Via Fight the Fear on Facebook.

Update: With more than 100 people signed up, the workshop has been moved to a bigger pace at Calvary Baptist Church (733 8th Street NW) in Gallery Place.

Original:

Brandi Carlile comes through town next week, taking the stage at Wolf Trap on Wednesday. A community-oriented, violence prevention campaign, “Fight the Fear,” is coming along, too.

A few days after the show, on July 25, they are sponsoring a free workshop for women, LGBTQ, and gender nonconforming people that will be run by the D.C.-based Defend Yourself. The campaign, which is inspired by Teresa Butz’s life and brutal killing in 2009, is funded by Carlile’s Looking Out Foundation.

Lauren Taylor, who has been teaching self-defense since the late 1980s, will lead the workshop along with several other instructors. Taylor explains that Defend Yourself’s teaching model goes well beyond the physical lessons that most people associate with self-defense classes.

“Most students, and I’ve been teaching a long time, come in thinking they’re going to learn to kick and punch, which is very powerful to feel,” she said. “But people are stunned at the verbal and mental transformation that learning this stuff facilitate.”

That stuff includes prevention and avoidance tactics. “Basically getting people real about where the risks lie in their lives,” Taylor says. The majority of attacks, including sexual assault, are by people the victim knows. “We’re leading people away from being horribly freaked out about parking garages and into seeing where there might be places in their lives with warning signs.”

Next, they get into developing verbal skills that can be deployed should a situation arise, whether it’s with a family member, friend, acquaintance, or a stranger. It is that work of “boundary setting and assertiveness” that Taylor says can help stop an attack before it starts. Only after those lessons do they get into how you actually hit someone.

The free workshop will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Church of the Holy City (1611 16th Street NW) Calvary Baptist Church (733 8th Street NW) on July 25. Between 4 and 5 p.m. LGBTQ and gender nonconforming individuals are invited to stay for additional material for their specific needs.