Your Golden Egg
When you think about it, I am teaching you what you need to know, so that you can defend yourself when your time comes, using all the training you will receive and all the diligent practice you have put into your studies. I write today to share my awareness as to what made a better martial arts instructor than I was when I started teaching women and girls self-defense and martial arts. I came to grasp that it was this specific training of mine, and what I had created, on a life-long basis that would ultimately stop violence against women. It has worked for many of my students over the years and I know it will work for you.
A life long training, and orientation into the martial arts and how it relates to you, is really what I am offering to you. If I had my way, our teacher and student relationship would move from crest to crest in your life, always being with you to guide you throughout your life. And although, you can’t fully realize it now, what I want for you personally is to be a “down to the ground and back up to the top of your head, martial artist”. I want you in time, after thousands of hours of practice to rightfully call your self, ready for the free sparring with males portion of any martial artist training. I want you to one day, love free sparring! Why? Because what you love, you are very good at doing.
That’s the road I invite you to accompany me on and the above destination is where I want you to graduate to and do well in your future martial arts training. Traveling on this walkway with your years long training will keep you safer than you are as a beginner. I predict that you will let go of your unconsciously held belief that says: “I need a man to protect me”. Instead of saying: “when I am with him, I feel safe, say this more powerful words: I feel safe anywhere I go at any time day or night”. No matter what, when, or how, I am safe! Write the preceding sentence down at least one hundred times in your martial arts journal and let it become your North Star. In a nutshell, that is what all these thousands of words are designed to remove: the old patriarchal indoctrination and switch it with something you can thrive and grow into.
Because, when the rapist is outclassed by your years of training and execution of martial arts, he has no chance of surviving what he had planned for you. In the years to come, you will have that power and sophistication to protect yourself. But, if you warn him in any way about what you are about to do to him, your chances of living to fight another day go swirling down the drain. You can warn him all you want after he is unconscious and flat out on the ground.
This inspiring element of surprise is your ace in the hole, in your brave self-defense strategy. But more importantly, your secret training over the long term is: your personal golden egg. Don’t ever think of the powerful element of surprise in any other way. Treasure it like a goose that lays you a golden egg whenever you need one. When you interfere with your attacker’s flow of thoughts, by warning him about what you are going to do to him, in any large or small way, you might as well place your neck on the chopping block while handing him the axe. You awaken the giant, scare him, and then give him plenty of time to recalibrate what he needs to do to you that he had not thought anything about. All the while, you are standing in front of him not moving a muscle, nor doing anything to protect yourself or hurt him. I hope you really think and write about this message and write it down in your martial arts journal at least one-hundred times. In combat: all that matters is the moment. Also, write with your own hand, one hundred times for this one: “your secret, is your super-power! Having a skill set like playing the piano or singing like an angel for everyone at a party is certainly a whole lot of fun. However, being able to protect yourself in no uncertain terms against an attacker is more than just a pleasant disclosure, it’s a saving your own life golden egg. You cannot put a price on that ability to do the one thing he cannot stop you from doing to him.
The danger you face every minute of your life is not going away because you wish it would. Because it is wrong beyond words what these rapists do, does not stop them for a second. These gangbanging rapists will carry on raping and murdering a new woman or girl, whenever the mood strikes them.
So what is a female to do? Read every word that I have written on www.protecttheroses.com. Once completed, and you have learned all you can learn from the written word you are ready to start teaching girls self-defense. Talk to them like they are every bit as smart as you are and remember that as mentally sharp as they are, they don’t have enough life experiences to make wise decisions, just yet. Tell them you are here to gently guide them, by walking and talking on the highway of martial arts with them.
Tell them that as you learn something new you will teach that new technique you have learned. In my writings, I don’t assume you know anything about street fighting, but are willing to learn. And I know that there is more than likely a great amount of geography between us and so I ask you, what to do next? If you want to help young girls to be safe and become there own protectors, train your self in a different way than you ever have before, here is a suggestion that I hope you truly embrace.
Training your girls’ group . . .
Start with your own creative thinking before you say a word to any young girls and think about what you are going to say to them and what is important to you about what you have learned. Telling them your personal insights and recognitions makes them curious about what it would be like if they started to learn martial arts for themselves. Do you realize that most parents do not say a word to their daughters about anything related to this subject and keep their daughters as vulnerable as they can be? This is because her parents know nothing about martial arts or self-defense and do not see the pursuit of this training for themselves or their daughters as being important. Because all they know is what they learned from the cinema, television or word-of-mouth. They have made a life long decision to just not think about the only thing that gives them a huge chance of surviving a street attack compared to their ability to survive that attack today. That is why you start training girls.
