Fighting to feel alive: Krav Maga, post-trauma, and the embodied healing journey after a mass violence event

This study explores how survivors of a mass violence event at a music festival engaged in Krav Maga training as a form of embodied recovery. Through in-depth interviews with six participants (three women and three men), we examined how intensive combat training became a way to feel alive again, physically, emotionally, and socially. The findings reveal that Krav Maga functioned not merely as self-defence, but as an existential response to a shattered sense of safety and reality. Four interwoven themes illuminate this process: physical readiness for future threat; reclaiming vitality through high-intensity effort; emotional expression through movement; and the training group as a raw, informal capsule of mutual healing. In this environment, participants found resonance, trust, and connection. As they pushed through exhaustion and physical challenge, participants began to renegotiate their embodied relationship with fear, pain, and presence. Within this transformative process, Krav Maga emerged as a medium through which survivors could reorient themselves towards vitality, agency, and connection. The study contributes to trauma and somatic recovery research by highlighting the potential of high-intensity training as a bridge between rupture and repair.