Professional Training & Certification

Join the growing professional field of Empowerment Self-Defense (ESD) by studying with the world’s most experienced ESD trainers, The Safety Team. Health care professionals can enroll in ESD training and/or add an integrated mind-body approach to trauma treatment by becoming certified in our Trauma Recovery program featuring Therapeutic Empowerment Self-Defense (TESD). Certification in these programs allows you to offer ESD/TESD anywhere in the world!

Empowerment Self-Defense Instructor Certification

With The Safety Team’s certification program, you’ll get personalized, hands-on instruction, updated with the latest developments in neuroscience, psychology, violence prevention and public policy. Through a time-tested curriculum and hands-on practice, you’ll learn not only what to teach but how to most effectively teach it, including how to:

• create and maintain a safe, welcoming, and productive learning environment
• build and organize your teaching team
• break down complex ideas and movements into pieces that facilitate learning
• scaffold concepts and support to foster student engagement and participation
• prevent, recognize and respond to trauma activation or protective disengagement
• create a learning arc that allows students to leave class feeling accomplished and inspired

Trainings for Mental Health and Other Health Care Professionals

Mental health and other health care professionals may enroll in the Therapeutic Empowerment Self-Defense™ trauma treatment certification program. TESD builds upon the success of ESD by attuning the approach to promote trauma recovery. TESD integrates somatic reprocessing techniques, psychoeducation, movement, and therapeutic support to facilitate healing. Trainees will learn:

• the physical and mental skills of Empowerment Self-Defense.
• to recognize and address trauma activation and dissociation.
• how to use movement to heal trauma.
• to implement an innovative trauma recovery program.
• the social and cultural context to violence, violence prevention, and healing.