Practice conversation so that you perform gracefully. Tell them, they just don’t know or fully realize what martial arts can do for them. Being taught to be dependent on the police or courts of law to come to their aid in her moment of crisis is just so much after the fact solutions that do absolutely nothing to stop an attacker dead in his tracks during the first moment of a rape attempt.
What is going to be your first game you will teach them? Heard of the listening game? The listening game teaches about learning to be still and patient. Girls learn that being still is something that they need to know about anyway. If girls cannot make themselves be still, what good are they as martial artist? Learning patience is a stepping-stone to safekeeping. Teach your student: “I can wait”. The listening game centers on spending some quite time telling others what you can hear and see who also hears that sound too. These are three powerful words that demonstrate a very powerful way of expressing self-control. It is being in control of your self that matters. Another thing it does with good results is teaching a girl the value of being patient.
Girl will learn there is a time to play and there is a time to work. It is a great idea to ask each girl to stand up and tell the rest of the girls why they think it is important to grow up within a circle of girls and women who study martial arts. In your own words what is the value of girls outsmarting her kidnapper? I did not say that girls are ready to start learning formal self-defense classes as a six year old. That comes up later on when they are better trained and remember each girl will be a different person to train.
You are teaching girls how to think about using their training for a safer life for themselves and their family. And that is why you are volunteering your time: to help make girls safer and be able to grow up into this world and be safe. Without you teaching them, they are vulnerable to any number of attacks by certain males.
You want these little girls to learn to fight smart and sometimes that simply means controlling the distance between the attacker and her own body. Teaching them about distance, speed and position is vital. I first learned about these three elements when I was 16 years old. When your students control all three elements of an encounter in one second, she will win that second of the confrontation. But if she controls even one of those three elements, she is still going to at least be safe from his attack in that one second. And don’t assume that they understand what you are talking about. Make them explain what you just taught them right back to you in front of the other girls. Make sure each girl speaks in front of the group every time they meet in a group.
When testing your students I suggest you have the strongest speaker talk first, so that girls get to understand what a strong female leader sounds like. Girls will want to emulate her. She should always say: “if there is anything I have said, that you don’t understand, tell me what it is and I will explain it in a different way. Have the next girl say in her own words answer the question, and see what she leaves out. Save the weakest speaker for last, and let her talk after her listening to all the other girls make their own points. It does not matter if the girl who goes before the group to speak is just repeating what she just heard, she still is reciting the day’s lesson, and that is what she came to learn. This is putting the entire girl’s study group on a slow upward ramp to their eventual day of starting the training in self-defense. At sessions end, sit “in circle” with you in between two of your girls. Always sit in the same spot so that it quickly becomes normal to talk like this. Start with the girl on your left and ask her what she learned and why it is important to her. Tell the girl’s at every session they will never have a bad training day with you. For them just to show up is a great training day. Congratulate them for being on time. Have them repeat: “one brick at a time, to build a strong wall”. Remember that sentence and tell your students that it came from me to them. Also, tell them to write it down in their martial arts journal.
In the Northern hemisphere start your questions moving to your left, which will move the energy around the circle to the right. If you live anywhere North of the hemisphere your positive energy is moving to the right. In the Southern half of the world, move the question and responses to your right. This strategy is simple, as a teacher you are learning to take the path of least resistance by connecting with the energy flows of the world. Look at the direction of the water in your toilet as it turns, when you flush it. Let that be your guide: if it rotates to the right that is the path you follow. If it rotates right as it flows out that is the direction, first to your left and then around the circle to your right to ask your testing questions. If it rotates to the right first and then around the circle to the left ask your questions in that order.
If you are living on the equator, what to do? Look at the direction of the water in your toilet as it turns, when you flush it. That’s all you have to do for guidance. If you have no toilets to look at, check out how water, when it is turning in one direction or another. If you still don’t have any guidance take a coin and flip each time you circle up to solve your question of direction. This is directly training you to be sensitive and aware of the natural flow of energy in the universe.
