Elemental is a sexual assault protection program that offers realistic training for realistic situations. This program:

  • Combines the best of classroom education and self-defense training in a program with peer-reviewed evidence of long-term effectiveness.
  • Offers an organized, cost-effective, and holistic curriculum that is grounded in social science research and is inclusive of a variety of participants, including gender and sexual minorities (GSM).
  • Assists your institution in filling the most recent requirements of the Violence Against Women Act (including the SaVE Act). Elemental combines some of the best elements of primary prevention and risk reduction programming. We offer face-to-face training and ongoing prevention through self-directed student review.
  • Provides program participants with choices in the way they respond to an assault, each based on the four elements of To-Shin Do. Our name comes from this element-based problem-solving paradigm.

What are the four elements?

Earth (Confident)
Hold your ground
Water (Surprised)
Step back momentarily, assess, then react
Fire (Connected)
Anticipate the threat and stop it before it grows
Wind (Withdrawn)
Exploit weaknesses within the threat that enable you to leave entirely

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Feb. 16 at The Corner Mat in Muncie, IN

Posted on Feb 19th, 2020

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Testimonials

I really enjoyed your "no pressure" approach and it allowed me to actually try the techniques without feeling uncomfortable.

Participant

My daughter is signed up for an upcoming session. I just wanted to say that I think your program is a valuable service to the students!

Parent of a participant

I liked how the different techniques weren't gender specific, and I liked how you could use each of the elemental moves to cater to your specific personality. It made the techniques more approachable. I loved the seminar, it was really empowering!

Participant

I also appreciated that we were given the opportunity to try things that we might actually experience in real life with the couches and the beds.

Participant

I believe this seminar should be a requirement for every senior in high school! It would be an awesome investment.

Parent of a Participant

I think this is a great seminar and I would highly recommend it to anyone, especially freshmen girls. So often we expect that these assaults would never happen to us, so we find it lame to go and learn defense tactics. But assault is a very real and scary thing, and I now feel much more prepared if ever faced with a situation like this.

Participant

I really liked the earth, water, fire, and wind aspect to the seminar. I think it really helped by giving us four options for each scenario.

Participant

As a volunteer for the Domestic Violence Network (DVN), I know the warning signs of an abusive relationship very well, and I know that statistically it's more than likely that two or three of the people in our class with be the victim of a sexual assault. Despite my experience with DVN, I don't think I fully understood how dangerous a situation can be if you don't know the first thing about defending yourself. Through this class I was able to build on that knowledge and learned even more than I honestly thought I could in only a three day period. I feel so lucky to have gotten the opportunity to work with you. Thank you!!

Participant

The scenarios... all felt very real for me. As a survivor of intimate partner violence, I thought those situations were much more helpful than many of the stranger-rape cases in past self-defense classes I’ve taken.

Participant

I have recommended the seminar to other because it helped me a lot with confidence in uncomfortable situations, and made me feel like I could defend myself if necessary.

Participant