ONTA Studio

ONTA Studio is a Martial Arts School in Essex Junction, VT, located at 373 Blair Park Rd STE 102. The dojo provides instruction in Karate, Self Defense, Kickboxing, Tai Chi, Chi Kung, MMA, and a variety of other Martial Arts to kids and adults. Based in Williston, Vermont, the studio helps people unlock the superpowers laying latent inside themselves. It serves as a place for families, children of all skills, sensitivities, and abilities, girls learning how to be dangerous, nerds, and people just learning how to live in their bodies or bringing attention back to their bodies after a long absence.

Zach Stevens leads the instruction, having been practicing martial arts since his mom, a Karate black belt, first brought him to the dojo at age five. Growing up on a farm in southern Vermont, Zach studied and earned black belts in Goju-Ryu Karate and Nihon Jujutsu and competed in folkstyle wrestling. With his passion for martial arts ignited, Zach went on to train Judo with Sensei Doug Tono at the Tohkon Judo Academy in Chicago, and Sanda Kickboxing, Tai Chi, and Chi Kung under Sifu Brent Hamby at EBM Kung Fu in California. He studied Pekiti Tirsia and Dogbrothers Kali with Guro Nicolás Wachsmann in Argentina, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu with Professor Edgelson Lua in London. He traveled to Thailand to study Chi Kung and Tao Yin with Grandmaster Mantak Chia, and is a certified instructor in his Healing Tao System. Zach holds a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Chicago and a M.A. in Economic Anthropology from the London School of Economics. He has over a decade of experience working with children and adults with special needs and developmental disabilities, both as a behavioral interventionist doing ABA interventions in homes and classrooms, and as teacher at a school for high risk special needs students.

Lauren Ballard grew up in the dojo watching her father train and compete as an American Kickboxer. Later he brought her into the temples of the Thai and Laos communities of northern California, where she learned Theravada meditation. After meeting Zach, the two of them traveled together to Thailand, where she studied Chi Kung and Tao Yi.

ONTA Studio holds a rating of 4.70 based on customer reviews. The studio is known as Over Nine Thousand Academy and welcomes those who have loved martial arts all their life or always wanted to but were hesitant to try.

By combining extensive traditional training with modern behavioral intervention experience, ONTA Studio offers a unique martial arts education in Essex Junction.

BizScoreAI gives ONTA Studio a Discoverability score of 100 out of 100, ensuring AI crawlers can find every page of the website so AI assistants can recommend the business. The studio also earns a Technical score of 95 out of 100, confirming the website is secure and indexable for search engines without errors.