Let’s learn another way: take your index finger and point it to the ground. In the Northern hemisphere go to your left and then back to your right in a circle around and around as your finger points down. If you are in the Southern hemisphere, using your dominant side hand (could be either your left or right hand) and point your index finger down, and move it first to the right and then back around to your left around and around the flow of energy goes. You are moving with the flow in your part of the world. You need to write that down: one hundred times: learn to go with the flow. I am teaching you not only to go with the flow, but also just as importantly to never, ever resist the greater force coming at you or surrounding you. Be one with rhythm and field of energy you are in and you are “half way home”. But more than that, I want you to know about the fields of energy that exist within each of us, and how to use that invisible, power to your advantage. A good fighter knows about going with the flow and realizes that it is just one more advantage that you have over your attacker. The reverse of this fact is to not even know about it and not know that fighting the greater force, with your own force is so wrong, because you could wind up getting hurt or worse simply because no one ever told you about moving in concert, with not ever against the greater force.
Push Energy
When a man says he is going to hurt you that is considered linear push energy. Understand how predictable linear push energy is: it will always be coming for you in a predictable straight line, 100% of the time. If you planned to not be where he was aiming at, what would happen to the success of his attack? You want to know that your first responsibility is to step off the line of his attack, but not to far off that line such that you can’t counter attack and strike him. The idea is to not always meet force with equal force, because you are not ready for that level of fighting, until you have free sparred for a year or so. Fighting, as you will learn from me is far more than block, punch, and kick. It is about using the flow of energy and going with it all the time.
When some male tells you that he is going to rape you, you say nothing. You never let him hear your speaking voice. He will think he intimidated you and he will not “armor up” and protect himself, you are making it so easy, but that’s the plan isn’t it? You are transmitting false information that appears to be real. This is your first trick and it is a very good trick because it seems so natural. You have him believing your trick. Tell your students everything you have read and learn here. These last three paragraphs should be written in your martial arts journal and read and re read over and over again. For now though, let’s get back to teaching the girls about self-defense.
The next thing is to start teaching your circle of girls how to walk and how to get into their first four stances: fore balance, back stance, horse stance, and ready stance. Check out these descriptions. Fore balance starts with her feet placed one-shoulder width apart between her ankles. Your hips and knees are centered over the feet, with the shoulders, back and chest pushed out ever so slightly. Her head and chin are up, with eyes straight ahead. The hips are slightly turned under so that the butt does not stick out from the posture she is standing in. It is as if she is sitting down in a chair, so the tucking of the bottom underneath the hips is key to more punching, kicking and blocking power that impacts the target.
Back stance, starts with one shoulders width apart. The right foot pivots to the right as the left foot slides over to the right and plants itself directly in front of the right heel. Next, the left foot slides forward about a shoulder and a quarter’s width between her ankles. Her feet are planted at a 90-degree angle from each other. She settles with 80% of her body’s weight centered about an inch past her navel in a direction away from the lead foot’s toes. Her front leg is dead center in front of her rear foot. Her left foot is pointing straight ahead and her right foot’s toes are facing off to the right. She bends her knees just enough to jump straight up without having to drop downward first, which is your test for whether or not you are in back stance or not.
Horse stance is your two feet a shoulder’s width apart and both facing the same way. With the left foot, step to the left about two shoulder widths apart between the two feet. Both feet are facing to the front in perfect parallel stance. Put the shoulder’s back, chest out with the eyes straight ahead. Hand and arms are hanging down below the belt folded folded into fists.
Here’s some questions to ask: whose body is that, which you look at in the mirror? Why do you think your body belongs to you? Who can touch your body and who can’t? Who protects you from danger? What happens when that person is not around to protect you? Is it possible for you to learn about martial arts and become your own protector? Is it possible to learn how to walk differently, talk differently, have better balance, and be impossible to be pushed around? Because if you think it is possible, you are walking on the right path already. Tell your girls that some warrior women have known how to protect themselves for thousands of years, without the protection of or need of male support. Tell your girls that women have been warriors for thousands of years. Tell them women have led men and women in countless battles quite successfully. Ask your girls if they would like to learn more about martial arts and self-defense training? Ask your girls if they would like to become as tough as the boys.
Wearing workout clothing, sit your girls down in a bigger and wider circle and tell them to spread their legs apart and put their palms on the floor in front of them and start leaning their head towards their palms, down on the floor. Repeat that stretching exercise 30 times. With their legs still apart, have them grab the sole of one foot with the hand that is on the same side as the foot they grab and slowly extend their leg out until it is its normal length. For balance, put your other hand on your thigh. Repeat 30 times and switch legs. With legs apart, have them put their arms above their head and attempt to put their face down on their knee. Repeat that movement 30 times on each leg.
