Don't take your personal safety for granted. Take charge with these five easy to learn self defense tactics to help keep you safe.

Every day the news is filled with horror stories involving women as victims of violent crime. We worry about ourselves and female friends and relatives. While no one can guarantee your personal safety, even in your own home, these self defense tactics can help reduce your chances of becoming a victim of violent crime.

Practice awareness. You must be aware of what’s going on around you at all times. Keep your ears open. Sometimes your ears can hear what your eyes can't see-behind you and around corners. This won’t work if you have ear buds in! Make frequent visual scans. While this not only helps you to see what’s happening around you, but it gives the impression you have confidence. Which brings us to the next of our self defense tactics:
Appear confident. Hold your head high. Keep your spine straight and shoulders back. Look at people's faces. Perpetrators are looking for victims with low self esteem (first impression of those starring at the floor) and they tend to steer clear of those who already saw them and can identify them.
Use common sense.This should be a given or it should be first, I'll compromise and put it in the middle. Don't go to an unfamiliar place alone, in the dark- and many less extreme examples. Lock your doors, use buddy system, let people know where you are and when you’ll be home, etc. I understand that as independent modern women we shouldn't have to report to anyone or restrict our activities because we wish to go alone, but we still need to apply common sense as a component of our self defense tactics.
Trust your intuition. We are born with "gut instincts". If, through the years, we haven't denied and suppressed them these instincts can help us. If you "have a bad feeling" there is probably a reason. Stop if you can and try to figure it out. Is it supernatural? Possibly, or perhaps you saw or heard something in the periphery that don't consciously register, but caused your mind to send out an alert.
Have a plan. Be prepared to defend yourself if you have to. It's not enough to know how, verbally or physically. You need to know that you can and will execute the plan if/when the circumstance presents itself. Hopefully you’ll never encounter a self defense situation. A martial art class or a self defense class is an excellent way to get hands-on experience and to understand the actual feel of these techniques with a partner. Just remember, if you freeze-up in real life, the plan is worthless.
Self defense tactics need to become second nature. You don’t want to live in a state of paranoia. Being prepared will help you gain confidence and independence.
To read more please visit: SelfDefense-4-Women.com

Author's Bio: 

Su Ericksen is a TaeKwonDo black and has taught self defense workshops. She lives in the Midwest with her family and works at a large medical center in the cardiology clinic. To read more on this subject please visit her website. You may contact her through the website. Self Defense-4-Women.com