Frequently asked questions about our courses

Please contact me directly for bank details and other administrative information.

I offer different payment methods depending on your situation (company, hospital, local authority, social sector, etc.), and we can discuss terms suited to your budget.

For more details, contact me directly .

The cost depends on several factors:

• Number of participants
• The course chosen
• Number of trainers involved
• Location of the session
• Duration, recurrence
• Conference format

For a personalised quote, feel free to get in touch.

No direct Qualiopi certification, as I work from Italy, but it remains possible through a partner training organisation for companies that need it for funding purposes.

In Italy, my courses have received several AGENAS accreditations (the Italian Ministry of Health’s national agency). It’s not Qualiopi, but it’s a validation framework that’s just as demanding.

I don’t guarantee you invincibility — no serious professional would. What I do offer you:

• A better understanding of your reactions when facing danger
• Immediately applicable tools, adapted to your professional context
• Increased confidence based on real practice and self-knowledge
• Reduced stress when facing aggressive situations
• Good communication habits to defuse tension before violence occurs

Real self-defence is, first and foremost, avoiding conflict. My training focuses on anticipation, prevention and defusing, to guarantee the continuity of your service (your mission).

Mainly hospitals and municipal police forces. But in practice, I work with all teams exposed to the risk of aggression, without distinction.

In the healthcare sector: emergency departments, psychiatry, nursing homes, paramedics — anywhere care staff can find themselves alone facing a patient or relative in crisis.

In the public sector: municipal police, of course, but also security agents, inspectors, drivers, reception staff — anyone on the front line facing the public.

And beyond: retail, transport, hospitality — any environment where an employee could find themselves alone facing an escalating situation.

The common thread isn’t the sector. It’s exposure to risk. If your teams deal with a difficult public, they’re concerned.

I operate from Italy, where my courses have received several accreditations from AGENAS (Agenzia Nazionale per i Servizi Sanitari Regionali) — the Italian equivalent of the Ministry of Health.

My approach doesn’t fall under the French Qualiopi model, but it benefits from official validation by the Italian health authorities, guaranteeing the quality and effectiveness of our programmes.

For French companies looking for Qualiopi certification , I can work in partnership with accredited training organisations.

ResponsAbility is a holistic programme designed to:

• Build a culture of collective responsibility around safety
• Train teams to become active prevention agents
• Turn fear into empowerment
• Build work environments where everyone feels heard and protected
• Develop everyone’s autonomy and confidence

ResponsAbility means recognising that safety isn’t one person’s responsibility, but everyone’s. It creates a powerful team spirit and organisational resilience.

Response + Ability = ResponsAbility (a response equal to your possibilities)

The programme rests on four pillars:

• Avoiding inaction through a guilt-free approach: even a small response has value
• Empowering through confidence: everyone knows their skill matters and commits to acting to the best of their ability
• Buying survival time by limiting damage while waiting for qualified backup to arrive
• Building collective defence as the sum of individual skills — collective protection is the sum of our individual competencies

Communication is central to this approach: expressing yourself assertively and with goodwill, sharing useful information without dramatising or minimising it, and maintaining smooth communication across hierarchical levels.

When the situation escalates, your safety comes first. Negotiation is no longer possible, and no one is asking you to sacrifice yourself to restrain someone.

1. Create distance: move away from the threat (running away isn’t cowardice, yes, you read that right)
2. Raise the alarm: shout, call the security office and/or the authorities
3. Get to safety: find a safe refuge
4. Communicate clearly: speak in a calm, firm voice
5. Defend yourself if necessary: use the techniques you’ve learned, as a group if possible

See also:

• How do you defuse verbal aggression?
• What guarantees does self-defence offer?

Setting a boundary means restoring limits firmly but respectfully:

1. Observe the behaviour: identify precisely what’s crossing the line
2. Name it clearly: “Your words/actions are crossing the (my *) line”
3. State the impact: “This is creating tension within the team”
4. Offer an alternative: “From now on, I need you to…”
5. Stay calm: your body language needs to be consistent

Setting a boundary isn’t a punishment, it’s restoring order and shared rules. It’s an act of goodwill towards the person and the team.

PS: Yes, “Your words are crossing my line.” My emotion, my anger, my time won’t go beyond that line. You’re welcome to stay there and shout, but it’ll be without me.

See also:

• What is tactical empathy?
• How do you defuse verbal aggression?

Defusing verbal aggression means reducing the tension, the perceived threat, so the brain can focus on something other than survival.