Put both feet together and stand erect with hands at the sides, and bend over at the waist and touch your toes or place your palms to the floor behind your heels.
Lay face down on the floor with palms at your side. Slowly slide your hands towards your shoulders and stop when you get there. With knees as a balance point, press your upper body up until your two arms are straight out with elbows locked. Do this exercise 10 repetitions or more every day. If that is too easy, use the ball of your feet as the balance/support point of your rigid body and then do ten push-ups or more every day. Your building up your punching muscles, called the triceps and deltoid muscle groups. Learn where those muscles are on your body.
A girl’s circle should meet weekly for about thirty/sixty minutes at first, so that you do not overload them with too much information. There will come a time though, when they are older, that you ask them to keep secret what you teach them next, from any man. The reason is that martial arts is their super power and when they freely give it away, that overwhelming power that they had, is gone. If any one sees them defend themselves in a street fight and approaches them and asks them how they learned to fight the way that they did, just say “I learned it from watching Wonder Woman fight the bad guys on TV, I can’t remember when though. Remember: “if it’s a secret, it is your super-power” needs to be written down in your martial arts journal at least 100 times.
So the reason I am writing this part about teaching girls is to get yourself eventually teaching females of all ages is because: “what you speak about, you bring about. You will learn this art at a deeper level and at the same time, change girls and other women’s lives for the better. For now, you are teaching just the basics. And that is a big deal for not just you, but for all the girls in your class that would not have a prayer of learning this any other way. Remember: what you teach, you magnify in importance in your own life and in time, it becomes who you want to be: a self-defense and martial arts teacher of women and girls! Every time you repeat some part of the training, you are listening to you, your greatest teacher ever, speaking in an authoritative voice that very same message maybe ten thousand times or more. That’s one thing good that you are doing for yourself. But look at what you are doing for the lives of the circle of girls that you are teaching. Imagine, if you watched them grow up into young girls and then women? Imagine how you would feel as they blossomed into strong and powerful women. Think about it, because your group of girls could birth the next world leader, in fact, I am sure it will. And here is a million dollar question for those of you reading these words: “what is wrong with being at the birth of and personally coaching a new world leader, a woman who is also a strong advocate for girls to start out learning to be their own protectors?” Not-a-single-thing!
I guarantee you this: if by chance we were to ever meet face to face, the second question I would ask you is how is your girl’s class coming along? I would definitely talk to you at length about the trials and tribulations of teaching a girl’s class. Now that to me would be a very interesting conversation. At some point I would ask you what your long-term goals are in relation to you studying martial arts and how does your current study of self-defense make you feel safe, secure, and calm when you go out of the house day or night? What message do you get from your gut? What you want to learn from this work “stone cold” is that your response to an attack is fully automatic and done without the slightest thought or evaluation. Because when you, recognize, evaluate, and select a response, then deliver the response; you are behind in the game of hurting your attacker before he can hurt you. Fighting is an undertaking of microseconds and nothing else is as important as always being ready to protect yourself by moving first. As Albert Einstein once said: “nothing happens until something moves.”
Let’s talk a little bit about what “runs the show” when you are threatened by an attacker. Do you realize that it is your unconscious mind, which “calls the shots” and directs your counter attack from a long list of techniques that you have trained yourself to absolute perfection? Granted, your conscious mind will send a quick signal to your unconscious mind: hey, “we are about to be attacked and the all seeing and all knowing unconscious mind, will make evaluations based on everything available and select what necessary actions you need to take. The next time you are in a situation that requires quick response and then quick action, I want you to understand what is protecting you. I want you to understand that what you have conceptualized as the beginning, middle, and end of your thinking, reacting and solution making capabilities is something that is way below what you are actually capable of doing “in a pinch”.
When I talked about your Golden Egg in the first paragraph regarding the element of surprise as being your Golden Egg, I was telling you the truth. This truth is one reason for you to recognize that a small number of males, not by any means all, but some, will try to abuse you, try to rape and murder you. So the question you probably have right now, “is my Golden Egg limited to just the element of surprise”? It is the door to your vault!
