Oh my, that's much better than mace!

We got a call on the hotline from a mom who was worried for her daughter's safety, who teaches after-hours. The mom asked if we sold mace and that's all she was looking for. I explained that we do not sell mace and that we recommend that people, both women and men, rely on self-defense tools that they always have with them: our own palm heels, elbows and knees. "That's interesting...", she responded.

Then, I began to describe how we actually teach women and girls how to defend ourselves using our body, voice and spirit. She liked the idea of using hard parts of our body against soft, vulnerable parts of an attacker's body. She liked the description of our instructor teams and, especially, liked the role of the male instructor. The fact that the male instructor wears 40 lbs of protective armor, so that students can experience striking and kicking a real, live person and receive feedback on those techniques, was fascinating to her. "Oh my, that's much better than mace!" she concluded.


Leslie Eto, IMPACT Chicago Registration and Workshop Director