An advocate for mental health and lifelong martial arts devotee, Ryann Niday has fought for her love of jiu-jitsu. Starting at a local gym in Edmond, Oklahoma in 2005, at age 11, Ryann found that the agency jiu-jitsu gave her over her mind and body allowed her to navigate being with boldness and self assurance.  After a life-altering tragedy in her mid-teens, Ryann began struggling with her mental health. The jiu-jitsu community, once a source of care and confidence, lacked the tools to help her move through her hurt and to a place of healing. In addition to working through the grief and confusion of her own personal tragedy, jiu-jitsu became an inaccessible outlet for a time.

With thoughtful intention and implementing therapeutic strategies, Ryann was able to find her way back to jiu-jitsu. She found a deep comfort in working with trauma-informed women and began to use somatic principles to recreate her jiu-jitsu practice. With the help of her supportive community, she discovered the power of boundary setting strategies, and addressing trauma responses that presented during training. It was with the help these strategies that Ryann was able to work through the second major setback in her jiu-jitsu journey: a physical accident that required multiple surgeries.

Rather than stepping away from her jiu-jitsu practice, as she had to in her teens, Ryann was able awaken a range of connections between jiu-jitsu and healing to create the type of space and practice for others that had been revealed to her: a jiu-jitsu study that embraces the whole self, on and off the mat.

Ryann is the Founder of Myline Somatic Self-Defense, located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.