1. Don’t react to the emotional content: stay calm, don’t retaliate
2. Adopt the posture you’d want from the other person: mirror neurons are powerful.
3. Validate the emotions: “I understand you’re frustrated”
4. Respect the space: keep an appropriate distance
5. Speak slowly and low: this naturally slows the aggressor down
6. Reframe: “If I understand correctly, you’re saying that…”
7. Offer a solution: “Let’s see how we can work this out together”

The key is to understand the other person’s need and meet it as far as possible. The need is sometimes simpler than we think — to a “look, I exist”, all that’s needed is to answer “yes, you exist and I see you”. Let’s not overthink it.

See also:

• What is tactical empathy?
• How do you set boundaries with someone?
• What to do in the event of an imminent physical threat?

Everything changes, often from the very first session: immediately applicable tools to set a boundary, defuse tension, assert yourself without aggression, and the discovery that you’re not alone in facing these situations. That changes everything.

Beyond the techniques, these sessions reposition your role within the team and the institution. Your individual wellbeing isn’t a side issue: it weighs directly on the collective dynamic and on your organisation’s ability to provide a safe environment. You’re no longer an isolated actor facing adversity, but a link in a chain of solidarity and professionalism. You learn to operate in psychological safety, like the best teams in the world.

This process is also a genuine awakening. Sun Tzu already wrote it in The Art of War: “Know your enemy, know yourself, and you will win a hundred battles without a single loss.” Understanding your own reactions to stress and violence is already half the journey; the other half is reading the signals of the person in front of you. This dual reading helps you anticipate difficult situations, defuse them more effectively, and turn every challenge into an opportunity to grow.

See also:

• Critical Continuum
• Looking for ultra performance? Mission One

No time. And yet, it’s urgent. That’s exactly why I’ve committed to transforming your teams in just 2 days.

Let’s be honest: no one is going to give you the time to earn your next belt, climb the ranks at a leisurely pace, or rack up courses over several years.

You need to be ready. Tomorrow. In a month. Sometimes in 10 minutes. Is that unfair? Yes, precisely.

The threat doesn’t make appointments. It doesn’t ask whether you’ve had time to prepare. So I owe it to you to offer training that’s dense, effective, and immediately actionable.

Protecting yourself isn’t a sport. There’s no age or fitness requirement. You’re not even required to want to.

The good news? Everyone has a place in collective safety.

Spotting danger early, positioning yourself intelligently, using your voice, managing distance — we’re all capable of that.

Training isn’t built on strength or explosiveness, but on judgement, anticipation and a few simple principles that work just as well at 15 as at 60.

In fact, most of the safety work happens before contact.

See also:

• Will we have to fight?
• What safety measures are in place for participants?

No. No striking, even in courses with a strong physical component.

Learning to take a hit can be trained, but it takes long, hard, months of repetition, and a body capable of absorbing that level of punishment. That’s not the profile of your teams, nor the time they have available. Aiming for that level would be aiming at the wrong target: a few hours of training will never be enough to prepare a body for that, and trying anyway only brings apprehension and injuries, for almost no benefit against a real aggression.

So we work with tools that have no impact: distance, body positioning, use of the voice, simple releases, control without striking. Movements you can repeat without risk, again and again, until they become reflexes — even for a body that has never taken a hit in its life.

And above all, these tools are chosen based on your reality : actual level of risk, work environment, physical condition of your teams. A town hall receptionist and a nightclub bouncer don’t have the same needs. It’s the training that adapts, never the other way round.

Without the pathos, I want to share a very personal view. With the build of a target (back then, 1.83m for 66kg), I had a complicated relationship with violence and aggression.

I naturally turned to combat sports, then to self-defence, picking up a few certifications along the way to reassure you:

• Krav Maga instructor, 2nd Dan black belt,
• Red Training instructor,
• Protect Israeli Security Solutions instructor,
• certified TOP practitioner .

And then one day, as often happens, you come face to face with real violence. Not the kind found on the mat, with its rules and referees. The kind that strikes without warning and leaves marks long after the bruises fade. And that’s when the injustice becomes unbearable to me.

Two paths open up: help the champions, the strong ones, push their limits further, or turn to those who never chose to fight — the victims, those who don’t, a priori, have the physical means to defend themselves.

I chose the second path.

Since then, I’ve trained more than a thousand people in demanding professional environments.

Participant safety is my absolute priority. Non-negotiable, even if it means slowing down the pace of a course.

Physical safety:

• Protective equipment suited to each exercise
• A secured, controlled setting, never improvised
• Intensity that progresses in stages (never a sudden jump to too demanding a scenario)
• A first-aid protocol and emergency kit always within reach
• No exercise without the explicit consent of the person involved

Psychological safety:

• The right to say “no” or stop at any time, no explanation needed
• Confidential spaces to talk, before, during or after training, for those who need it
• Support available if an exercise stirs up something deeper
• A systematic debrief after every intense scenario — no one leaves carrying an unprocessed load
• Zero humiliation, zero hurtful competition between participants: we learn together, not against each other

One simple principle guides everything else: real strength comes from safety, physical as much as psychological. Without it, no solid learning is possible.

