Upcoming classes
Home for the Holidays: Difficult Conversations with Family
Safe Bars: De-Escalation for Hospitality Staff
Active Bystander Skills for Interrupting Racism
Empowerment and Self-Defense for BIPOC
Get Empowered! A Self-Defense Happy Hour
About our classes
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 meeting any other challenge, we offer skills you can use.
Live life with more confidence, more safety, more freedom, + more fun!
Join us to learn how to prevent and avoid harassment, attack, and abuse; how to stop a threatening situation with words; and physical strikes to use against common attacks.
- All of our classes are tailored to the life situations and experiences of the students.
- All of our classes are open to people of all abilities: You don’t have to be an athlete or a martial artist to help yourself be safer. All of our classes are held in wheelchair-accessible spaces. If there’s something else that would help you be able to participate, please let us know.
- All of our classes have limited sliding-scale spaces for those who can’t afford the full fee.
- And all of our classes are fun!
If you sign up for a class and are unable to make it, we’ll give you a partial credit toward another class. We’re unable to make refunds.
Home for the Holidays: Difficult Conversations with Family
Do you dread facing your relatives, in person or online? Do conversations about the election or racism end badly, or are you bracing for comments about things like your sexuality or your weight? We can help!
Join us to learn:
- How to prepare yourself for spending time with difficult relatives (and others)
- The 5 basic elements of boundary-setting
- How to bring the temperature down when someone is escalated
- And more!
Who: Open to women, trans men, and nonbinary/gender nonconforming people, age 16 and up. Maximum enrollment is 35.
When: Pick a session below; the workshop is 2 hours long.
How: Fee is $20, $35, or $50. Please contact us if you can’t afford $20 or if you can give more than $50.
Please let us know when you register what accommodations you may need (such as ASL or Spanish interpretation) or email us.
By registering, you agree to hold confidential other peoples’ experiences and stories shared in the session. For safety reasons, no recording is allowed, and the session will be closed to entry 10 minutes after it starts.
Class Dates
Safe Bars: De-Escalation for Hospitality Staff
co-sponsored with Focus on Health (FOH) and Safe Bars
The pandemic has brought with it an enormous surge in the number of people giving hospitality workers a hard time. Join us to learn de-escalation skills for dealing with people who refuse to wear a mask, spew blatant racism or sexism, are out-of-control angry, or otherwise creating problems for you at work.
In this experiential workshop tailored to the hospitality industry, you’ll learn:
- When to choose to de-escalate
- 5 steps to effectively de-escalate
- The assertive alternative
- Working with the fight-flight-freeze response
- Organizational strategies
- And more!
Who: Open to everyone who works in the hospitality industry. Maximum enrollment is 35.
When: Pick a session below; the workshop is 2 hours long.
How: Fee is $20, $35, or $50. Please contact us if you can’t afford $20 or if you can give more than $50.Please let us know when you register what accommodations you may need (such as ASL or Spanish interpretation) or email us.
By registering, you agree to hold confidential other peoples’ experiences and stories shared in the session. For safety reasons, no recording is allowed, and the session will be closed to entry 10 minutes after it starts.
This training can also be tailored to your workplace. Please contact us if you’d like a custom workshop for your organization or business.
Class Dates
Active Bystander Skills for Interrupting Racism
Attacks on people of color, especially Black and Asian Americans, are spiking. We all can take action to interrupt verbal and physical hate and we all have concerns that can prevent us from getting involved. Skills are the antidote to those concerns. Join us to learn how to assess a situation and choose a response to reduce harm to the person targeted while keeping yourself safe.
We’ll cover:
- A social-justice framework for understanding the role of bystanders in interrupting oppression
- Reasons to get involved when you see a problem, and reasons not to
- Overcoming barriers to intervening
- The 5 steps of bystander intervention
- De-escalation basics
- 4 tools for intervening
Read more about our active bystander trainings in The Washington Post.
Who: Open to all genders age 14 and up. Maximum enrollment is 35.
When: Pick a session below; the workshop is 2 hours long.
How: Fee is $20, $35, or $50. Please contact us if you can’t afford $20 or if you can give more than $50.
Please let us know when you register what accommodations you may need (such as ASL or Spanish interpretation) or email us.
By registering, you agree to hold confidential other peoples experiences and stories shared in the session. For safety reasons, no recording is allowed, and the session will be closed to entry 10 minutes after it starts.
Class Dates
Empowerment and Self-Defense for BIPOC
People of color in the U.S. are targeted for verbal and physical hate at much higher rates than white people are. Join us to build on what you already know with more skills to help keep yourself safe. We’ll cover:
- The 5 basic elements of boundary-setting
- How to bring the temperature down when someone is escalated
- 2 simple physical strikes for the worst-case situation
and more!
NOTE: This workshop is for people of color. If you’re white and want to help, please join us for our workshop on Active Bystander Skills for Interrupting Racism.
Who: Open to women, trans men, and nonbinary/gender nonconforming people, age 16 and up, who identify as Black, Indigenous, or people of color. Maximum enrollment is 35.
How: Fee is $10, $20, or $30. Please contact us if you can’t afford $10 or if you can give more than $30.
Please let us know when you register what accommodations you may need (such as ASL or Spanish interpretation) or email us.
By registering, you agree to hold confidential other peoples’ experiences and stories shared in the session. For safety reasons, no recording is allowed, and the session will be closed to entry 10 minutes after it starts.
Class Dates
Get Empowered! A Self-Defense Happy Hour
Have you been harassed at work (virtually or in person), on the street, or on public transit? Is a family member intrusive, either with words or physically? Is there anyone you want to set a limit with, but arent quite sure how to say it? We cover these and other situations.
You’ll find the power in your body and mind to practice boundary-setting as the foundation of self-defense, and effective strikes for a last resort.
We’ll cover:
- The 5 basic elements of boundary-setting
- How to bring the temperature down when someone is escalated
- 2 simple physical strikes for the worst-case situation
and more!
Who: Open to women, trans men, and nonbinary/gender nonconforming people, age 16 and up. Maximum enrollment is 35.
When: Pick a session below; the workshop is 1.5 hours long.
How: Fee is $20, $35, or $50. Please contact us if you can’t afford $20 or if you can give more than $50.
Please let us know when you register what accommodations you may need (such as ASL or Spanish interpretation) or email us.
By registering, you agree to hold confidential other peoples’ experiences and stories shared in the session. For safety reasons, no recording is allowed, and the session will be closed to entry 10 minutes after it starts.
Class Dates
Don’t see what you want?
Please sign up for our newsletter, and we’ll let you know when workshops are scheduled.
In the meantime, if you’d like some training in personal safety and self-protection skills, you can bring us to you! If you have any group (friends, neighborhood, workplace, faith group, club/team, etc.), we’ll customize a workshop to your needs – and we can do it online.
