Girl Instinct: What's in a Name?

It took a long time for me to settle on the name for my karate classes for teenage girls. I wrote lists and lists of words - both English and Japanese - and those who know me can hazard a guess of what that list looked like. "Zen" and "Qi" and "Dojo", "Intuition", and "Awareness" and "Empowerment" all made it to the list. I finally settled on "Girl Instinct" because I wanted to pay homage to one aspect of being female that really does, in my opinion, offer an advantage in self-defense situations (and making life decisions in general): women's intuition. Men can be intuitive as well, of course, but in our society, intuition is generally fostered more in women (although this is changing steadily as we have now entered the Age of Aquarius). The term, "Girl Instinct", is simply a fresh, modern take on what our mothers and grandmothers intrinsically had - that uncanny sixth sense that enabled them to magically know if we had had a fight with a friend at school, or struggling with how we felt about ourselves... or out with some boy they didn't like.

There is, however, a slight distinction between "intuition" and "instinct". "Intuition" is intangible - and can often precede a physical altercation by telling you, "Hey, something's not right here; time to go home!" "Instinct" can often start as intuition, which may then expressed as a physical impulse. A flick of a wrist, a turn of a shoulder, hands straight out in front and backing away from a threatening person: these are all instincts of a well-trained martial artist. Instinct, in other words, is where intuition meets reflexes.

"Instinct" and "intuition" also hints at a very important concept in Japanese martial arts: zanshin, which is basically means awareness of everything that's around you at all times. Zanshin deserves a blog post all of its own, so more about that later!

In short, "Girl Instinct" is not only the name of my karate program, it is what I hope to evoke and develop in my students. Through continued training in the martial arts, I hope my students will have the physical reflexes to defend themselves against attacks - countering if necessary - and escape harmful situations quickly, the mental acuity to talk (and act) calmly to try to deter an attacker, and ultimately, the ability to trust their intuition to avoid aforementioned harmful situations in the first place.

And "Girl Instinct" it's a heck of a lot easier to remember than "Shizuka Dragonfly Golden Empress School of Wind and Bamboo". ;)

#WomensIntuition #SelfDefenseforWomen #SelfDefenseforGirls #Instinct #Karate #MartialArts #GirlInstinct