Andreas Brick Handbag London

It’s been described as ‘Sex in the City meets Bruce Lee’ and now a Cambridge based business, co-founded by a member of Citypink, is launching its self defence workshops in London. 

Brick Handbag offers intelligent, enjoyable, self defence courses for women, taught by women.  Although it’s a spin out of a martial arts club that’s been going for around 10 years (teaching a type of kung fu developed by a Chinese nun), the workshops are purposefully not martial arts focused and suitable for all.  

The founders did some research when setting up the idea, finding that people both really responded well to the name and found the workshop concept more practical than the idea of attending ongoing classes.  There has also been a great reaction to the idea of the sessions being women led, a strong social element both during and after the workshops, and superb feedback - so far everyone that has attended the sessions has said they would recommend others doing the same.

Why learn self defence?  The obvious answer is that you learn how to get out of threatening situations, quickly and safely.  The statistics are definitely much better than the media portrays – attacks from complete strangers are actually quite rare – but they also show that the best way to get out of a dangerous situation (whether you know the person or not) is to incorporate a mixture of running, yelling and fighting back.  The Brick Handbag sessions cover all of these aspects.  

But the workshops are also very aware of issues such as aggression within relationships, and as a result the sessions are as much about creating a sense of confidence and boundaries and about learning to ‘stand by’ yourself as much as they are about self defence.  The training shows you some of the ‘tools’ that you have at your disposal, and how to move your body in different ways to create power where before there was little.  There’s a warm up, some pad work, lots of pair work, various group exercises, explanations regarding how minds and bodies work under pressure, and some good tunes in the background to keep things moving.  

The level one workshop  is suitable for all ages (the eldest so far on a course has been 63) and for all levels of fitness.  You don’t have to be aggressive, and it doesn’t matter if you feel totally the opposite – there is more inside you than you think, and this is what Brick Handbag is all about.

The company also provides courses for large corporates and small businesses – both those that have female staff working off site, at odd hours or alone (think private client bankers or lawyers visiting clients in homes, sales staff travelling on the job, the medical profession, estate agents, therapists, on-call vets, and so on) and those that are looking to offer something a little different in terms of employee training programmes.

If you're interested in taking part in the work shop, please email andrea@brickhandbag.com or call her on 07810 445 802.

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