Aim high

Setting and reaching goals is a major part of Maiorino’s course. “We work on goals, and those can be as simple as, ‘I want to have a better image of myself.’”

Maiorino sets a tough goal for her students: to be able to run for 40 minutes by the end of the semester. “They need to fulfill an obligation…meet a challenge,” says Maiorino. “I don’t force anyone to do anything, but, because of not forcing, they do it. I’m not lenient, but I am fair.”

When they’re not working on physical self-defense skills, women in the class come together to discuss issues affecting them. They give presentations, make handouts, and even perform skits to teach each other about issues like healthy eating or the dangers of date rape drugs.

Maiorino says she is touched every semester by the camaraderie that develops between lower- and upper-classmen. “Seniors really work to share info with younger students,” she says. And Maiorino’s classroom is always a safe space to share experiences and stories that could help a younger woman make her own decisions.

“Whatever we say there stays there,” she says. “We’re all together, but we all came in through different doors.”

Passionate healing

After 34 years of teaching self-defense at the University of Missouri, this class has become more than just Maiorino’s job. It’s become her identity. She lives in clothes that are easy to move in: t-shirts and loose polos with no accessories other than a small gold chain around her neck.

Talking with Maiorino is simultaneously energizing and exhausting. As she speaks, Maiorino leans forward and stares directly into your eyes, pointing and moving her hands rapidly. As she listens, she leans back and nods, truly hearing every word. Then she interrupts and leans forward again, with so much passion and force it’s like she’s worried she won’t have enough time to tell you all she wants to say. As you leave her, she will inevitably compliment you, not out of flattery, but out of a true desire to communicate that she values the time she spent with you.

Maybe its Maiorino’s affirming nature that brings women (and men) to her class semester after semester. Or maybe she’s hitting a nerve deeper in the psyche of college students. In a world where eating disorders, alcoholism, rape, drug abuse and relationship violence affect a disproportionate number of young women, Maiorino’s class is a place to heal. When women come to her, the first thing Maiorino teaches them is how to fall down. Why?

“So they can learn how to get up.”