Patriarchy coerces us to sever connection from our body's felt knowledge of our own experiences.

 

It also silences the language we need for both naming its harm and connecting the personal to the political.

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The Emotional Self-Defense Course combines training in somatic awareness and trauma with the feminist analysis we need to name the systems shaping our lives.

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Is this course only talking
about patriarchy?

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No. Any sound feminist teaching is rooted in the decades of research in intersecting systems

(race, class, sexuality, colonialisms, etc.)

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When is the course available?

The fully online, self-guided video course was released January 30, 2020 to participants in 7 countries.

(Yes, you can still sign up!)

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What is the tuition? $347.

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The course's online & self-guided

learning format offers you:

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trauma-informed teaching 

(but we also question the patriarchal,
white, and class-privilege based assumptions in
neuroscience trauma studies!)
 

feminist theory for naming the 
power dynamics of patriarchy

("theory" is about having language
to name our embodied and relational experiences
inside larger, intersecting systems)
 

self-assessment guides and exercises

(to reflect contemplatively as we connect the feminist
teaching to our identities and lived stories)
 

recommended readings
of feminist foremothers

(readings are optional, but you will be
introduced to a lineage of brilliance
we are denied in most of our education system!) 
 

frameworks for intergenerational healing, creative awakenings, and community care 
(to intervene in cycles of pain and harm, to heal unhealed stories, 
to change the world together in small and big ways)

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Module 1:

Mind-Body Reconnection 
 

why mind-body reconnection
is your feminist emotional self-defense superpower
 

how patriarchy, white supremacy, and
capitalism disconnect us from our body and the earth

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Module 2:

Trauma as Feminist Knowledge

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why trauma studies holds important
insights— and, why most trauma
studies is still entwined in male, white,
and class-privilege based models of the body
 

how your daily exhaustion is a source
of expert feminist insight about intersecting systems
 

how to notice what your body already
knows about your own healing process

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Module 3:

Patriarchy's Looking Glass
 

a very short introduction
to the history of heterosexuality
 

why we still need Virginia Woolf's 1929
theory of the looking glass linking patriarchy to
other forms of domination

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Module 4:

Engaging Men Who Use
the Language of Feminism

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understanding the power dynamics of
male feminist privilege in a time of #metoo
 

spotting the red flags of
male fake feminism
(or, when narcissists or sociopaths go
undercover as a "male feminist") 

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Module 5:

Preventative Feminist Medicine 
 

how our wounds from patriarchy, capitalism ,
and white supremacy are targeted and exploited 

understanding how our structural deprivations
and vulnerabilities will be targeted by narcissists and sociopaths

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Module 6:

Everyday Patriarchal Emotional Abuse,
Gaslighting Patterns,

and Male Defense Mechanisms
 

why we lose connection to our
emotions  in environments with
frequent gaslighting
 

how patriarchy socializes men to deny
the range of their feelings then gaslight ours
 

how to spot and not negotiate with
gaslighting and male defensive mechanisms

 

identifying when intense erotic bonding
comes after  belittling, stonewalling,
withholding, or raging at you first
 

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Module 7:

Mirroring, Exhaustion, and
the Naming Labors of Feminist Life

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neuroscience research on mirroring,
brain development, and our emotions—
and, a feminist reframing

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why finding language for our experiences of
structural gaslighting is so exhausting

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staying close to your body's data to read
and name relations of power​​

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Module 8:

Feminist Grief Work

 

how to grieve how patriarchy
hurts everyone of all genders
 

how to trust the
transformations of grief
 

how to turn collective grief into
birthing creative power,
healing, community,  
and a better world for all children

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Module 9:
Community Care Practices
as Emotional Self-Defense

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what feminist foremothers wrote about identity, difference, and transformative community

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how dominant systems (like heteropatriarchy)
shape access to certain forms of community
and marginalize other forms

 

imagining a kinship root system
from the model of tree roots

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Module 10:
Reconnnection to the Earth 
as Emotional Self-Defense 

 

Indigenous feminist understandings of
connection to land, water and ancestral memory
as foundational to flourishing life

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listening to the plants, wind, water,

stars, and trees for our
received embodied-sensory-spiritual wisdom

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reckoning with settler colonial violence
as central to patriarchal violence, abuse,
and narcissistic exploitation

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Module 11:
Intergenerational Healing
as Emotional Self-Defense

coming soon...

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Module 12: 
Awakening Your Creative Power
as Emotional Self-Defense

coming soon...

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