After having taken a wide variety of movement classes over the course of my life, I continue to be impressed by Kaja’s ability to guide students through learning physical skills in a way that’s based on what works for their individual bodies and brains.
They make the process of learning to fight from a manual feel comfortable and intuitive for me—as someone who learns primarily through proprioception, this is something I’ve struggled with in the past.
Being part of a class and school culture that centers the needs and comfort of people who are not what one might think of as the typical HEMA student (your neurotypical straight cis white dudes) was a revelation—I realized I had never been part of a martial learning space that was specifically for me before. The amount of mental load created by the social pressures associated with those spaces is hard to quantify, until it’s suddenly not there anymore and I can put that energy toward learning.