Can I learn self-defense in a few sessions?

Yes and no, and be suspicious of anyone who only says yes.

In one hour you can learn things that genuinely change your odds. How to stand and hold your hands so you are hard to grab in the first place. How to keep distance without looking like you are keeping distance. How to break a grip. How to get up off the floor without turning your back. How to move toward the door instead of freezing in place. That is real, you keep it, and you will still have it in five years.

What takes longer is doing any of it when your heart is at 180 and your hands have gone stupid. Everybody is competent in a garage on a Tuesday. The gap between competent and reliable is closed by repetition, by drilling against a live person who is not helping you, and by somebody turning the pressure up a notch at a time while watching what you do with it. Months, not hours. Anyone who tells you a weekend seminar closes that gap is selling a certificate.

So here is the realistic version of a few sessions, in the order I would teach it: stance and hand position, keeping distance, breaking grips, getting up off the floor, moving to an exit. Five things. Five things drilled properly beat twenty things you half remember, and the half-remembered twenty is what most short courses actually leave you with.

Grip breaks are usually the first thing people ask about, because that is what it looks like when somebody puts hands on you. Not a boxing match. A wrist, a sleeve, a bag strap. What to do if someone grabs your wrist walks through the principles so you know what you are drilling toward.

All of it assumes the other person is bigger than you, because they usually are. Nobody picks a fight they expect to lose. See what to do when the person is bigger and stronger.

If you are a woman starting from nothing and you want the order that matters most, what a woman should learn first is the same short list with the real situations attached to it.

What a few sessions will not give you is an answer for a weapon or for three people at once. Those situations come down to distance and an exit rather than technique, and more training does not change that. It just makes you quicker to recognise them and quicker to be somewhere else.

The most useful thing I teach is not a technique anyway. It is paying attention early enough that you never need one. That costs nothing, it works in the parking lot before anything starts, and it is the thing that actually keeps people out of trouble. Techniques are what you fall back on because you already missed it.

So book a few sessions. Learn the basics, walk out better than you walked in, and decide then whether you want the rest. Nobody is signing you up for anything. One session, no package, and I would rather you left with three things that work than a certificate for a weekend course.