The Independent
Self-defense is more than just knowing a few maneuvers. True self-defense includes personal awareness and an expanded understanding of “protection.” This summer, the DOVE Center is offering a new personal safety course intended to educate individuals and community service providers alike about empowerment-focused safety. Beginning June 4, the 16-week course touches on topics like fear, intuition, boundaries, myths, situational advantages, socialization, and trauma healing. It is open to anyone in the community ages 15 and up, male or female.
Thanks to an IRONMAN grant, ImagePro Printing donations, and many volunteer hours, the original DSU cost of $500 for the summer course has been reduced to $65. The course fosters a safe environment for those re-evaluating their personal safety and is useful for anyone beginning college, re-entering the dating scene, or traveling abroad. However, personal safety benefits individuals from all walks of life.
“I’m not a violent person, but it taught me that it’s okay to protect myself,” said Tammie Kartchner, a Utah business owner who took the course last year. “It taught me to be more aware of my surroundings, but it also empowered me.”
The course was the brainchild of retired professor Tim Eicher, who built the class for Dixie State University students 25 years ago. With the extensive work of the Personal Safety Coalition—a southern Utah committee of safety service providers—the course is now accessible and affordable to the community at large.
Class instructors Sasha Trae and Tim Eicher feel that personal safety should be holistic in its approach and prefer to use the term, “personal safety,” rather than “self-defense.”
“It is neither exclusively book learning nor self-defense training,” said Trae. “The course is designed to be ‘biopsychosocial,’ meaning it simultaneously strengthens cognitive awareness, social effectiveness, and physical self-defense.”
The course includes both classroom and gym components, which are highly complementary.
“You learn from the book what motivates someone to attack you. It’s not just learning how to attack the guy in the red suit—although I think they are always looking for red suit volunteers,” Kartchner said, laughing.
The personal safety course meets every Thursday beginning June 4 and ending September 17. To register, please contact the DOVE Center Outreach Office at (435) 628-1204.
The DOVE Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization committed to providing safe, caring, and confidential shelter and advocacy and support for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and to reducing the incidents of abuse through prevention education. For more information, please visit www.dovecenter.org.
