I Thought I Was Running One Workshop. It Became Eight Sessions.
earworm: [Panic! At The Disco – Into the Unknown; Idina Menzel – Into the Unknown (Disney's Frozen 2)]
What started as a single women empowerment workshop became an eight-session journey of learning, practising and discovering how confidence can be built over time.
Our first Iron Flora session at SIT — the beginning of eight weeks of learning and practising together. Shared with permission from participants.
Published: 25 August 2026 | Reading time: 5-6 min | Category: Iron Flora
Empower One. Empower Many.
On 18 March 2026, I thought I was delivering a one-off women empowerment workshop at Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).
I was wrong.
That one-hour workshop eventually became eight weekly sessions.
I had prepared the workshop carefully, hoping that participants would leave feeling just a little more confident and prepared than when they arrived. What I did not expect was that they would want to continue learning.
That was how one workshop became eight sessions.
How it began
The first Iron Flora workshop at SIT on 18 March 2026, with 26 participants learning together.
As I was preparing to leave SIT, a senior leader asked me what I wanted to do next. I told her about something I had been thinking about for years: Iron Flora. She immediately saw an opportunity for me to try it at SIT and suggested that I run a one-hour workshop for the Employee Wellness Committee before my last day. I said yes. She not only encouraged the idea; she helped make the workshop happen. Twenty-six women signed up.
That single conversation changed everything.
As I shared in Why the Name Iron Flora – Strength and Gentleness Can Coexist, the roots of Iron Flora stretch all the way back to 2006, when I was looking for women self-defence classes myself. Over the years, I had accumulated experience in martial arts and self-defence, while also spending much of my career teaching and learning how to design curricula, lessons and assessments. I wanted to bring those different parts of my experience together into a women empowerment programme combining awareness, communication, confidence, composure and practical self-protection.
What I wanted participants to take away
My goal was never to teach women how to fight. It was to help them feel more prepared, more aware and more confident in making decisions when something did not feel right. Every activity had to be simple enough to remember, practical enough to be used immediately, and realistic enough to be applied outside a training room. That meant repetition, reaction drills, scenario practice and discussion.
Rather than immediately telling participants exactly what they should do, I often asked them: "What would you do?"
Those conversations became some of the richest learning moments. After many years in education, I have learnt that being able to perform a skill and being able to teach it well are two very different things. My approach is also influenced by Kolb's experiential learning cycle: adult learners bring their own experiences into the classroom, and learning happens through experience, reflection and making sense of what happened. I did not want Iron Flora to become an hour of me simply telling everyone what to do. Sometimes the most interesting learning happened when somebody asked a question that made the whole room stop and think.
Participants were asked to describe how they felt after the first Iron Flora workshop in one word. “Confident”, “empowered”, “equipped”, “knowledgeable”, and “enlightened” were among their responses. 23 of 26 participants responded.
This was also where my years of martial arts and self-defence training met the educational experience I had spent much of my 30s developing.
Self-protection is more than fighting
One of the ideas I wanted participants to remember was that physical defence should not be the first response to every situation.
Our principle is: Escape → De-escalate → Defend.
If you can safely leave, leave. If a situation can be calmly de-escalated, everyone has already won. Physical self-defence becomes important when those options are no longer available.
The objective is not to win a fight. It is to create enough space to get away safely. This is not a film set. You don't know whether someone has friends nearby, whether there is a weapon, or what other risks you haven't seen. That is also why learning a technique isn't enough. Under stress, people may freeze.
One sentence I found myself returning to throughout the sessions was: "There isn't one best technique. The best technique is the one you remember to use after you've overcome the freeze response."
The aim was therefore not to teach dozens of impressive-looking techniques. I preferred a smaller number of simple and effective ones that participants could practise repeatedly, while also learning to breathe, remain composed and make decisions under pressure.
For me, that is much closer to what practical self-protection should look like.
Participants practising a self-protection drill during one of the eight Iron Flora sessions at SIT.
For readers interested in where my approach to full-contact martial arts and self-defence came from, I wrote about being a female full-contact martial artist back in 2015, when I was 29.
In addition, because some of these principles become particularly relevant when we are navigating unfamiliar places alone, my earlier articles about travelling solo around Bali for 10 days and spending a month in Bangkok completing the Cambridge CELTA also reflect some of the experiences that eventually shaped how I think about awareness, confidence and independence today.
What happened after the workshop
The first workshop was supposed to be the end of it. Instead, participants wanted more.
So we continued.
Over eight weekly sessions, we had more time to practise, repeat, ask questions and explore different scenarios. These sessions also allowed me to observe what participants remembered, what they found difficult and what they wanted to learn next.
Because the learning was happening over several weeks rather than in a single afternoon, I could also adapt subsequent sessions based on what I was observing and what participants told me they needed. For instance, after our first session, one participant asked whether I could provide a recap of what we had covered and a preview of what we would be doing the following week. I thought that was a useful suggestion, so from then on, I shared a short recap and preview in our WhatsApp group after each session.
“I really appreciated the relatable stories shared by Celestine, which helped set a meaningful and engaging context for the Women Empowerment Workshop. The session was complemented by practical and effective tips that were easy to apply and genuinely helped strengthen my sense of confidence.”
– Zhang Weili, Career Educator
“Celestine’s workshop offers a rare blend of physical and psychological self-defence skills, making it highly valuable. She gives clear instructions and practical demonstrations that build confidence and empower women to handle everyday situations with strength and assurance.”
– Dr Janice Wong, Assistant Professor
Most of the participants had never stepped into a dojo or trained in martial arts, yet they were willing to try, ask questions, laugh when things didn't quite work the first time, practise again and come back the following week.
I did not take that commitment for granted. Our sessions were held every Wednesday from 5pm to 6pm, during SIT's recreational hour. There were plenty of other things they could have been doing with that time – attending a meeting, finishing up work, taking part in another activity, or simply heading elsewhere. Yet week after week, they made time to come, for which I am grateful.
Winding down together at the end of an Iron Flora session.
Every session ended quietly too, usually with some stretching and gentle movement. After practising physical self-protection, I wanted participants to have time to wind down through stretching, gentle movement and breathwork. We could practise something physical and intense, then slow things down and leave feeling calm and relaxed. In some ways, that brought me back to the same idea of yin and yang that inspired Iron Flora in the first place: exertion and relaxation, strength and gentleness, action and calm. That balance mattered greatly to me.
What I learnt
I thought I was going there to teach, but I found myself learning every Wednesday evening as well. Adult learners ask wonderful questions. Some were questions I had never considered before, and those questions made everyone - including me - think more deeply.
Most importantly, the eight sessions reinforced something I already knew from education but had now seen through Iron Flora: Confidence takes practice.
A one-hour workshop can introduce an idea, teach a useful technique or help someone see something differently. However, confidence and composure become stronger through repetition, feedback, reflection and experience. That was what those eight weeks gave us.
Our final Iron Flora session at SIT after eight weeks together. Shared with permission from participants.
Then, something else began happening along the way. The participants weren't simply learning from me – they were learning from one another. By the final session, what had started as a workshop had begun to feel like a small community: I Thought I Was Going to Teach Eight Sessions. They Became the Beginning of Iron Flora.
Bring Iron Flora to your community or organisation
If you're an educator, community organisation, corporate HR or wellness professional looking for practical confidence, awareness and self-defence training for women and girls, I'd love to explore how Iron Flora could support your students, staff or community.
Iron Flora programmes can be adapted for different age groups, needs and contexts while keeping the same core focus: developing greater awareness, composure and confidence, together with simple and practical self-defence skills that participants can remember when they need them.
Empower One. Empower Many.
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