Dec 04 Dennis Jones – Training for Survival

This interview was published in September 2006

SR  Hiya Dennis, congratulations on the award at SENI, I’d like to talk about that, but can we leave it until next month?

DJ  You can leave it as long as you like Steve! 

SR  Modest as ever!  (Dennis laughs) What I’d like to talk about this month is what motivates people to train.

DJ  In my case it’s habit.  Smoking is a bad habit and a lot of people find that particular habit a hard one to break.  I started training in the martial arts and found it a good habit so it must be a harder one to break than a bad habit!

SR  But you don’t smoke!

DJ  I know.  It’s one of those analogies…

SR  Martial arts and smoking just brings this story to mind – and I just gotta tell it.  When I was in Czech teaching a few years ago, I was staying in this ‘family’ hotel with our association English iaido and aikido chief instructors and the hotel owner asked us if we would like to arrange to have a sports massage…

I didn’t want one and neither did the iaido instructor, but the aikido instructor who was a vegetarian ‘health’ type person said “yeah, I would like to arrange one”, being a healthy guy he hated smoking and all the smells associated with it so he asked the hotel owner if the masseur smoked.  Well, in Czech, if you asked a masseur if she ‘smoked’ it’s asking for extra curricular ‘services’.  The hotel owner looked very embarrassed and said “yeah I think so…”  When I mentioned this strange conversation to our Czech chief instructor, he roared with laughter and explained the hidden meaning!  Our guy never got his massage or extra services!

DJ  I bet that story is edited!  (Editors’ note: just a little.)

SR  Back to the original subject…  are you saying that health is the main reason?

DJ  No, fighting has always been the main reason, anything else is secondary, I need to be able to look after myself, and so my reason for training has always been to be able to disable someone as quickly and efficiently as possible.  And when I say efficiently, I mean with one ‘shot’.  If that shot doesn’t work, do it again!  You get one window of opportunity and if you miss that – you’re in trouble.  Making the right decision at the right time takes real skill.

SR  One of my young dan grades fought off 4 attackers – one armed with a baseball bat. He took the bat off the guy and battered them all into submission.  At the end of it they all ‘made up’ and shook hands – and guess what?

DJ …He gave it back?

SR  Yup – and then got a good hiding.

DJ  I’ve got a couple of baseball bats at home and about half-dozen other implements taken off idiots at various times over the last 5 years – and that doesn’t include the blades we’ve confiscated!  There is a right time when you can easily get a ‘tool’ off someone but if you read the situation wrongly You are very likely to get seriously hurt!

SR Fighting is your main motivation, what do you think it is with other people.

DJ  I can’t really talk for others but the secondary product of my training is health. 

SR  The ‘trinity’ that I teach is health, skill and application.  I would consider that trinity to be the factor that determines whether what you do is a martial art or not.

DJ  Are all these equal or put another way, are they as important as each other?

SR  That’s right, good mental and physical health is very important for life in general as well as self defence, skill is essential for self defence and for general co-ordination in life, it’s also a sign of mental and physical well being, self defence will then arise from those two with the right kind of awareness and mindset.

DJ  My Chinese mother, who with her family nearly staved to death during the Japanese occupation of Malaya, repeatedly told me never to take good health for granted.  She would say to me, ‘Denny always pray for good health’.  And then tell me that lots of money means nothing without fitness and health.  When you are young you always take good health for granted, as you get older, get ill and have friends whose health has declined you tend to value it more.  You’re also glad that you didn’t get into excessive drinking, didn’t smoke, do drugs and act recklessly, treating your own life with contempt.  Good Martial Arts training should imbue the student with good manners and respect for other people and themselves.

Anyway Steve if you’re not healthy, how can you defend yourself?  And if you’re not physically fit, fighting gets very difficult.  When I teach now, the primary purpose is fighting, however, I always talk about using training as an aid to good health.  It’s one of the reasons that I have maintained my taiji.

SR  What about wisdom?  If someone asked me why I trained – that would be my answer, the pursuit of wisdom.  With regard to fighting, wisdom can teach you how to avoid trouble and help get you out of a situation with the least possible injury all round.

DJ   Experience gives you wisdom and I certainly teach people how to avoid trouble, teach them the indicators of trouble, how people act and what angles they use.  I also explain what they will be feeling at ‘that awkward moment’ I know because I spent most of my life, and that includes working on the doors, avoiding, deflecting and defusing potential trouble.   

SR  Experience in many other areas of my life has given me wisdom that I’ve been able to apply in the Martial Arts and vice versa.

DJ  I’d say that a lot of the content of my courses didn’t come directly from the Martial Arts but from my experience.  However, my experience is also from the Martial Arts and Karate helped make me into who I am.  

SR  The thing with knowledge is that it’s useless unless you’re able to make intelligent use of it.

DJ  In my view, use of intelligence can be defined as, changing yourself to suit your surroundings or changing your surroundings to suit yourself.  I also think of two types of knowledge, the knowledge you know and the knowledge you know that you can find out.  These thoughts have over the years, served me well.

SR  The Martial Arts is an alchemical process, that’s why we use the analogy of the chakras to represent the journey.

DJ  Isn’t that religious though Steve?

SR  Not really Den, you have to discipline yourself and your desires to fulfil the journey in the arts and we’re not talking about God or anything outside of this life.  The word religion comes from the same root as ‘lesion’ (cut or tear) so religion means rebinding to what you were before you were born.  The martial arts are far more pragmatic than that.

DJ  I guess it’s finding out who you really are, stripping away all that’s unnecessary and discovering yourself.  Know your ‘Atman’.  The Vedanta states that ignorance manifests in three distinct stages:

1. Lack of information.
2. Lack of understanding
3. Lack of experience.

SR  That’s wisdom then isn’t it?

DJ  I’d call it survival!

SR  Wisdom and survival…..  not bad reasons for training eh?

DJ  Not bad at all Steve.

Steve Rowe

Steve Rowe is a highly successful Martial Arts instructor - an International Neigong, Qigong and Tai Chi Teacher and an 8th Dan Karate with many other senior dan grades in other martial disciplines.

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