News
The Herald-Sun September 13, 2008: SafeSkills® Has Moved!
After 16 Years in Shannon Plaza, SafeSkills® has a new location 3702-3 Hillsborough
Rd in Jefferson Square. The new space has a separate lobby, meditation room, two
upstairs dressing rooms, kitchen, bathrooms and a 1200 square feet area workout
space.
SafeSkills® offers self-defense workshops, on-going Karate and Arnis martial arts
classes and How to Defuse Potential Violence workshops for social workers and health
care clinics. The new location will enable the owners, Beth Seigler and Kathy Hopwood
to increase classes and expand their offerings to include yoga classes, "Back in
Balance" classes, pre-karate classes for younger children and special weekend workshops
such as self-defense instructor training, therapeutic movement, Tai Chi and more.
Kathy Hopwood is also an artist and plans to use the space for art shows and events
for other artists as well as her own work. The 20 foot walls are perfect for art
showings and the open space in the main room lends to many forms of art such as
performance movement, hooping, and African drumming. They have added the name of
Movement Arts to include these new artistic ventures.
SafeSkills® Movement Arts plans a grand opening October 25th. For more information
go to their website www.safeskills.com or call 644-1335.
Press Release:
Doing the Impossible and still going strong!
After 16 years in Shannon Plaza, SafeSkills® has relocated to 3702-3 Hillsborough
Rd. While sixteen years in one location is a success story these days, the real
story is even more impressive. Beth Seigler and Kathy Hopwood have been doing the
impossible for twenty-six years.
When they decided to open a martial arts school in 1982, they sought the advice
of a local program for start up businesses. “It was a program where retired business
executives gave advice to new business owners,” says Kathy Hopwood. “More of a one-session
mentoring program. The man we spoke with about our dream of a training center actually
laughed at us and said he had never heard of such a thing nor would he suggest we
attempt it.”
Even being laughed at did not discourage these two women who had already encountered
that attitude just to put a foot in the door to get martial arts training. Their
dream was not to be deferred. “My dream was to have a space that we could do so
much more than martial arts, I wanted to do yoga and sponsor other compatible movement
workshop and events,” Beth Seigler says. “But it was difficult. You have to keep
in mind that in the 1980’s this was rare – even aerobics was still new. Yoga was
something “mystical and foreign”. Commonplace today, martial arts and yoga classes
were still unusual. More unusual were women devoting their lives to bring this dream
to fruition.
“My first dream was to have a safe space for women and girls to learn self-defense,”
Kathy states, “ and we have achieved that because that is what we are mostly known
for. Over 26 years, we have taught thousands of women and teen girls in our self-defense
workshops. We are at a point now where we are teaching other women to be self-defense
instructors. But we have always taught martial arts, both karate and Arnis, a Filipino
martial art based on sticks. We have always had co-ed Arnis classes but now all
our martial arts classes are co-ed.”
Being a visual artist, Kathy’s dream has shifted. “I love martial arts and teaching
self-defense but I have this undeniable need to be creative beyond that. I was born
an artist and am drawn to both sculpture and painting. Our new space will have room
for this dream to be lived out.” Kathy sees the 20-foot high walls as a blank canvas
to have her and other local artists show their artwork on a monthly basis. “You
could not ask for any better space for visual art than these walls,” Kathy says.
“The walls are just begging for beautiful art to adorn them.”
As for Beth, she sees the continuation of her first dream, “A larger and calmer
space for our martial arts classes while offering our “Back In Balance” and yoga
classes along with bringing in instructors for special events like meditation, dance,
hooping and whatever comes our way that interests us!”
Both women see that their persistence of vision enabled them to do the impossible.