If you want to get comfortable with asserting your needs, communicating your boundaries and learn a few power moves to defuse a threatening situation, we’re here for you.

We coach in Empowerment Self Defence, a holistic approach to personal safety that addresses the whole spectrum of violence, from micro-aggression to unwanted contact, to physical assault.

If you’re keen to tap into your power, we’ve got you covered. Our workshops invite you to feel and channel your strength through movement. They also offer opportunities to digest what you’re learning so you can keep it with and you move through life with confidence.

If you’re living with the effects of trauma from violence, and would like to learn in a trauma-informed setting, we’re here for you. Our instructor team is trained to work with trauma in the body and in designing programmes that meet you where you are.

We see you as the authority on what’s right for your body. We don’t do commands or instructions, we offer invitations and options.

The course is open to women, people living in women’s bodies and who identify as women.

If you’d like to talk more about whether this programme is right for you, reach out.

Your instructor is Maya D'Amour.

Maya’s style is thoughtful, creative, and collaborative and her workshops are full of compassion and empowerment.

She believes that safety starts with recognising that you deserve to be safe. You’ll practice identifying your boundaries, build verbal and physical skills to uphold them, and saying what you need.

Maya is a certified Empowerment Self Defence (ESD) instructor, trained in trauma informed martial arts programme design with Conscious Combat Club, completed foundational training in Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), holds a 1st Kyu in Shotokan karate, and continually explores ways of drawing on traditions like kickboxing, Krav Maga, and Jiu Jitsu.

The cost of the 8 week course is £99, thanks to a subsidy by Another Way Women’s foundation.

We’ve worked hard to keep it affordable, but if cost is still a barrier, reach out.

Equally, if you’re able and moved to supplement your fee with a charity donation to empower other women in your community to access the protective and resilience-building benefits of Empowerment Self Defence, we’d be profoundly grateful.

They’re a mix of movement, games, reflection, options to discharge energy, and options to ground and regulate your nervous system.

Exercises integrate a range of physical and verbal boundary setting techniques, focussing on the specific safety challenges that women face.

You’ll come away with a few fast and furious power moves to defuse a situation, and create space for yourself to think and act.

Crucially, they put you at the centre of your own experience, offering you plenty of options and invite you to choose what feels right.

Great question and important to ask.

• For starters, we acknowledge that trauma affects individuals, groups and communities

• We ask practitioners about their known triggers and support systems so that we can incorporate accommodations and supports into the design of our activities and group agreement

• The first thing we practise, before stances, strikes or releases, is saying 'no' to activities that don't feel right to us. We invite participants to practice saying no in sessions and celebrate when they do

• We consider participants to be the authorities on their own experience. The activities we do are invitations not instructions. We invite participants to choose —from a range of variations, to take a pause, practise a grounding technique, or to simply say ‘no.’

• We practise nervous system regulation techniques, and invite participants to choose ones that work well for them

• We practise interoception and making choices in line with our instincts, energy levels, and body cues