Protective Offense with Teja

Tèja is the author of Reimagining Women's Self-Defense: How Self-Defense Fails Women and How We Can Fix It. She has studied multiple martial arts, edged-weapons, firearms, wilderness survival, biomechanics, and health. She has seen martial arts and self-defense though many lenses: as a neglected, neurodivergent child raised around drugs and violence, an instructor, personal trainer, EMT, filmmaker, and manager of a stunt team.

Teja endured a difficult pregnancy and over a year of recuperation which fundamentally changed her approach to self-defense. Teja’s quest is to find the place where self-defense meets common sense; where self-awareness, situational awareness, strategy and problem solving intersect; to create a paradigm of empowerment for those who want to dismantle anxiety, see conflict as opportunity and raise productive, resilient children who won’t become victims (or criminals).