See also:

• How do you build crew spirit?
• The purpose of the ResponsAbility programme

My evaluation is based on direct observation and practical engagement. The points assessed are:

• Understanding of conflict dynamics
• Establishing and maintaining a safe posture
• The ability to negotiate under stress
• The ability to reproduce techniques in realistic scenarios
• Application of a shared intervention protocol
• Integration into team dynamics
• The ability to recondition oneself

No stressful written tests, just a genuine measure of your ability to turn learning into concrete action.

See also:

• Why work with ultra-realism?
• How do you teach quickly and thoroughly?

For my training sessions, we need:

Space:

• A room of around 100-150 m² minimum for groups of 15-20 people
• Smooth, non-slip flooring
• Ceiling height of at least 2.4 m
• A safe location (no columns, stairs or hazardous furniture)

Equipment:

• Ideally, carpet, floor mats or tatami (depending on the course)
• Projector and screen (for theoretical presentations)
• Sound system (for videos and demonstrations)
• Chairs and tables for debriefings

But I always adapt to your existing setup. Get in touch to discuss the specifics of your site.

I work everywhere.

I speak French, Italian and English, which allows me to adapt my training to different cultural and linguistic contexts.

I’m used to working with international, multicultural teams.

Tactical empathy isn’t weakness. It’s actually the opposite. It’s a tool, just like a release technique or a dodge.

In short, it means understanding and acknowledging the emotions and motivations of the person in front of you. Not to please them. To act effectively.

Concretely, it serves four purposes:

• Bringing the tension down
• Creating a human connection, even a small one, even with someone hostile
• Opening a space where discussion becomes possible again
• Restoring a bit of confidence when everything has spiralled out of control

Simple phrases are enough: “I can see you’re angry. I’d like to understand. Let’s talk about it.”

Nothing more. No speeches, no armchair psychology. Just acknowledging what the other person feels, out loud.

Be careful not to confuse things. Acknowledging someone’s anger doesn’t mean excusing what they do with it. You can tell someone who’s losing control “I can see you’re angry” without ever condoning the loss of control itself. You separate the person from their behaviour.

And on the ground, in a real crisis, that’s often what makes the difference. Not force. The ability to defuse before everything tips over.

See also:

• How do you defuse verbal aggression?
• How do you set boundaries with someone?

TOP©: Potential Optimisation Techniques

The method was developed in the 1990s by Dr Édith Perreaut-Pierre, a former military doctor, at the request of the French air force, to help pilots and operational personnel manage stress in conflict situations.

So this isn’t a generic wellness discipline. It was tested and refined with fighter pilots and highly specialised units such as GIGN, RAID and special forces, before gradually being passed on to civilian society (elite sport, public services, and businesses).

What is TOP© actually based on?

The method rests on 4 pillars: breathing, multisensory representations (or mental imagery), inner dialogue and relaxation. Depending on the goal, two, three or all four pillars are used together.

• Breathing: this is the entry point. It’s the only parameter of the autonomic nervous system you can consciously influence. By changing its rhythm, you send a direct signal to the brain to calm or, conversely, energise the body. It’s the first technique we work on, and the one that needs to become automatic.

• Mental imagery: mentally living through a situation before it happens. The brain struggles to distinguish an action actually experienced from one intensely imagined, which allows you to prepare a response before you’re even in the real situation.

• Inner dialogue: what you say to yourself in the moment. Under stress, this inner voice often becomes negative or paralysing (“I’m not going to make it”, “it’s too much”). Working on inner dialogue means taking back control of that voice so it serves action instead of blocking it.

• Relaxation: not a loss of control, but the opposite — a state of calm achieved through conscious control of physical and mental tension, freeing up unnecessary strain and keeping your resources available for what matters.

Does it come from sport or the military?

Both, but in this order: first the military, then sport and civilian life. The method spread through the police, healthcare workers, firefighters, emergency services, and businesses.

What’s the value for conflict management?

TOP© is useful on several levels:

• For learning technique
• For regulating emotion
• For fighting decision-making stress
• For recovering, reconditioning

Can it be learned quickly?

The first pillar, yes: a few breathing exercises are enough to get a measurable effect, provided you repeat them until they become a reflex. The other pillars require more practice.

In our 2-day courses, the goal isn’t to make you an expert in TOP©, but to give you 2 or 3 tools you can use immediately when facing stress — breathing above all, which is the foundation everything else builds on.

Who can benefit from it?

Anyone exposed to sudden, intense pressure: healthcare staff facing an aggressive patient, security agents, police officers, but also managers in crisis situations, or simply anyone who wants to better manage their everyday stress.

