes, that they won't knock you over or let you fall, and so on. This is going to sound dopey, but, I make martial arts movies for fun (they're very short). But, the better ones are *always* the ones that I made with my closest friends of several years, and I think it's very apparent when watching them that it's the level of intimacy and trust that we have together.

 

That said, I think a woman who just joins a SD class for a few little tactics doesn't have the time to build that kind of trust required to really be able to let loose and practice like you're suposed to. So, I think that's another reason why ongoing MA training would work better than a couple of sessions for SD purposes only.