Mel Hayes

Liz Mahler is Australia’s only qualified Master Instructor of Rock and Water Focus on Girls and an advanced trainer of Rock and Water for Boys. With over 40 years’ experience as a martial artist and educator, Liz has empowered thousands of girls, teachers, youth workers, and professionals across the country through her powerful and transformative workshops.

In partnership with Rock and Water Australia and The Gadaku Institute, Liz will be leading a special Focus on Girls two-day training workshop, designed to support teenage girls and women in developing confidence, communication skills, resilience, and a strong sense of self. Backed by decades of experience and a deep understanding of adolescent development, Liz’s sessions offer practical tools and meaningful change for those working with young women.

FOCUS ON GIRLS WORKSHOPS are being held in Lawnton, QLD (25-27 Aug 25) and Rossmoyne, WA (19-20 Nov 25). To learn more and register, please click on the location.

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN AUSTRALIA: 2025 SNAPSHOT

Gender-based violence remains a critical issue in Australia, with recent data highlighting its pervasive impact:

Prevalence of Violence

• Approximately 1 in 6 women and 1 in 16 men have experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner since the age of 15.
• Around 1 in 5 women (20%) have experienced stalking, compared to 1 in 15 men (6.8%)
• Nearly 2.3 million women have reported experiencing emotional abuse since the age of 15.

Workplace Harassment

• A recent report revealed that 1 in 2 women and 1 in 4 men working in retail have experienced sexual harassment, with young women under 25 being the most affected.

Homicide and Fatalities

• In 2024, 37 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner.
• As of mid-2025, 23 women have been killed, with 7 fatalities occurring in just one week.

Impact on Specific Communities

• Nearly 1 in 3 female victims of intimate partner homicide in 2024 identified as First Nations women, indicating a disproportionate impact on Indigenous communities.

Economic and Health Consequences

• Women who have experienced sexual violence are 30–45% more likely to face high financial stress compared to those who haven’t.
• Intimate partner violence contributes more to death, disability, and illness in women aged 25 to 44 than any other preventable risk factor.
• Domestic and family violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and children.
• The economic cost of violence against women and their children in Australia is estimated at $21.7 billion annually.

Underreporting and Legal Challenges

• Approximately 70% of women who experience abuse by a current partner do not report it to the police.
• Among those who obtain court intervention orders, nearly half report that the violence continues regardless.
  
  Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Gender Equality Australia, Our Watch, MJA, Unified Lawyers, BCEC, and media reporting from 2024–2025.

Empowering Women and Girls Through Martial Arts and Rock and Water Training

Overview
Martial arts and Rock and Water programs have increasingly been recognised for their capacity to empower women and girls, build self-confidence, and reduce vulnerability to violence and sexual assault. This document summarises key research findings that support the use of these interventions in individual development and violence prevention strategies.

Martial Arts Training: Impact and Outcomes

Psychological and Emotional Benefits
Martial arts and empowerment-based self-defence programs have consistently shown positive effects on the psychological wellbeing of women and girls:

A survey conducted by the Pink Belt Project in Australia, involving over 400 women, found that:

• 95% reported moderate to high improvements in mental health, including reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression.
• 95% experienced increased confidence and empowerment.
• 93% felt safer and more secure in everyday life.
• A 2024 qualitative study by Eggleton and Skea reinforced these findings, showing:
• Improved self-confidence, self-acceptance, and body image.
• A strengthened sense of identity and resilience, particularly among women who had experienced past trauma.

In her 2004 study “I Can Take Care of Myself,” Professor Jocelyn Hollander (University of Oregon) found that participants in a 10-week feminist self-defense course experienced:

• Increased self-confidence and assertiveness
• Reduced fear of assault
• More positive body image
• Improved social comfort with strangers, acquaintances, and intimates
• Shifts in beliefs about gender roles and personal agency. These benefits were evident even among women with no prior experience of violence, demonstrating the proactive power of such training in fostering self-worth and agency.

Evidence of Violence Prevention

In a 2020 study co-authored with Jeanine Cunningham, Hollander evaluated a 9-hour self-defence course delivered to a broader community sample aged 18–77. Participants reported:

• Significantly lower rates of sexual assault at a one-year follow-up
• Higher levels of self-defence self-efficacy
• More accurate knowledge about sexual violence and resistance techniques
• Reduced tendencies toward self-silencing

This study offered the first rigorous evidence that self-defence training is effective in preventing sexual violence across a non-college, general population.

