The end of Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) inspired Student Involvement to host an empowering self defense class on Nov. 3.This class offered students the opportunity to learn more tactics on how to defend themselves. 

The instructors brought forward many different tactics to the class that involved situational skills that could potentially help prevent future dangerous circumstances. . One of the lessons introduced was ‘the five principles of self-defense’. The first principle is to ‘yell’, meaning to use your voice to speak up for yourself and others. It is important to express your boundaries clearly. The second principle was ‘think,’ meaning to use your head and listen to your intuition. The third principle was ‘run’ and this is when a person decides they need to leave an uncomfortable situation. The fourth was ‘fight’, where you use the hard parts of your body against vulnerable targets. Lastly was ‘tell’ and that meant to heal and share your story in a safe space with someone you trust to support you.

During the event Madgelena Diaz, who led the class, was very strict on the fact that people are by all means entitled to defend themselves, but the idea ahead of time is to always try to diffuse the situation so it does not lead to the worst. Diaz has traveled all around to teach the art of self-defense because she believes that it is an important skill to develop that a lot of people may need at some point in their life. 

In an interview with the STAR Diaz described why she enjoys teaching these classes,“Being able to travel and share this knowledge has been really rewarding. Being able to have these conversations in different communities and also making it accessible to different communities is the real goal for us.” 

In the class, the instructors introduced different stances that should occur before self-defense mode. The first one was the comfort stance; a stance that is normal for a person and when they feel comfortable. The second stance was the awareness stance which they taught involves having good tall posture with both your hands held, fingers not intertwined, and resting around the belly. In the awareness stance, the instructors focused on maintaining balance while keeping an eye on the surrounding area and on people. The idea of these stances are to abate further violence and to create a safe space. 

During the class, Diaz discussed the usefulness of these stances. “These techniques are not just for violent situations, but in just setting boundaries in general. When you are trying to understand what they are telling you, and what’s happening. It’s when you’re not trying to escalate or be confrontational. Also with the awareness stance, it is the grounding of being close to the belly because that’s where your intuition stems which adds to the grounding and aware mentality.”

Diaz travels and spreads knowledge of empowering self-defense because she knows that it is a skill that’s very valuable to all communities. She wants to spread awareness to more people who need these tools. Diaz ended the class by saying, “I want people to really feel empowered, to know that they have a right to defend themselves and to also remind them they do have these tools.”