Defend Yourself

More safety, more confidence, more freedom, more fun!

Based in Washington, DC, serving the entire U.S.

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Bring us to you

Have a group? We’ll come to you!

Defend Yourself offers workshops and classes of any length, from an hour-long workshop to a year-round class. All of our programs cover:

  • Prevention and awareness: steps you can take to prevent or avoid an attack or abuse.
  • Assertiveness and verbal self-defense: using words and body language to stop annoying or intrusive behavior and to keep a situation from escalating.
  • Physical self-defense: practical techniques to end a physical attack and get to safety.
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Photo by Martin Locraft

All of our classes are tailored to the life situations and needs of the participants. We present age-appropriate material for students age 3 and up! Everyone can join in: No matter how out of shape you are, or what physical limitations you have, you can do things to protect yourself.

All Defend Yourself programs are interactive: We involve participants in brainstorming, role-playing, and exercises. Our approach is positive, empowering, and upbeat: We don’t focus on how scary it is that violence and abuse happen, but rather on options we all have and ways we can take care of ourselves.

Even in a short workshop, people learn concrete skills they can use. The longer the class time, the more we cover different situations, respond to the risks in students’ lives, practice to make the techniques second nature (so you’ll have them when you need them), and deal with complex, real-life situations.

Contact us at 301.608.3708 or by email. We can customize a workshop for your group!

We can teach workshops of any length. Here are some examples:

Power Lunch (2 hours)

One of the most popular formats, a Power Lunch can take place at any time of day and includes:

  • How to avoid being a target
  • Simple verbal skills for setting limits
  • Basic physical techniques for when escape is not an option

FUNdamentals of Self-defense (4 hours)

Covers everything in the 2-hour workshop, plus:

  • Application of more complex verbal strategies in a variety of real-life situations
  • Physical responses for front and rear attack

Safer and More Confident (12 hours)

Covers everything in a 4-hour workshop. Students also:

  • Learn techniques to escape pins on the ground, even when pinned by a much larger attacker
  • Practice complex, real-life verbal situations
  • Work on healing from past harassment, abuse, or assault

Who’s learning to defend themselves?

These are some of the places Defend Yourself has held classes and workshops. If you want to organize a workshop for your school, community group, workplace, or whatever, call 301.608.3708 or email us.

Workplaces

  • D.C. Public Libraries
  • Center for American Progress
  • Community Connections
  • Council of Chief State School Officers
  • D.C. Central Kitchen
  • Discovery Communications
  • Golden Triangle Business Improvement District
  • Greenpeace
  • Humanity and Inclusion
  • Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
  • Smithsonian Institution
  • World Bank

Community and faith groups

  • American Association of University Women
  • Asian Pacific American Bar Assn. of DC
  • Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project
  • Children’s Hospital/Boys Club, Girls Club
  • Community Connections
  • D.C. Rape Crisis Center
  • D.C. Anti-Violence Project/The D.C. Center for the LGBT Community
  • Disability Partnerships
  • Fort Belvoir/Family Support Program
  • Generation Hope
  • Girl Scout troops (lots!)
  • Girls Inc.
  • Islamic Center of Maryland
  • Mary’s Center
  • Returned Peace Corp Volunteers Washington
  • ScholarChips
  • Washington Ethical Society
  • Willow Street Yoga

Schools — elementary + middle

  • Holton-Arms
  • Oneness Family School
  • Sandy Spring Friends School, high school and middle school
  • SISTERS/Family Support Center: E. Brooke Lee MS, Kennedy HS, Montgomery Village MS, Parkland MS, Twinbrook Community Center, Earle B. Wood MS, Julius West MS, Watkins Mill HS
  • North Bethesda Middle School, after-school program

Schools — high

  • Barrie School
  • National Cathedral School
  • Sherwood High School

Schools — college+

  • Alpha Delta Alpha Delta Pi GWU
  • University of Md.
  • American University Law and Government Program
  • Carlos Rosario International School
  • Georgetown University
  • Marymount University

If you want to organize a workshop for your school, community group, workplace, or whatever, we can do it! Contact us.

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Sign up now for the monthly newsletter and you’ll also get our e-book with stories of real-life people standing up to harassment, abuse, and assault!

Read our latest newsletter here

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Meet Lauren

Teacher, resister, advocate, warrior princess. Passionate about a world free of gender-based violence and people becoming their full selves. Loves chocolate, justice, and cats (not necessarily in that order).

Click here to find out more!

Classes for everyone

Defend Yourself has classes for everyone, no matter what your age or ability. Whether you're dealing with street harassment, going off to college, healing from abuse, or any other challenge, we offer skills you can use.

Click here to see some of what we offer!

National Street Harassment Hotline

Call toll-free: 855-897-5910
(English + Spanish. 24-7)
Find out more!

More safety, more confidence, more freedom, more fun!

Get our newsletter!

Sign up now for our monthly newsletter and you’ll also get our e-book with stories of real-life people standing up to harassment, abuse, and assault!

Read our latest newsletter here
 

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Learn something now

  • Run,Yell,Tell, Hit, + Go Along
  • My journey to assertiveness
  • Strategies for safety
  • Should I yell FIRE!?!?
  • #9 Making self-defense a part of your life
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What people say

This class has given me a powerful toolkit and the confidence to yell “NO” and know I have every right to say it. It’s helped me rethink my personal boundaries and feel good about maintaining them.
Thank you for a wonderful class. I will spread the word around my high school and to every interested girl/woman I know!
What an empowering, enlightening class! You gave me a wonderfully empowering gift – the ability to speak! You helped take away some of the fear that I had by having me realize that I have some power within.
Her calm, steady energy felt reassuring.
Bothering leads to dangerous things and situations if we aren’t careful. We want to try to stop the situation before it gets really dangerous+ACE There are bullies that can start at just being annoying by talking and saying those mean things but it can turn into something very dangerous if you are not careful. So the key is to be very smart and think before you ac– from the book by our students at Jump Start Girls/Adelante Nias
Inspiring, caring, understanding, strong, and self-assured.
Thank you for such an empowering, confidence-inspiring class. When you first announced that the class would teach both verbal and physical defense, I was a bit hesitant – I presumed I already knew how to verbally defend myself, and thought I was ready to get down to more hard core self-defense moves.
When I took my [previous self-defense] class, I learned how to fend off physical attacks, but it took me much, much longer to learn how to develop and maintain healthy relationships. I spent too many years in an abusive relationship . . . Now I’m a lot more careful about defending myself – which is why your class was so important to me.
The teachers role-modeled being strong women.
Lauren is very encouraging and patient. An excellent teacher, she makes everyone feel comfortable.
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Based in Washington, D.C., serving the world

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