Every Body Karate for Adults & Teens
Body-positive, trans-affirming, neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-aware karate
We practice Jin Sei Ryu Karate-Do, a traditional martial art for the 21st century. There are two ways for Adult and Teens to get started:
- Rolling admission all year round. Schedule your free trial class to start now! Call/text 847-790-4226 or fill out an online form to reserve your spot.
- Beginners’ Series: Join with a cohort for an 8-10 week series every January and September. This year, our fall Beginners’ Series starts Tuesday September 9th (9/9!)
Jump to:
- Beginners schedule
- What is Karate for Every Body?
- Registration/Inquiry Form
- Looking for Karate for Kids (age 4-12)?
Adult & Teen Beginners Schedule
We offer a beginners’ series every January and September, and also offer rolling admission year round. Check out our full class schedule, and start your journey to black belt today!
Learn about our tiered pricing here.
Classes times for Beginner Adults & Teens
- Tuesdays 7:30pm – 8:15pm – This class is for beginners only (usually 0-4 months of karate experience) and is is quite small
- Thursdays 6:30pm – 7:30pm – This class is for Beginners and Advanced Beginners (usually 0-8 months of karate experience) and is small
- Saturdays 3pm-4pm – This is our ‘Community’ class and is the highlight of our week. Beginners and experienced students alike come together to practice (and learn) karate basics, practice forms and partner work, conditioning exercises, and more. This is a larger class (usually 10-14 students). Beginners welcomed and encouraged!
Wednesdays 7:15pm-8:15pm – Open dojo self-training time. Do you have an independent streak? Like to have time to decompress, practice at your own pace, maybe hit the heavy bag? This is your time to enjoy the training space without the structure of a class. You can practice entirely on your own, or ask a senior student or teacher for help.
Monthly fees include unlimited classes each month. Come to as many classes per week as suits your schedule! Download our full 2025 schedule here.
What if I want to keep taking classes after the Beginners’ Series ends?
We hope you will! After completing the the series, you can join as a member at one of our monthly membership tiers to gain access to multi-level classes 5 days a week!
What do you mean by karate for every body?
Body-positive, trans-affirming, neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-aware karate.
This is karate for the 21st century. Our karate teaching is student-centered. As part of our commitment to inclusivity and diversity, we teach from a body-positive, trans-affirming, neurodiversity-affirming, and trauma-aware perspective.
Body positivity for us means that we believe that karate is for every body, and also for everybody. At Culture of Safety, we know that people come in all shapes, sizes, ages, and abilities. We support Health At Every Size (HAES) approaches to health and wellbeing. We recognize that size is not a reliable indicator of fitness, fitness looks different for each body, and that fitness itself is not always the most important factor in someone’s health and wellbeing. Every body deserves to feel safe, strong, and self-confident. You can start karate classes with the body you have today. We want each person to discover the joy of karate in the body they have—not the body someone else tells them they should have, or the body they wish they had.
A trans-affirming space
We work hard to ensure our space and culture are trans-affirming. We will always check in to ensure we are using the most affirming language and pronouns for each student. Our bathroom facilities are single-stall all-gender (or agender) spaces.
We recognize that all students come with different brains and that everyone learns differently. In order to support the full neurodiversity of folks who want to learn karate, we vary our teaching approaches to meet the needs of the student in front of us.
Trauma-informed
We recognize that trauma-informed teaching require us to find ways to challenge students in ways that empower and do not create trauma or re-traumatize them. To accomplish this, we ensure that class expectations and structures are explicit to allow full agency and autonomy of every student. Students are encouraged to take breaks when they need to, even if it’s not a formal break time. When despite our best efforts, a student is triggered during class, we encourage them to take care of themselves, and to communicate with us and their training partners about what they are experiencing. Our goal is not to protect our students from all challenging situations, but to support them in healing by exploring their growth edges in a supportive environment.
We’re here to help adult and teen beginners find their strongest, most confident, and most empowered self and explore the joy of their bodies in movement.
An inclusive, welcoming environment
How do we make our adult and teen beginner karate classes welcoming to every body at Jin Sei Ryu Karate-Do Chicago?
- Using trauma-aware teaching practices
- Maintaining a trans-and-queer-affirming space
- Adjusting teaching practices to support students with a variety of abilities and a variety of fitness levels
- Offering tiered pricing – which allows those who can afford to pay more the opportunity to support those less able
- Offering affirming in-person private lessons
Our head instructors are Sensei Amy Jones and Senpai Kyren Epperson. Sensei Amy Jones, LSW (she & they) is a 4th degree black belt and a licensed social worker, as well as a certified empowerment self-defense instructor. Senpai Kyren Epperson, PhD (they/them) is a 3rd degree black belt, a teacher of samatha meditation, and a practitioner of Zen Shiatsu massage (bodywork) as well as a certified empowerment self-defense instructor. With their blend of backgrounds, Sensei Amy and Senpai Kyren work to create an empowering environment where folks of all ages and stages can feel safe exploring something new.