Here is where I give you the best news of your life: there really in no limits to the Golden Eggs that are already coming your way. You just have to unclutter your body, mind, and spirit and let them come to your aid in growing up to be a strong and powerful woman. I want you to write down how you feel when you have completed a front kick punch combination ten thousand times. Write it down; discuss your feelings about being able to protect yourself and not needing anyone to come to the “damsel in distress” who, in this case is not you 10,000 repetitions down the road! Is that another Golden Egg? Yes mam, that’s what it is! Because when some male is trying to, “out of the blue” attack you for no rhyme or reason, you can blast him in the groin with a hard and fast front kick and before he can even bend forward you can rock him backwards with a hard reverse punch to the nose as you set your lead foot down, you take a step-slide forward with your opposite side foot and drill him in the Xyphoid Process with a full power, palm heel strike. How do you like your Golden Eggs now? Yeah, that’s what I have always thought too.
But there is so much more, since what I am saying about a front kick punch combination is so true, what about all the other things you could practice 10,000 times? Golden Eggs are coming your way after you pass the 10,000 repetitions marker, you will know a small portion of what I know, once you go over that number. In your martial arts journal, keep an accurate account of how many of this kick or this punch you do. How many times you perform a moving back fist, sidekick combination. Just pick your favorite technique or combination and get up on the martial arts super highway with the worldwide throngs of women and girls already singing, dancing, and talking quite safely to each other up there.
About that 10,00 repetitions number: 80 front kicks a day, three times a week is 240 front kicks per week. Four weeks at 240 front kicks is 960 per month. In just one year that is 11,520. repetitions. How good do you think that front kick would be in one year? Don’t be intimidated by big training numbers. While your doing your kicks, your attacker is sitting on a couch somewhere drinking a case of beers. Perfect, keep sitting they’re absorbing that patriarchal yarn being spun out on TV about how powerless girls and women are in everyday life. When you think about him watching TV and being lulled into that false sense of security is just like an automatic pinsetter at the bowling alley setting him up to believe something about you, because you are a female and he won’t learn the hard truth until he meets a well trained martial artist (over many years) one fine day.
But before I close this message, I want to teach you three more games to train your girl’s circle with, to really become good at stopping their bodies from moving in a second or less. Put on a song that they can dance to and get them to sing or dance along with the music. Then stop the song abruptly and see how many keep on dancing. If they move or twitch a muscle they have to sit down on the sidelines. Then start the music again and let the girls “get into” doing their thing, when all of a sudden, you stop the music. Again another girl or two has to sit down. The music keeps playing until you know you cannot squeeze another girl off the dance floor. I want you to demonstrate how to play the game by dancing in front of the girls and have one of them stop the music for you to demonstrate what they must do to continue dancing. When you freeze in mid-move, they will get a laugh out of it and then demonstrate a second time where you keep dancing after the music stops and the girls will tell you that you have to sit down! Play the game every week until all the girls cannot be caught moving after the music stops.
Remember the girls are learning body control and making a game out of it. After every game, sit down in a quick circle and ask the girls how they thought they did and what they learned. Use the circle to get the girls to stand up and speak and look at the other girls week after week. Public speaking is a “right” step into getting the girls to experience for themselves that they have courage and a voice. Instruct girls to breath from their diaphragm and not their lungs. Have them lay down on the floor with their feet together facing towards the center of the circle and their heads away from the center. Have them place their hands on their stomachs and push their stomachs towards their spine just a little bit. Then have them breath into their stomachs and don’t let their chests stop the flow of air down to their diaphragms. Fill the diaphragm and then use the hands to push it right back out. Keep doing this until they learn diaphragmatic breathing. Do this every time they meet to talk about self-defense.
A “building girls’ course is way different for adult women. You have to put your own sword in the fire to get it tempered enough so that it will not break during combat. The use of the word sword is one way of saying that the part of you that will fight to protect yourself is invaluable in combat. You must, at the right time in your life, put yourself into a combat situation on a weekly basis if you are ever going to learn what confronting an attacker is all about emotionally. Why this exercise? Because young girls grow up to be influencers who can shape the world through their efforts to get other girls on board to learn how to protect themselves. There has to be something special in their training for the girls to come back week after week.
