For a martial artist, the journey to mastery is like climbing a mountain that has no summit. No matter how high you climb, there will always be a higher plateau beckoning you.
So when Cindy Jones became only the third person in Canada to earn the sixth dan (degree) Shihan rank in the Shorinjiryu Kentokukan Karate-do School, she readily acknowledged that her journey isn’t over.
In many ways, it’s only just beginning.
“Every level has made me better,” said the newly appointed Shihan, who is head instructor of Athabasca’s Wa-no Kaze Kai Karate Club. She and her husband Sensei Daryl Jones have been training in karate since 1989, and both have risen to heights they never would have imagined at first.
So when Jones accepted her new (and likely final) rank during a presentation at Whispering Hills Primary School on Saturday, it was as much a moment for reflection as celebration.
“It’s a journey you don’t plan in advance. It’s sort of something that happens,” said Jones, who still has fond memories of the long car trips into St. Albert that she and her husband would make when they were just beginning their training. They began as white belts, just like everyone else, and they never considered heading up their own club and teaching in Athabasca.
But that’s exactly what ended up happening.
“None of this was my intention. You grow and progress and you need someone else to practice with. You need to teach someone something so you have a partner. (Then) if your students get up to a certain level, you have to get ahead of them. You just keep learning along the way,” she said.
Since 1992, Jones has helped guide a great many students on their own martial arts journeys, and they in turn have helped her advance down her own path.
“It all depends on the students you have, the other people that support you, and how you react and grow and become a better martial artist,” she said. “You learn from your students. There’s never a class where I don’t learn something as well.”
The Wa-no Kaze Kai club has been well received in its two decades of existence, and teaching the many students who have joined has kept Jones very busy. Being an instructor will always be a demanding role, but now that she is literally one of the most accomplished practitioners of her martial art in the country, her list of obligations will only grow. She has responsibilities to her students, and her teachers, to the martial art itself and to a national organization. These are not responsibilities that Jones has taken on lightly, but she’s never shunned them before, and she doesn’t intend to start now.
“To be recognized on the national level, at such a high level, it is overwhelming. You have an obligation to give back,” she said. “There is a lot to live up to, (but) anything that challenges you to move out of your comfort zone makes you a better person.”
It takes many years to earn a first-degree black belt, and many more to earn the degrees above that. It would take a long time, and a lot of very focused and deliberate training, for Jones to receive her seventh dan, but she doesn’t anticipate going in that direction. That’s not to say she intends to stop learning or growing as a martial artist and a person.
That would be impossible, even if she tried.
“I’m not interested in the number. I’m interested in our students and our club and the organization.”
And that is good news for the community’s karate practitioners, both now and in the future.