Who teaches it in your courses?

I’m a certified TOP© practitioner. I integrate these techniques directly into my courses, weaving them together with the practical aspects of managing violence, so that both reinforce each other: the technical gesture, and the mental state that allows you to execute it at the right moment.

See also:

• What guarantees does self-defence offer?
• Will we have to fight?
• What if we don’t have time to train?

The urgency of skill transfer starts with one observation: we don’t know the day or the hour.

No one plans the moment a colleague will have to step in, defuse verbal aggression, or handle the first seconds of an escalating conflict. Unlike other subjects, where you can train for months before facing a real emergency, violence doesn’t give warning. It shows up on an ordinary Tuesday, with no warm-up.

That’s the whole limitation of traditional training, designed for the long term: weeks of practice to hope to master a perfect technical gesture. A luxury that reality on the ground almost never allows. You can’t expect a team to wait until they’re “ready” in the sense that everything is mastered, drilled, automatic — because that moment never comes before the incident itself does.

The urgency of skill transfer is therefore the opposite of traditional training: transmitting quickly what is immediately usable, even if imperfect. A word, a posture, a simple reflex, delivered in the moment, applicable the second you leave the room — rather than sophisticated know-how that would only become operational after months of practice.

This isn’t about training experts. It’s about quickly giving everyone the means to respond to the best of their ability, because danger doesn’t wait for you to be ready.

See also:

• How do you defuse verbal aggression?
• What is tactical empathy?

Ultra-realism means we simulate conditions as close to reality as possible:

• Simulating physical and emotional stress
• Scenarios based on real incidents encountered by your teams
• Environments that resemble your actual workplace
• Immediate debriefs to cement the learning

Why? Because the brain associates a set of tools with situational demands. If the tools are practised under stress, the brain associates them with that level of activation. Ultra-realism creates lasting learning by aligning the tool with the context.

We’ve actually created a dedicated course, the Virtual Box , an experience that “stings” as much physically as psychologically.

See also:

• How do you select technical tools?
• What’s your evaluation method?

Crew spirit is my first intention. I want to create brothers (and sisters) in arms.

• Collective challenges: you’ll only get there together
• Shared vulnerability: everyone feels a little “out of their comfort zone”
• Shared successes: we celebrate the small and big wins together
• Progressive trust: trusting and inspiring trust
• Debriefing and reflection: understanding, celebrating the positive, improving the process

Through a collective build-up of strength, the team becomes a crew that trusts each other, protects each other, and is ready to face challenges together.

This spirit is the real strength when facing aggression and crises. It’s the foundation of the ResponsAbility programme .

Nothing magical, just a lot of method.

Focused pedagogy

We focus on what’s essential and useful. Concretely: 70% practice, 30% theory. The body learns by doing, not by listening.

We start from your real problems. No abstract scenarios invented for the exercise — the situations you experience, or could experience, in your actual work context.

Activating internal resources

You don’t arrive empty-handed. Everyone has already lived through things, taken hits, handled tension in their own way. We build on that.

We build together. You don’t receive pre-chewed knowledge — you construct it with what you already have.

I encourage you to doubt, to challenge, to question in order to find your own angle and style of intervention. In a VUCA environment, ready-made answers are suspect, at the very least.

Repetition and grounding

We repeat. But never twice the same way. Scenarios vary, the context shifts, the person in front of you changes, the pressure varies. It’s the only way to build a reflex.

After each scenario, systematic debriefing. What worked, what didn’t, why. We never let anything slide without understanding it.

Psychological safety

You learn badly with fear in your gut. Here, you have the right to try, to get it wrong, and to try again. No one judges you for a failure during training — that’s actually where you learn the most.

Result

In 2 days , you leave with tools that stick. Not techniques you forget the moment you leave the room, but reflexes and reference points you can reuse — and pass on — for years.

See also:

• Why work with ultra-realism?
• What’s your evaluation method?

Tools are never chosen at random. Our selection depends on:

Your context:

• Type of aggression encountered (verbal, physical)
• Environment (hospital, school, street, office)
• Team profile (age, fitness level, prior trauma)
• Available resources

Proven effectiveness:

• Techniques based on real data
• Tested in conditions similar to yours
• Adaptable without losing effectiveness

Real-world applicability:

• A complex tool requiring 10 years of practice isn’t applicable in 2 days
• We favour simplicity with maximum effectiveness
• No unnecessary impact (we set aside striking as a first response)

Legal compliance:

• Self-defence law respected
• Necessary, simultaneous and proportionate response
• Professional ethics

Every tool needs to make sense FOR YOU, in YOUR reality. That’s where real effectiveness lies.