Next game is called monster. This game is dedicated to teaching girls to recognize and respond to a person in their very group who is a monster. Now, the girls are going to walk around looking at everything until they look into the eyes of each girl. When they meet the “two faced” girl she will make her very own monster face and then go back to looking normal instantly. What does this game teach? It teaches girls that even someone who they know and trust can turn into a monster in just a second. And girls need to be ready to remain calm, and not let the monster know that you recognized their monster face. The girls will want to crack up with laughter, but to stay in the game they cannot show anyone what they just saw. Hopefully, the “monster” girl can make her way through the entire group of girls without being identified by the other girls they reveal their monster face to. At the end of the game you will ask the girls to point to the girl who is the monster in the game that has just concluded. The way you will do it is to count 1-2-3 and point her out all together now! Before the class starts, you will notify the girl by way of a text or phone call outlining to her what the game is going to be. She must keep this communication from you a secret from the other girls in the class until after the game is over.
Final game is called freeze, like an icicle. Here is how you play the game. You count the number of girls in the circle and you get that many pieces of paper, no bigger than 3” x 3” or 7.62 mm x 7.62 mm and draw a circle on each of the pieces of paper except one, and on that piece of paper write the word freeze. Make sure it is a colored piece of paper, so no one can read the writing through the opposite side of the paper it is written on. Put all the papers folded up the same way and put them into a hat where no one who picks out a piece of paper can possibly know what they have picked. Instruct all the girls to not reveal in any way that they picked out the paper that says freeze on it.
Following the selection of who is going to be the “freezer”, fold all the papers back up and store them for another use. Here is how the game goes: The girls start moving and walking around, not necessarily in a circle but not straying to far apart from each other, either. When the freezer touches the first girl, she is to freeze exactly how she is when she was touched. The goal is to see how authentically the girls are able to stop themselves from moving so much as 1” or 2.54 cm. When touched by the freezer.
Before we end the games, here is yet another game that the girls will absolutely love. Learning the left hand from the right hand is absolutely vital in martial arts. Now, this game is a great one for learning the difference. Stand the girls up and tell them to bend their knees and put their hands in front of them like they are going to hug someone with palms facing each other about 12 inches apart. Tell them to crouch forward like they are going to grab someone. Tell the girls spin around first to the left four times and then back to the right four times, then tell them to freeze hard. Then go up to them and ask them, which is their left hand and which is their right hand. Do this every week to make sure every girl knows her left from her right. Tell the girls to sit in a circle and ask them what they thought about the Left/Right game. Ask the ones who get it right how they remember it to be either left or right. Then as a surprise asks the girls to raise their right hand. Ask them if they realize that the leg on the right hand side is called the right leg too.
Tell them that one day they will free spar with males just for the fun of it and they will need to know for sure what their strong dominant side is and which one is not.
Today, let’s take my self-defense training out into the world in a woman-to-woman meet up. Imagine this scenario. You encourage another adult woman, someone you train with regularly, to start her own class of girls. Give her a few weeks to start her own class and of course encourage her to teach the classes on a regular weekly basis.
Now here is the world - changing part . . .
Are you sick and tired of women and girls just disappearing and never being seen alive again? Do you fear you could be the next one to disappear? Are you sick and tired of toxic masculinity? Are you sick and tired of protective orders not keeping the sick–o males in anyone’s life 500 feet away from you? Do you want to do something to turn the tide of the battle in your favor? Nothing is stopping you from organizing locally and acting globally to start with. Do you know what that phrase means? In this case, it means that you recognize that there is a worldwide lack of martial arts training for girls of all ages, from all walks of life in all the countries in the world when it comes to being able to protect themselves. It means that when you take responsibility for getting training for just yourself that is thinking locally and acting locally. This is good for you and I am delighted that you are doing this for you.
But when you train the next generation of girls on a weekly basis you are absolutely 100% thinking locally and acting globally! Why is that so true? It is because in these girls’ life time, who is to say where they are going to move to next and where and when they are going to organize another girls’ group and what that student of theirs is going to grow up and start to train another group of young girls? When her girls grow up and start teaching the next generation of girls you cannot think for a minute that you are not thinking locally and acting globally. As you are reading these words you are in a golden moment in your life where you recognize this is the time for you to teach girls how they can have their own Golden Egg anytime they want or need it. And tell them like everything else in life that is great, that they have to want it so bad that you will change the course of your life to get that Golden Egg. And by the way, once they get that first Golden Egg, they are going to want more of them.
