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Self defense for girls: 10 simple lessons

It’s this simple:  Children defend themselves with their heads. It’s knowledge that protects children in today’s world. Knowledge about safety, about what to avoid, about what to do, where to go, and how to stay out of harm’s way.

I’m a part of a remarkable association of martial arts teachers, really forward thinking and action-oriented instructors, who come together almost every day to move worthwhile projects forward. The group is called The One Hundred, it’s headed by a 6th degree black belt named Tom Callos (www.tomcallos.com).

The One Hundred, all of us, work on things that are, literally, “good for the world.” Like we’re bringing diabetes education to martial arts schools and anger management training and environmental self-defense programs. This week we launched a very simple, but powerful website to help girls (young women) learn about a kind of self-defense made just for today’s world.

The site, still being added to and polished, is www.flavors.me/10Lessons. Check it out.

And if you know a young person who could use some self-defense instruction, send them our way. Tell us you visited our 10 Lessons site and we’ll give you 1-week of lessons, for free –and one thing you will NEVER get at a school in The One Hundred, is a “sales pitch.” We don’t sell over the counter, we sell by engaging in and delivering extraordinary work.

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A look to the New Year

As we approach the new year it is a time to reflect on what our lives will be in this year coming.  I am in that process myself now, with a number of changes that have taken place in my life and business.  While I continue to think about this I do know that there are a couple of areas that I would like to give my attention. Continue reading “A look to the New Year”

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Kindness is self defense

This is a great video for youth or adults.  It will make you stop and think about why you are here on this earth.  I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.  It truly makes me smile.  I must give credit to Tom Callos for sharing it with all of his students too.  That was very kind.  It is important that when we learn something of value, when we are trying to practice something that we share it with each other.  Enjoy!

 

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Anger management: speaking calmly

When it comes to solving the situation that faces us, we know that using our words in effective ways is key to calming down any of our responses.  We have learned from others that expressing our feelings and why we feel that way to the other person is the first step.  We will want to use “I” messages, no matter what age they are.  None of us want to hear someone blame us for something or tell us don’t do this or that.  It does not matter if we are a youngster or an adult.  What touches us is when we know how our action affected the feelings of another person. Recognizing those feelings is practicing empathy.

So if I am a child I may say, ” I feel angry when you kick my blocks down”, and if we are talking to our parents we want to say, “I feel frustrated (angry, disappointed or whatever the feeling is) when I do not get to have a play date.”  Then the conversation begins with more control and less emotions of the moment. 

When parents set the example by doing the same in return to their children, it models to the child anger management.  None of us want to or set out to hurt each other. Learning to calm ourselves down before we make a choice that we regret later is one of the most important self defense we will ever practice.

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Creating peace at Thanksgiving gatherings

This time of the year we have many gatherings to go to and many of them involve family members and those close to us in other areas of our life.  Now I don’t know about you, but my guess is that you are much like me in that many of the occasions we go to, we do so with certain expectations.

We know ahead of time who is going to annoy us, who is going to brag, be outrageous or argue with us.  We think in our minds that we are going to do everything we can to stay away from certain subjects and sometimes people to try to keep the peace.  In fact the reason I am writing this is because from a ‘self-defense’ point of view, the things we do that harm us the most, come from our thoughts and mouth.

So what can we do to have peaceful gatherings?  For us to have the peace we are looking for we need to go to a place that may not seem to make sense at first.  If we are to change the relationships that we have, we must choose to be at peace with everyone in our life – and this time of the year especially with our relatives.

How can this possibly be true?  Because if the focus of our inner dialogue about our family members is on what they are doing wrong or how annoying they are, then that is exactly how your relationship is going to play out.  If what we notice about them is how annoying they are, then we are more likely to blame them for our annoyance.  But in reality the annoyance we are feeling is actually coming from our own thoughts.

In our mind we need to redirect our thinking to “My intention is to be authentic and peaceful with this person (relative)”, and that is the experience we will have.  I know this is true, I have seen it with myself and I am sure you have too.

Have you ever had a good relationship with someone and everything is going along very well and then they do something that hurts you really in a bad way?  What happens?  I have noticed that many times the very things that had been cute and appealing to me now begin to annoy me and they are very easily criticized.  We have all done this at some time. 

Our relationships are what we think they are.  I am going to talk about this more in the future, but for now just  know that,  No one is capable of making you upset without your consent.  When we decide to connect to peace, and bring peace to our relatives and relationships, we immediately gain the power to change the energy of the gathering that we attend in this season of thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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Clean up of our waterways

I have just learned that September 19th is an international day devoted to cleaning up the waterways and is used as a day of awareness of what we can do to contribute to the health of our oceans and rivers.  I would like to invite our school and community to join with Balanced Life Skills in creating one or more projects that we can do on that date to help in this cause. 

If you know of a beach or creek or any waterway that needs the attention of humans – to undo what humans have done – please contact us so we can put groups together to spend this one day working on this important type of self defense. 

Talk to your friends and neighbors and lets make a difference in our environment.