One in 3 women have experienced violence and 59 women have been killed in Australia this year. As a martial artist, I myself know the capacity for healing and growth our sports offer. Yet the women who most need to learn combat face the most barriers.
Conscious Combat Club is dedicated to providing access, safety and support to victim-survivors of gendered violence through trauma-informed martial arts and is now raising funds to open a dedicated trauma-informed martial arts and movement centre in Melbourne.
This week I spoke to Georgia Verry who founded Conscious Combat Club, in consultation with psychologists, to offer a safe space for women living with trauma to reclaim their body, confidence and strength through trauma-informed martial arts.
Conscious Combat Club started as virtual classes in November 2020. Australia had just experienced one of the worst bushfire seasons in its history and the world was still in the throes of the pandemic — trauma was all around us and it was disproportionately affecting women.
In 2022, Georgia and her team worked with the Center for Social Impact at Swinburne University’s Aviate program, which seeks to build impactful and sustainable social enterprises, to develop an access-based social enterprise model. Conscious Combat Club is now a registered charity operating a social enterprise model.
Classes are predominantly offered in person teaching kickboxing, and jiu jitsu will be launched at the start of next year, while online classes are also still offered. But this is not a self-defence program.
Rather, by teaching combat in a conscious way — guided by trauma-informed principles, they help people expand their window of tolerance.
“Your window of tolerance is your capacity for resilience. It’s a state of being where we can think rationally and make decisions based on multiple pieces of information. We all have a window of tolerance, and we all exit it sometimes. Have you ever been so upset that being told to ‘calm down’ makes you angrier? That’s hyperarousal and it happens when we step outside our window of tolerance.
“On the flip side, when faced with a danger we can freeze or dissociate from our bodies. Repeatedly numbing as a safety response is known as hypoarousal and can become a learned behaviour used whenever we exit our window of tolerance.
“Sometimes, after experiencing trauma our window of tolerance shrinks, and things that weren’t triggers before, now send our nervous system into overdrive. One of the keys to expanding your window of tolerance is being conscious of the physical sensations your body expresses right before you exit your window.
“At Conscious Combat Club, we work on expanding our window of tolerance by recognising these feelings and working through them.”
Need for a dedicated trauma informed movement centre
Georgia explained the club’s current set up and her vision for the future, saying “We operate somewhat similarly to your average gym — we have intake programs, and generate revenue through memberships.
“Currently, we do that through pop ups where we bring in the equipment and then leave no trace. At this stage we’re not set up as a martial arts facility full time and we feel like we’re taking up space in somebody else’s space.
“Where we want to be is in a dedicated trauma informed movement centre that can be built for purpose.
“Your typical martial arts gym is really scary and can be overwhelming for a lot of people. It takes a lot to step through those doors and get started. So we know that there’s a real need to have a dedicated space; it is so important to people because it means that they can really feel like the space is made for them.
“That way we can think about all of the barriers that victim survivors experience and try to reduce them as much as possible through the design of a space. But to get there, we need money.
Because Conscious Combat Club is working with such vulnerable people, it’s really important that they don’t just look at how much money is needed to be viable. Rather, they need a significant buffer in case things go wrong, so that the rug isn’t pulled out from these vulnerable people who’ve been promised services.
With the help of Swinburne, Georgia puts that figure at $350,000, which should see the club self-sufficient and running slightly cash flow positive within two years.
Rounds 4 Respect event
Conscious Combat Club has applied for government and corporate grants to help raise the $350,000 needed to open a dedicated trauma-informed martial arts and movement centre in Melbourne.
It is also holding a fundraising initiative on December 1 in Melbourne, Rounds 4 Respect. This will see participants complete one round of jiu jitsu, wrestling or kickboxing for every woman lost to violence in 2024 to raise money to help break the cycle of gender-based violence.
For more information on the Rounds 4 Respect or to help sponsor the event see https://rounds4respect.org/.
You can connect with Georgia Verry on LinkedIn.