Hollander’s 2014 article “Does Self-Defense Training Prevent Sexual Violence Against Women?” analysed data from a mixed-methods evaluation of a 10-week university-based feminist self-defence program. One year later, participants were:

• Less likely to have experienced sexual assault
• More confident in their ability to assertively and effectively resist threats Compared to non-participants, these women demonstrated sustained behavioural change and self-protective awareness.

Empowerment and Violence Prevention

• Empowerment-based martial arts training enhances risk recognition, assertive boundary setting, and readiness to act in threatening situations.
• A cluster-randomised controlled trial in Malawi showed that girls who completed self-defence training were significantly less likely to experience sexual assault.
• Traditional martial arts in cultural contexts (e.g. Kalaripayattu in India, programs for Maasai girls in Kenya) are being used successfully to prevent early marriage, sexual violence, and gender-based oppression.

Cultural and Community Impact

• Programs such as those led by Meenakshi Raghavan in India and at the Enkakenya Centre for Excellence in Kenya demonstrate how martial arts foster personal agency and social change.
• Global programs like Guardian Girls International promote martial arts as a vehicle for resilience and safety across multiple countries.

Rock and Water Program: Evidence and Benefits

Program Foundation

• Developed by Freerk Ykema in the Netherlands, Rock and Water is a psycho-physical training method integrating martial arts, mindfulness, and social-emotional learning.
• The Australian “Focus on Girls” adaptation adds a fourth foundation: Stepping into Action, which supports practical assertiveness and self-defence skills.

Key Outcomes for Women and Girls

• Improved body awareness, emotional regulation, decision-making under pressure and being able to take action to direct their own lives.
• Increased assertiveness and ability to set physical and emotional boundaries.
• Strong feedback from participants indicating improved self-worth, courage, social confidence and personal safety

Australian Context

• Delivered in schools, community groups, and women’s shelters, Rock and Water programs help create safe and respectful environments for women and girls.
• Evaluations in South Australia show reduced bullying, enhanced conflict resolution skills, and greater social cohesion — indicators of a safer social environment for all participants.

Expertise and Impact

Liz Mahler is the only Master Instructor of Rock and Water Focus on Girls in Australia. Over the past 20 years, she has taught the program to thousands of girls, school teachers, youth workers, and allied professionals across the country.

With 40 years of experience as a 7th Dan karate expert, brown belt jiu jitsu practitioner, professional martial arts teacher, and Rock and Water trainer, Liz brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to her workshops.

Her delivery of Rock and Water Focus on Girls is supported by extensive anecdotal evidence of real-time transformations, as women and girls reclaim confidence, personal power, and resilience inside her sessions.

Conclusion

Both martial arts and Rock and Water training programs offer powerful, evidence-informed tools for empowering women and girls. These approaches improve confidence, support mental health, and equip participants with the emotional and physical strategies needed to reduce their risk of violence. Expanding access to and evaluation of these programs should be a priority for schools, communities, and policy-makers committed to gender-based violence prevention.

FOCUS ON GIRLS WORKSHOPS are being held in Lawnton, QLD (25-27 Aug 25) and Rossmoyne, WA (19-20 Nov 25).
Please click on the location to register.

We are excited and privileged to welcome Klaas van der Veen as a guest facilitator for the upcoming Rock and Water 3-Day Workshops at William Ross State High School in Townsville (11–13 August) and Bray Park State School (18–20 August), both in Queensland.

Klaas brings a wealth of international experience, deep knowledge, and genuine passion for the Rock and Water approach.
We invite you to read more about Klaas and his incredible journey below.

BIO – Klaas van der Veen (Born 25 April 1962, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands)

I have been a Rock and Water trainer since 2002.

My company is called FYSYKwurk, because for me, communication starts with the body.
“FYSYK” means physical, and “wurk” means work in Frisian, my mother tongue, spoken in the north of the Netherlands.
I’m a Master Instructor with the Dutch Rock and Water Institute. Since 2014, I’ve been delivering the 3-day Basic Trainer workshop and the 2-day Young Child seminar. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of presenting Rock and Water seminars around the world, mostly across the Netherlands, but also in places as far as Lima (Peru), Nairobi (Kenya), and Kampala (Uganda).

In my early career as a social worker in a boys’ institution, I discovered the power of physical communication. I saw firsthand how movement and body awareness could unlock verbal and mental development. So when Freerk Ykema, the founder of the Rock and Water Program, developed his theoretical framework, it immediately resonated with me. Everything clicked.

I’ve dedicated my life to working with young people and helping build stronger social and emotional skills.
– Rock qualities help us stand strong and find our own path.
– Water qualities help us connect, collaborate, and live well together on this beautiful planet.
The Rock and Water Program truly has the power to change lives.

