Thanks for visiting my website!  If you are a first time visitor, the best way for you to get started is to look at the introductory video just to your right.  If you are familiar with my seminars and training manuals, welcome back.

The Everyday Self Defense seminar presentation includes an introduction to personal safety awareness, conflict avoidance skills, stress reduction, and practice with simple, but surprisingly effective practical skills. Pro-active personal safety measures, positive communication skills and the ABCs of self-protection provide the basis for the program.

What does this mean? In an Everyday Self Defense session, participants truly participate! We practice verbal defense skills and gain insight into our use of body language, body placement and avoidance techniques. We use specific awareness drills to offer a hands-on learning opportunity. With my unique, easily understandable ABCs of self-protection, seminar participants increase awareness, balance and control.

I also ensure that there is time for seminar participants to share personal stories so I can offer solutions to real-life professional dilemmas. This activity is vital to human service workers who have been assaulted or mistreated in their work. Handouts that include tips on social worker safety in various settings complete the session.

Everyday Self Defense programs offer a balanced approach to personal and workplace safety that anyone can learn. I designed the program to help you reduce fear and gain confidence in your role as a human service professional.

Combining more than 30 years training and teaching in the martial arts with my diverse experience as a professional social worker, I have developed a unique approach to personal safety awareness for human service workers that stresses social and professional issues as well as mental and physical training.

Everyday Self Defense represents all that I have learned applying self-defense techniques to common, everyday situations that most of us have to deal with in our personal and professional lives.

Why is it important?

In combining the two fields of personal safety instruction and social service, my goal is simple — to decrease fear and increase confidence among social and human service workers. I use personal safety and wellness training to help us better serve our clients, our communities and ourselves.

We human service professionals face many stressors. Whether threats come from our clients, their families, the neighborhoods we visit; our co-workers, bosses or general working environments — we need help. I specifically designed Everyday Self Defense courses to help promote job wellness and personal safety awareness in all human service situations.

What You Will Learn at an Everyday Self Defense Seminar

You will learn how to:

• Use your mental abilities to defend yourself (pssst… most of self-defense isn’t physical at all!)
• Use a few simple physical techniques in safe yet powerful ways
• Identify the everyday situations that may compromise your workplace safety (and learn what to do about them.)
• Recognize stereotypes and how they influence our safety decisions
• Identify the assertiveness skills that work best for you and practice using them
• Understand your personal and legal rights and how to gain or protect them
• Identify potentially violent behavior and learn how to avoid it
• Reduce stress and maintain composure under pressure