Saving yourself: a martial artist explains how she teaches self defense for women, and why she does this work.

I came into self-defense through martial arts. In 1992, I took a five-minute self-defense class at a women's festival: how to use your voice, do a power yell and a palm heel strike, where you strike the nose with the heel of your palm. It had never occurred to me that I could protect myself because I'm a woman and I'm small and not that strong. The next day I signed up for a class.

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In 1993 some Asian women friends and I started RUCKUS. We thought we'd start a school for Asian women, but martial arts is a little hard; it needs commitment and it's a "no pain, no gain" situation. Attrition is high. So the conversation turned to self-defense. Our way of teaching self-defense is about instilling confidence. We talk about internal strength, prevention, being smart. We talk about being a bitch, able to say what you want to say, set up a boundary and get the hell out. It goes from prevention to after-care. In between you might have to fight back. I teach them to go against vulnerable places. We go for eyes, nose and knees. We give women the chance to test their strength by hitting a pad. It doesn't take much pressure to break a knee, so when you hit a pad and see that you've hit it hard, you know you can knock someone down. It's a great way for women to imprint on their bodies that they have physical strength.

Asian women deal with specific issues; we tend to be smaller, and we're supposed to be easy to attack. Attackers assume that we won't do anything. We're submissive, we're gentle. Those assumptions make us vulnerable. Asian men also deal with the stereotype of being more submissive, more feminine, not as strong, thinner, weaker. For men, it's very easy to go from zero to 100, and they have to learn when it's okay not to fight. We also expanded to teaching queer communities, where people are often faced with multiple attackers, or need to get away with a partner. We have discussion, games, role plays and techniques. We talk about violence from people we don't know and violence from people we do know. We talk about self-defense in domestic violence situations, where you have to see the person the next day.

It's important to put violence in the context of our culture. Sometimes women give a racial description for their attacker. We don't get "this white guy approached me"--he's just "a guy"--but the men of color get identified. When it comes up, we try to separate the identity from the behavior: what actually happened, what he actually did.

I started teaching in Japan in 1997, when predominantly men or the police were teaching. I heard a lot of stories that the men didn't believe women could defend themselves. It was hierarchical, with the big judo sensei teaching all these little women things they wouldn't be able to do anyway. One woman came to my class and didn't talk at all. Often people who don't talk are thinking, thinking, thinking. After class, she handed me a thick envelope with her story. She ran away from home to Tokyo when she was a teenager. She was wandering and a man struck up a conversation with her. She told him she didn't have a place to stay, and he said, "Why don't you come with me?" He took her to a hotel and tried to rape her. She fended him off but he was very strong, so she feigned asthma and had a coughing fit. She kept it up for five and a half hours. He'd get her water, tell her "get better" and then try again. Every time he'd try to rape her, she'd start coughing. Finally it was like a war of attrition. He said, "I'm leaving." I had started that class by telling self-defense stories, pointing out the maneuvers that women had used. Like coughing, or sometimes waiting, talking, cajoling, flattering. She said, "Please tell my story to as many women as you can so they can be inspired to get away, too."

There was another woman who was blind. She had been told all her life that she should not go out, that she was a nuisance because she needs a caregiver to take her around. That was the first time I had taught someone who couldn't see, so I had to learn about her instinctive reaction to her environment. I stood away from her and asked her to touch my nose; she touched it right away. I moved a little bit and asked her to touch my shoulder, and she did. She also had the guide stick that collapses into a bundle, or extends to six feet. I said, "Let me see your stick, it looks like a great weapon." She said, "Oh my God, I've been told never to use that as a weapon." I took it and started wielding it around, to see how she could hold it. We came up with all these great moves she could use, not to puncture anybody but to keep people away from her, to make it a shield.

All it takes is for somebody to tell you "this can be a weapon," and your whole perspective changes. You see that your body is a weapon. Your voice is a weapon. Your hair-clip is a weapon. Your high heel is a weapon. But the biggest shift was her feeling that she has the right to protect herself. She'd always been taught that because she is disabled, she has to be protected. Two years ago in Japan domestic violence became a crime. In the last five years, there have been a lot of speak-outs about domestic violence and rape. That's helped because people want this. They seek it out and it's not a secret.

There isn't a "correct" or "incorrect" technique. I give as many choices as possible, so they can assess a situation. The thing I talk about most is to trust their instinct. I can't tell you how many women have said, "I have a self defense story," and the first sentence is, "I had a bad feeling."

In 2001, I took a class in secondary trauma and the instructor asked us, "Why do you do what you do?" I had always said that I was a martial artist and a feminist and I wanted to bring those together. But when I thought about it for a long time, I realized that two of my closest family members are domestic violence survivors. That's why I'm connected.

There's a concept called trauma mastery, which explains that people get into these fields, like self-defense or emergency room work or even organizing, because they've had trauma in their own lives that they want to fix. You revisit that trauma over and over again in other people to save that one person you couldn't save before. But there's always a gap between your motivation and the work because you can never master a trauma, you can never save that person because it's already happened, it's done.

If you don't know why you're doing what you're doing, you start to blame the participants. You forget that it wasn't their fault. You start to feel that you're the only person who can do the job, like this is my crusade. You see only black and white, you can't see shades. The only way we can prevent that is to really ask that question, why am I doing what I'm doing? That is the most important thing to come clean about. I have a good perspective now on my path and my family's path. But if I ever don't. I should get out. There are tons of people who can do this work. If I'm a detriment to myself and others, then I should leave it.

By Yuko Uchikawa, as told to Rinku Sen

Yuko Uchikawa is a martial artist, co-founder of RUCKUS and a graphic designer.