Visualize this scene: if you and another adult woman got your two girl groups together for a training session on a regular basis! Watch the girl’s relationships grow tighter when they meet new girls all coming together for one purpose: to learn how to protect themselves. Now, imagine if the group had three girls’ groups meeting every couple of months. Now imagine if you had ten girls’ self-defense groups meeting in the same place at the same time. Would self-defense become the “cool” thing to participate in? Girls’ could grow up safely into a world of their own making where they never could be raped or hurt by males who are toxic to everyone they meet. It is an involvement in martial arts that could change the direction of the entire world.
And it would be best for you if there were no notoriety, no press release, no nothing from your groups and it was all kept a secret. You don’t talk to the press, because they are not your friends. If they were your good friends, there would be journalists by the thousands already writing article after article on a daily basis about why aren’t girls taught how to fight better than the boys? Where are articles written after a girl is kidnapped and murdered, and her body found out in the woods, about how self-defense training could have prevented her death? All the while, the press is mute about the one and only solution to stopping violence against women and girls. Change that thought instead to where is even one single solitary mention of girls taking self-defense for even a day class is ever being discussed or written about in the press? What if through our combined efforts we brought about a change in the world’s cultures that made it mandatory that girls must take martial arts and self-defense training, as a curriculum requirement for graduation from high school? Now, we are talking about a change so powerful that world leaders would quake in their boots from wondering what is coming next? It would be an army of women world wide, speaking over a 100 different languages, in over 100 different countries saying this is us, now!
Writing that particular message would cause a big stink in the public’s mind because it would mean that the parents had depended on the world at large to keep their beloved daughter safe and sound. And they did not do something for their own daughters that would teach them to protect their own body with their own body. Once parents get over this realization, they may forgive themselves and get started on a new direction in their life. A direction that will take them away from their old beliefs and opinions, away from what they thought they were destined to do and be. Away from what other men have directly or indirectly told them about what their life would be about or not be about. That’s the power of a women or girl who puts thousands of hours into a practice that can make her strong, quick and decidedly no one’s fool. Think about you for a moment, would you like a life like that? It can only be occurring in your life if you get “some skin in the game” and start training hard for the next ten years. Can you imagine what you will learn in those ten years of training? In my Tae Kwon Do classes we will start off slow, with high repetitions of course, taking plenty of time to let the training sink deeply into your sub-conscious mind.
Did you know that there was a secret language that a certain group of women in the Hunan province in South Eastern China they used to communicate with each other? Way back then, females was not allowed to learn how to read and write the Chinese alphabet. So the women learned to read and write Nushu whereby they wrote songs to sing to each other, embroidered handkerchiefs, communicated with words written in Nushu all because the men would not allow them to learn how to read and write. Nushu, was a “female’s only” secret language that was guarded by these women and girls. Ms. Robin Morgan, noted feminist, poet, political activist, journalist, lecturer and editor of Ms. Magazine from 1989 to 1994 told an audience, where I was in attendance, at the Women’s Building in San Francisco, California about this language that could have been in existence for over 2,000 years without men knowing about its existence. Nushu was first discovered in 1986, for the first time by a man!
The take away from Ms. Morgan’s talk for me was: where there is oppression, there is resistance to oppression. What this means is that girls grow up in a culture that is repressing their ability to get out from their homes, and walk safely to school and get back in that same home without being kidnapped, raped and murdered by a male attacker. Or for that matter, those same girls or women are raped and murdered in their own homes. So, girls and women learn they are not safe anywhere. This for me is as good a working definition of female oppression as there is.
I want to point out one important fact. If there were no oppression for thousands of years of women, what would our world be like? If women were in charge of the world as leaders of countries, banks, multi national corporations, can you imagine what a world would be like for both women and men to live in? It would be the opposite of that we have now. I am telling you that if millions and millions of women learned martial arts do you think we would have even half of the problems we have now? Violence and corruption grow strong where women are not empowered to rule as equals to men. And you know what to do: write one hundred times in your martial arts journal what you just read here.
I write about this today to tell you www.Protecttheroses.com is not designed by me to teach you to learn a couple of martial arts techniques, that you will forget in a month or two. No, this is an introduction, a very long slow ramp up to a moment in your life when you make the “flip flop” and know forever more that you are ready to graduate onward to an instructor working close to your home who can provide opportunities for you to free spar with men. Your trainer is going to be me initially, but it is also going to be you, and a teacher you are yet to meet. For you, what could be better than this introduction to the world of martial arts?