My wife Harriette, who is also a Master Instructor with the Rock and Water Institute, shares this passion with me. Together, we work to support and strengthen the people we teach.

We live on a small farm near a national park in the north of the Netherlands, surrounded by our two dogs, three cats, two goats, ten chickens, and one proud rooster!

When we’re not working, we spend as much time as we can with our five children and seven grandchildren.
I’m a lifelong sports enthusiast. I played high-level volleyball in my younger years and now proudly cheer on both my sons who play too. Harriette and I are also big fans of speed skating, we follow and support our national champions every winter.
I’m really looking forward to leading the 3-day workshops in Townsville and Brisbane this August.

Hope to see you there…high five, fist bump, or hug!

– Klaas

All good schools have a strong focus on social and emotional learning, or SEL. The idea here is that children need to develop strong habits of behaviour in order to promote the important social skills to allow them to thrive. Educators understand what is called “ neurogenesis” . Daniel Coleman, in The Brain and Emotional Intelligence explains that the brain generates 10,000 stem cells a day that are split into two. One becomes the “daughter” line to keep generation cells while other goes where it is needed in the brain and becomes that kind of cell. Can you see the implications for learning and behaviour?

Neurogeneseis adds to our understanding of the concept of neuroplasticity, where the brain continually reshapes itself according to the experiences we have. If we are learning a new habit, like being a better listener, or communicating with more empathic selection of language, then that circuitry grows accordingly.

Parents can probably deduce the difficulty, then, in trying to overcome bad habits, as the neural circuitry to build the particular habit has been strengthened and reinforced over time. The implication is clear, try to buld positive social and emotional habits from the start, and continually reinforce the, over time.

So where does Rock and Water fit in?

A really good Rock and Water teacher uses the constant repetition of skills, including feedback and rationalisation through explanation, examples and transfer to life where appropriate. The student in a Rock and Water class can’t help but to become aware of both the synchronicity of the class and the behaviours of individual students around them. This promotes social acuity , communication and empathy. Partner games and exercises offer a much more explicit set of skills in communication and collaboration. This requires both the utilisation of mirror neurons as well as logical capacity.

There is a general assumption that boys and girls have different levels of empathy and ability to connect and collaborate. This might be generally true but bear in mind that the differences are minimal. Women tend to be more highly developed in the use if the mirror Neuron system, while men seem to use bursts of mirror Neuron activity and then go into problem solving mode. It’s better to look at two emotional systems, one for cognitive empathy and another for emotional empathy. It is true that many women are great at systems thinking while many men have strong emotional empathy.

The important point here is that the individual needs to have the opportunity to develop and reinforce these systems over time, through strong SEL programs both at school and in after school activities, and these programs need to run from early childhood right through puberty, when brain “ shedding” and refining is at its most active. If we allow few opportunities for social interaction and emotional learning then the pathway to effective and rewarding relationships in adult life becomes rocky.

Students who undergo the Rock and Water program often complete journals where they describe their experiences in the lesson and attempt to make some transfer to other aspects of their lives. Many students also complete pre and post surveys where they are asked about their ability to handle pressure, to handle conflict and also to check their self esteem. The responses are often very similar. Students write about their abilities to work with others, to tolerate the taunts and social rebuffs of others without damage to their self esteem. They write about overcoming doubt and finding the confidence to work towards a desired goal. It is gratifying to read about students who felt that they have become leaders, or that they have gained a satisfaction in helping others down the same path.

Many schools see programs such as Rock and Water as a way to augment other SEL initiates in their school. In this case the program might be taught as an intensive one day activity or a short course delivered to identified at risk students. Other schools understand the process of neurogenesis and the implication that students need repeated exposure to practices that encourage positive and respectful interactions that help to develop deeper communication and empathy. With this in mind, many schools insist on a two tier approach, where all students are exposed to the program over a set time, usually a term and with adequate reflective intervals between lessons. It makes sense for the program to be taught once or twice a week for at least one term. More would be better, but schools are busy and the curriculum demanding, so it is difficult in a pragmatic sense to offer more time even though it may be desirable.

Schools that take this approach also ensure that students who need more exposure to the program are able to participate in withdraw groups in following years as a second tier of the program. It is important that parents are aware of the program and its benefits so that they can better understand the program and its principles in order of reinforce the language and techniques of the program at home. In this way, positive behaviours and attitudes can be reinforced, and neural pathways strengthened to promote ongoing positive habits.